Takeaways from Alabama Football’s First Fall Scrimmage

Alabama football held its first scrimmage of the fall inside Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday morning. The scrimmage was closed to the public and media, but head coach Kalen DeBoer spoke with the media afterward, and Alabama released a few pictures and videos from the scrimmage.

Here are some takeaways from Saturday morning in Bryant-Denny.

Kalen DeBoer isn’t going to reveal much

Nick Saban wasn’t exactly an open book with the media, but DeBoer kept things very vague after the Crimson Tide’s first fall scrimmage. If you skim through DeBoer’s transcript, you’d be hard pressed to find any specifics about how any one player or position group performed in the scrimmage.

He only mentioned three players by name (Jalen Milroe, Jam Miller and Justice Haynes), and two of those three were specifically asked about by reporters. DeBoer also did not provide any details on injuries, just saying that the team is “relatively healthy” and dealing with “typical fall camp stuff.”

Alabama will have one more scrimmage inside Bryant-Denny and two more practices with viewing portions open to the media, but

Big plays for freshman receivers

Because of the nature of a scrimmage, Alabama was trying to get as many receivers involved as possible according to DeBoer.

“The ball really gets spread around,” DeBoer said. “If we look at the stat sheet it would be almost every receiver catching balls. So it’s not really just one guy had five to seven catches. They all walk away from a day like today disappointed, and there’s no reason to be disappointed.”

While there wasn’t any one guy who got targeted a lot, two of the biggest highlights from the scrimmage came from freshman receivers Ryan Williams and Caleb Odom. Williams had a long touchdown reception as shown in the photos released by UA, and Odom made an impressive one-handed snag around the 29-second mark in the highlight video. The freshman duo displayed their big-play ability on Saturday.

Position battles aren’t settled quite yet

Alabama’s biggest position battles heading into fall camp are at right tackle and cornerback. Kadyn Proctor has seemingly won back the job at left tackle after spending the spring at Iowa. Redshirt freshman Wilkin Formby has been with the first team offensive line at right tackle during practice, but he and redshirt sophomore Elijah Pritchett are still rotating reps at the spot.

USC transfer Domani Jackson has locked up one of the starting corner spots, but Wake Forest transfer DaShawn Jones, Jaylen Mbakwe and Zabien Brown are all still in the mix to be one of the other starters at corner.

DeBoer said seeing the guys actually tackling and playing in a game-like situation with the scrimmage helps bring the coaches clarity on the position battles a little more than regular practice can.

Encouraging signs from offensive line

DeBoer brought up the offensive line twice when asked about other position groups. He said they were able to open up some nice holes to create explosive plays for the running backs and create opportunities in the red zone.

“I also see the offensive line, slowly, like coming together, and being in sync, understanding where their help is,” DeBoer said. “So, where it was at, it’s kind of like the spring where the offense was slowly starting to catch up to where they should be.”

He also mentioned there were no procedural penalties on the offensive line like false starts or illegal formations, and they were able to draw the defense offsides once. Alabama struggled with false starts at times last season.

“The penalties were really down and minimal,” he said. “So I like the way we’re having some urgency and we’ll move around offensively. The guys are all getting set, so all the processes that we have in place, the guys are doing a really good job.”