Brynn Anderson/Associated Press The White team defeated the Crimson team 31-17 in the Alabama A-Day spring game Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. By virtue of Crimson's victory, it will dine on steak Saturday, while White will be relegated to eating beans: Crimson was led by starting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and the first-team offense, while the first-team defense played for White. Tagovailoa had somewhat modest production aided by a late touchdown with 265 yards, one touchdown and one interception on 19-of-37 passing, and he was outperformed by backup Mac Jones on the White team. Jones had the benefit of facing the second-team defense, but he took advantage by throwing for 271 yards, two touchdowns and one interception on 19-of-23 passing. Tagovailoa's brother, Taulia Tagovailoa, also played for White and went 6-of-9 for 93 yards with one touchdown and one pick. Freshman wide receiver John Metchie thrived for White with five catches for 133 yards en route to being named A-Day MVP. Things didn't start out ideally for Jones, as he was intercepted by freshman linebacker Shane Lee in the opening quarter. Alex Byington of the Montgomery Advertiser suggested that Lee could be in the mix for a starting spot entering 2019: Video Play Button Videos you might like Crimson took advantage of the turnover, as running back Najee Harris rushed for a four-yard touchdown to give Crimson a 7-0 lead. Following field goals by both sides, Jones got White in the end zone for the first time late in the first quarter when he found tight end Kedrick James in the flat for a 29-yard touchdown. James did most of the work on the play with his run after the catch despite being viewed primarily as a blocking tight end, per Roll 'Bama Roll: With a chance to give White the lead in the closing seconds of the first half, Jones got aggressive by going for a touchdown rather than settling for a field goal. That decision paid dividends, as he found Xavier Williams for a 22-yard touchdown with nine seconds left off an impressive stop-and-go route by Williams. While Jones had the best numbers among the Alabama quarterbacks Saturday, Taulia Tagovailoa stood out and made his case to be named Tua's backup as well. Like Jones, Taulia stumbled out of the gates. One of his first passes was intercepted by safety Eddie Smith in the first half, which erased a strong play he made previous, according to John Mitchell of Saturday Blitz: After getting that mistake out of the way, the younger Tagovailoa brother looked much more comfortable in the second half. That was apparent on a 29-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Jaylen Waddle in the third quarter that saw Taulia roll to his left and throw on the run to extend White's lead to 24-10. AL.com's Matt Scalici felt Taulia's touchdown pass looked quite familiar: Based on how well both Jones and Taulia Tagovailoa played, Byington expressed his belief that head coach Nick Saban could have a difficult decision on his hands when it comes to choosing Tua's backup: The biggest beneficiary of the quality quarterback play for the White team was Metchie, who stood out among a strong group of wideouts. Metchie made several big plays in the game, including a 49-yard reception on an underthrown ball by Jones in the first half. Both Ben Jones of the Tuscaloosa News and Birmingham Iron reporter Marq Burnett were impressed by Metchie's showing: After linebacker Jaylen Moody intercepted freshman quarterback Paul Tyson in the third quarter and returned it 30 yards for a touchdown to put White on top 31-10, Crimson's fate was essentially sealed. Even so, Saban gave Tua Tagovailoa a chance to work out some kinks by continuing to play him in the fourth quarter. That worked to Tua's advantage, as he finally broke through with a touchdown when he hit wide receiver Jerry Jeudy, who ran 54 yards for the score with 2:10 remaining in the game. That touchdown made Tua's day look a bit better than it was, but Brad Crawford of 247Sports noted that he wasn't going against the easiest opponent: Also, Tagovailoa dealt with a knee injury late last season, and Saturday marked his first significant action since the national championship game loss to Clemson. Alabama's first-team offense was not in rhythm, although it is difficult to envision the Crimson Tide's offense being anything less than explosive in 2019 given the wide array of weapons Tagovailoa will have at his disposal. Saban still has plenty of time to fine-tune things on the offensive side of the ball before Alabama opens up the regular season against Duke on Aug. 31.<doc-sep>Alabama’s football program is holding its annual A-Day spring game at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala. this afternoon. While there are tens of thousands of fans in attendance, the crowd is a bit disappointing. Nick Saban said he was excited to play in front of a big crowd today. “A-Day is a special day around here. There’s a lot of great traditions in this game — a lot of these things are special & what make being at University of Alabama a very special place,” he said. The crowd didn’t end up being that big, though. Alabama appears to have roughly 30,000 fans in attendance. Maybe 30,000 here for A-Day. Sad Bama Fans, sad. We can do better. We have a saying in the LEO world that complacency kills. Very worrisome for the “Bama Dynasty”. pic.twitter.com/S5P0nV1y1t — Criss in MS (@hwyman_34) April 13, 2019 Here’s another look at the crowd: The A-Day crowd for today’s spring game … pic.twitter.com/E13Uz3q1QY — Alex Byington (@_AlexByington) April 13, 2019 There are plenty of college football programs that would love to have a crowd like that for a glorified scrimmage. Those programs are not Alabama, though, and the Crimson Tide used to fill the stadium for these days. Alabama’s spring game is being televised on ESPN2.<doc-sep>Saturday was one of the busiest offseason Saturdays of the college football offseason. There were spring games going on all over the country, including a few of the biggest programs in the sport. It would have been nearly impossible for you to follow along with all of the action yourself -- and, honestly, why would you want to -- so we went ahead and kept track of the biggest developments for you. Of course, the word "biggest" needs some context here. These are spring games, after all, not regular season games. More than anything the goal of spring practice is to prepare for the season and not get hurt. Thankfully, as far as we know, most teams got through the day relatively healthy. That can't be said for all the coaches, though. More on that below. Michigan fan has a message for Jim Harbaugh Michigan didn't hold a traditional spring game on Saturday, but rather an open practice. Still, even so, one Michigan fan sent a message to Jim Harbaugh via airplane. The sign is a bit difficult to read in the photo, but it says, "Hey, Jim, this is God. It's OK to pass on first down. Let's try it." For those wondering, Michigan ran 396 first down plays last season. It ran the ball on 265 (66.9 percent) of them. I guess there's at least one fan in Ann Arbor hoping for more balance. Auburn's QBs had a big day If you were hoping for some clarity on the QB competition at Auburn based on how they played in the spring game, sorry, you didn't get anybody. Everybody played too well. Malik Willis, Joey Gatewood, Bo Nix, Cord Sandberg and Wil Appleton all took snaps for both the Blue and Orange teams on Saturday, and the QB quintet combined to complete 38-of-52 passes (73.1 percent) for 479 yards, five touchdowns and an interception. Tua may need wider shoulders If you weren't aware, Taulia Tagovailoa joined his older brother Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama this year, which means that putting "Tagovailoa" on the back of Tua's jersey no longer suffices. Now we need first name initials as well, and it is really putting stress on the equipment manager in charge of attaching names to the uniforms. Tua finished the day having thrown for 265 yards and a touchdown, as well as an interception. Taulia played as well, completing six of his nine passes for 93 yards with a score and interception of his own. The best Alabama QB on the day was Mac Jones, who threw for two touchdowns and 271 yards while leading the White team to a 31-17 win over Crimson. Like the Tagovailoa brothers, Jones threw an interception as well. In fact, every Alabama QB who threw more than one pass had at least an interception on Saturday, as there were four turnovers in the game, including a pick six by Jaylen Moody. Nick Saban's hip is bothering him Perhaps the biggest news of the day in Tuscaloosa is that Nick Saban has a sore hip and might need to have something done about it. Defense leads Blue past White in Penn State spring game Blue beat White 24-7 in Penn State's spring game, an affair that seemed to feature more defense than most of the games on Saturday. The Blue team defense had a massive game, finishing the day with six sacks and 10 tackles for loss. All six sacks were recorded by different players, and five of them were freshmen or sophomores. Guarantano sharp for the Vols White beat Orange 28-10 in Knoxville thanks in large part to Vols QB Jarrett Guarantano. Guarantano threw for only 198 yards, but had four touchdowns and didn't turn the ball over. While Guarantano played well, the White defense showed out a bit itself, forcing three turnovers and picking up three sacks. The Orange defense played well too, picking up five sacks of its own. Franks has monster spring game for the Gators Feleipe Franks had a good finish to the 2018 season, and he's off to an even better start this spring. Franks threw for 327 yards and four touchdowns to lead the Orange team to a 60-35 win over Blue in the Florida spring game. His favorite target was Trevon Grimes, who had four receptions for 195 yards. Just your typical 48.8 yards per catch kind of day for Grimes. Les Miles took the field for the first time with the Jayhawks Bit of a different atmosphere than in Baton Rouge. Nebraska fans love their spring game Listen, I can't sit here and tell you that I would be showing up to watch a college football practice on a Saturday afternoon during the spring if I weren't doing it for work, but different strokes for different folks. Some of those folks are Nebraska fans, who always make a point to show up to Memorial Stadium for the team's spring game, whether they're coming off two consecutive 4-8 seasons or not. How many do you think were watching The Masters on their phone during the game? Justin Fields somewhat underwhelming Ohio State played its spring game Saturday, and Justin Fields was the main attraction as the transfer from Georgia is set to take over at quarterback for Dwayne Haskins. Well, the good news is that Fields' Gray team beat Scarlet 35-17 to win the game. Fields also had this 98-yard touchdown pass to Binimen Victor. The bad news is, other than that pass, it wasn't a great performance. Fields finished the game completing only four of his 13 pass attempts for 131 yards, meaning if you remove that TD, he was 3-for-12 passing for 33 yards. Fields did rush for 38 yards and another score, however, and good news or bad news, what's important to remember is that spring game stats mean nothing. There was a lot of scoring in Notre Dame Different teams have different ways of scoring their spring games, so unless you watch every play, it's sometimes difficult to know exactly what's happening.<doc-sep>Nick Saban was in midseason form Saturday after Alabama’s spring game. The legendary football coach had no patience or time for the media when it was time for questions. In one of his better quotes in a long time, he ripped the media over questions of Tua’s health. “I try to have honesty and integrity with you folks but you don’t believe me so go ask Dr. Cain. We’ll make you the coach next year and you can answer questions in a press conference,” he told the press. Saban at DEFCON-4 in postgame. Asked about Tua’s velocity: “I try to have honesty and integrity with you folks but you don’t believe me so go ask Dr. Cain. We’ll make you the coach next year and you can answer questions in a press conference.” — Cecil Hurt (@CecilHurt) April 13, 2019 You can watch a video of his comments below. Nick Saban was in a rare form today after the A Day game. Here’s a few of his best bites from the presser @abc3340 pic.twitter.com/ICKqcSxw9w — Chris McCulley (@ChrisMcCulleyTV) April 13, 2019 It’s only April and Saban is already out here looking like he’s five or six weeks into SEC conference play. Even though I hate the Crimson Tide with every fiber of my body, there’s no question that the Alabama coach is a national treasure. (RELATED: Clemson Beats Alabam a For National Title) Everything he does is must-watch content. The man might honestly hate the media more than President Donald Trump, and that’s saying something. Of course, I might hate the press as well if I won six national titles and had to answer questions from people who don’t know a fraction as much as I do. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alabama Football (@alabamafbl) on Apr 13, 2019 at 11:14am PDT If this is what Saban is like halfway through April, then I can’t wait to see what we get from him during the season. He got embarrassed in the national title game by Clemson. Don’t think for one second that blowout hasn’t been haunting him nonstop. My friends, it looks like we’re geared up for an incredible 2019 college football season. It’s going to be majestic if this is the attitude Alabama’s coach carries with him all season.<doc-sep>
Nick Saban isn't likely to get much sympathy from his coaching peers regarding his offseason challenges. But even Alabama faces some, especially on a defense that was uncharacteristically vulnerable late last season. Such challenges are inevitable when seven underclassmen declare for the NFL draft, even more than the usual exodus. The tasks include replacing some defensive stars, bringing along two freshman quarterbacks behind Heisman Trophy runner-up Tua Tagovailoa and getting other newcomers acclimated to the system and expectations. "We have a very young team," Saban said this week. "We don't have a lot of depth. We'll welcome the new players that we have coming in the fall. I think there's a dozen more and maybe some of those guys can contribute to some of the issues that we have from a depth standpoint." OK, it's hardly a sob story with 15 members of the nation's No. 1 recruiting class already on campus. Alabama wrapped up spring with Saturday's annual A-Day spring game pitting the first-team offense versus the first-team defense in yet another part of that development. Alabama, as usual, has opportunities in some spots for newcomers to play early roles. The candidates include a pair of top-10 prospects, defensive end Antonio Alfano and offensive tackle Evan Neal — along with two four-star quarterbacks with crimson bloodlines. The Tide is looking for a starting tackle with the early departure of projected first-round pick Jonah Williams, and Raekwon Davis is the only returning starter along the defensive front. Some of those departures were practically foregone conclusion with Jonah Williams and defensive tackle Quinnen Williams regarded as likely high first-round picks. It wasn't the typical Alabama defense even before four defenders left early, a fact painfully reinforced in a 44-16 national championship game loss to Clemson. Alabama allowed an average of 345 passing yards to a trio of star quarterbacks — Georgia's Jake Fromm, Oklahoma Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray and Clemson freshman Trevor Lawrence — in the final three games. COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Teams with most national titles | FBS coaches with most national titles The Tide gave up eight touchdown passes without an interception during that stretch. Some other intriguing positions/storylines for the Tide leaving spring: —Jalen Hurts gave Alabama the luxury of a backup quarterback who was also a two-year starter. Hurts is now at Oklahoma as a graduate transfer. Mac Jones was a third-teamer last season but only completed five passes while playing a mop-up role. He put up the biggest numbers in the spring game among the backups, going 19 of 23 for 271 yards with two touchdowns and an interception, mostly in the first half. Freshmen Taulia Tagovailoa, Tua's younger brother, and Paul Tyson tried to take advantage of a chance to perform in front of Tide fans at the spring game. CLEMSON: Why Dabo Swinney has a different approach to spring games than most coaches Tyson is the great grandson of iconic former Alabama coach Bear Bryant. Taulia Tagovailoa was 6-of-9 passing for 93 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Tyson attempted five passes, completing one for 8 yards while also getting picked off. —Alabama had depth issues at inside linebacker even before Mack Wilson opted to skip his senior season. Fifth-year senior Joshua McMillon has drawn praise from Saban. —Defensive tackle DJ Dale wasn't among the highest rated recruits but has gotten strong enough reviews to think he might have a chance at playing time as a freshman. Saban said Dale has shown some physical skills but also "a little maturity about being able to go out there and do his job." —Tailbacks Najee Harris and Brian Robinson appear good enough to maintain Alabama's tradition of star runners. But Alabama is replacing senior Damien Harris and potential first-round pick Josh Jacobs. Five-star freshman Trey Sanders arrives this summer. This article was written by John Zenor from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.