Kalen DeBoer updates latest on timeline to name Alabama starting QB

Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer offered some insight into when he might be close to naming a starting quarterback for the 2025 season. Ty Simpson, Austin Mack and Keelon Russell are all competing for the job after last year’s starter, Jalen Milroe, moved on to the NFL.

During an appearance on Always College Football with ESPN’s Greg McElroy, DeBoer explained that he typically likes to have a starter named by the last week-and-a-half before the season. The Crimson Tide kick off the 2025 season on Aug. 30 against Florida State, which would put the deadline at mid-August at the latest.

“There’s been roughly a similar kind of timeframe throughout fall camp. The last week-and-a-half,” DeBoer said. “We usually have a little bit longer phase of bonus practices leading up to Week 1. There’s a weekend before and a few days before that. That’s kind of when you really for sure like to have the starter named and him to be able to start really being in sync with his receiving corps, gelling that way and really piling on the reps. But if you feel like you’re at that point earlier, maybe a week earlier.”

DeBoer is coming off his first season as the head coach at Alabama and led the team to a 9-4 finish. As the Crimson Tide aim to make it back to the College Football Playoff, finding the right quarterback to take them there will be paramount.

Simpson is entering his fourth season in Tuscaloosa and has been the backup for the past two years. Mack is a former four-star recruit who followed DeBoer from Washington to Alabama, while Russell is a five-star freshman who ranked as the No. 2 quarterback in the 2025 cycle according to the On3 Industry Ranking.

That should make for a tight competition and one that certainly won’t be an easy decision to make. But having been a part of a number of these battles throughout his career, DeBoer further explained what he looks for in naming a starter.

“I’ve had a lot of these kind of competitions over the years,” he said. “When you do it for 25 years, I don’t know if it’s three, four, five, but there’s been a handful of competitions to some level where there’s two guys, three guys, a guy coming in that’s a transfer and all that. You’ve really got to be thorough.

“I think in the end, it’s who can move the ball down the field. People sometimes get caught up in who’s great now, who had the best completion percentage and all those things. Those are all important. But I think in the end it’s who’s moving the ball down the field for the ones and the twos most consistently when you’re here in practice each and every day.”