{"id":128638,"date":"2025-06-14T06:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T06:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/128638\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T06:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T06:47:10","slug":"why-qb-battle-reminds-ryan-grubb-of-michael-penix-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/128638\/","title":{"rendered":"Why QB battle reminds Ryan Grubb of Michael Penix Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"

2024 was more rocky than Alabama football<\/a> is used to, as the first season without Nick Saban at the helm<\/a> didn’t necessarily go how it was supposed to. The Crimson Tide missed out on the College Football Playoff after finishing the regular season 9-3 with ugly losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Now, Jalen Milroe is headed off to the NFL<\/a> and Kalen DeBoer and his staff now have to figure out who will be replacing him under center in 2025. As it stands, veteran Ty Simpson and five-star incoming freshman Keelon Russell are going to battle it out to see who gets the starting job to begin the season.<\/p>\n

New offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb has been around great college quarterbacks before, and this competition reminds him of one of his best<\/a>, Michael Penix Jr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve told this story a couple times, but in 2022 when I got [to Washington], we didn\u2019t have \u2013 obviously, Mike Penix wasn\u2019t there yet,\u201d Grubb said, per Daniel Hager of On3 Sports. \u201cWe had two quarterbacks in the room, and one was the incumbent starter. Another was a five-star freshman quarterback. I told them I was going to bring a quarterback in, that we had to have competition.<\/p>\n

Article Continues Below<\/p>\n

\u201cThe No. 1 thing in the quarterback room is that should be the most competitive room on the football team. If it\u2019s not, you probably don\u2019t have the right guys in there. And I think for years \u2013 far before I was here \u2013 Alabama\u2018s done that. They brought in a lot of really good quarterbacks, let them compete and develop, let the best guy win the job and move on from there. We\u2019re no different. That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do is develop every one of those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grubb was the offensive coordinator under DeBoer at Washington when the Huskies went to the national title game at the end of the 2023-24 season, eventually losing out to Michigan. During that season, Penix was also the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. After a failed one-year stint with the Seattle Seahawks, Grubb reunited with DeBoer<\/a> in Tuscaloosa.<\/p>\n

As of now, it appears as if Simpson is the leader in the clubhouse<\/a> over Russell, which comes as no surprise given the youth of the highly-touted recruit. However, it would also come as no shock to see both guys get reps early in the season as Alabama figures out what its best path forward is to compete in the SEC and get back into the CFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2024 was more rocky than Alabama football is used to, as the first season without Nick Saban at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[405,7,1879,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-128638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-alabama-football","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-michael-penix-jr","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114680381052297619","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}