{"id":713825,"date":"2026-01-29T11:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/713825\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:15:13","slug":"what-kalen-deboer-said-about-keeping-keelon-russell-austin-mack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/713825\/","title":{"rendered":"What Kalen DeBoer said about keeping Keelon Russell, Austin Mack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alabama football lost some players to the transfer portal, but no quarterbacks departed via that mechanism. <\/p>\n

The only change to the room from 2025 is Ty Simpson went to the NFL draft<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Crimson Tide managed to fend off any other quarterback-hungry programs from plucking away the other returning scholarship players, Austin Mack and Keelon Russell. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s huge,\u201d DeBoer said Wednesday while in Mobile for Senior Bowl practices<\/a>. \u201cTwo guys who know our system at quarterback. Just the way, with an offensive line that\u2019s got some leaders who are gone, two quarterbacks who can carry over from last year what we did and keep it moving forward.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mack is heading into his third season with the Crimson Tide and fourth with DeBoer. The quarterback spent one season at Washington under DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. <\/p>\n

He will compete with Russell, who\u2019s heading into his second season with the Crimson Tide. The former five-star quarterback has high upside and will try to surpass Mack once spring practices get underway. <\/p>\n

Mack presumably starts the quarterback competition with a leg up considering he\u2019s got more experience. He also was the quarterback who finished the Rose Bowl for the Crimson Tide once Simpson had to leave the game with a cracked rib. <\/p>\n

But outside of that, both Mack and Russell have limited experience with significant college snaps. Both have primarily worked in cleanup duty in blowouts, though Mack got a series in the first half against Louisiana Monroe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alabama football lost some players to the transfer portal, but no quarterbacks departed via that mechanism. The only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[405,2034,7,48,9735,326,9],"class_list":["post-713825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-alabama-football","tag-fbc","tag-football","tag-ncaa-football","tag-practice","tag-sec","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115978103899618754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713825","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=713825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}