Going into the season, the big question for Alabama was who was going to replace AJ McCarron at quarterback. The prevailing thought was that Florida State transfer Jacob Coker would end up as the starter. Even when senior Blake Sims started the season, plenty of people assumed that he wouldn’t be QB1 at the end. We would see the season play out with Jameis Winston against his former understudy in the title game.
Blake Sims was supposed to backup an FSU transfer. Now he’s got better numbers than FSU’s starter.
Sims wasn’t supposed to start. He wasn’t supposed to last. And now he’s 60 minutes away from the College Football Playoff.
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Instead, we have arrived at December not just with Sims starting, but with Sims being a real asset on a team that has more flaws than the typical Nick Saban team. Sims’ performance on Saturday night in the Iron Bowl was a microcosm of his season. He struggled at the outset, so much so that Coker started warming up. The long-assumed passing of the torch seemed imminent, but Sims responded by torching the Auburn defense. Bama won by that most un-Saban score of 55-44 and marched on to Atlanta.
Sims’ 11.6 yards per attempt and four touchdowns against Auburn cap a season in which he has performed at as high a level as any Saban quarterback at Alabama, With one exception, A.J. McCarron’s 2012, Sims’ numbers are as good or better than any Alabama quarterback since Saban’s first year in 2007. And Sims has not just put up good numbers, but he’s done so against perhaps the toughest schedule that an Alabama Saban team has played and with the weakest Alabama running game in years.
Below are three stats covering the time period from 2007 to the present: the adjusted yards per attempt numbers for starting Alabama quarterbacks, Alabama’s yards per carry as a team, and Alabama’s strength of schedule according to the Simple Rating System. (Adjusted yards per attempt and SRS are explained here.)
| Year | Adjusted yards per attempt | Team yards per carry | Strength of schedule |
| 2014 | Sims - 9.6 | 5.1 | 6.43 |
| 2013 | McCarron - 9.8 | 5.8 | 3.76 |
| 2012 | McCarron - 10.8 | 5.6 | 5.51 |
| 2011 | McCarron - 8.3 | 5.5 | 4.21 |
| 2010 | McElroy - 10.1 | 5.1 | 4.69 |
| 2009 | McElroy - 8.2 | 5.0 | 6.62 |
| 2008 | Wilson - 6.5 | 4.6 | 2.93 |
| 2007 | Wilson - 5.8 | 4.0 | 4.40 |
McCarron's 2012 stands as the best of the Saban era by some measure. After that, Sims' performance sits in a cluster with McCarron's 2013 and Greg McElroy's 2010. However, there is a pair of factors in Sims' favor.
Our Bama site
Our Bama site
First, Alabama's running game has taken a step back. Despite having T.J. Yeldon and Derrick Henry, the Tide are on course to have their lowest yards per carry since 2010. And Alabama's rushing situation would be worse without the 387 yards that Sims has added, minus sacks -- none of Saban's previous starting QBs at Alabama was a serious rushing threat. There is no doubt that Sims has benefited from throwing to Amari Cooper, who seems to have passed Julio Jones as the best receiver of the Saban era, but he's otherwise had an unremarkable set of targets.
Second, Alabama has played in the best division in college football history. To update the numbers in that piece from September, the average SEC West team finished the regular season with an SRS rating of 15.53, which is close to a field goal better than the prior high, set by the 2009 SEC West. In the division, Sims faced a steady diet of mostly above-average pass defenses. Tack on games against West Virginia and Tennessee, both of which had decent pass defenses (Nos. 30 and 55 nationally in yards per pass attempt allowed), and Florida (No. 8 nationally in yards per attempt allowed) and you have a rough schedule for any quarterback.
In fact, the Florida performance brings into focus an argument that would have been unthinkable before the season started: Alabama could go into a Playoff matchup against Florida State with an advantage at the quarterback position. We started the season thinking that a game between Alabama and Florida State would pit Winston against his former understudy. Instead, Sims has beaten out the latter and performed better than the former.
Against the No. 8 schedule in the country (according to SRS), Sims has an adjusted yards per attempt of 9.6, which is first in the SEC. Against the No. 41 schedule in the country, Winston has an adjusted yards per attempt of 7.4, which is fifth in the ACC. After leading the ACC and the country in most categories in 2013, Winston's most notable accomplishment this year might be going unbeaten despite leading the conference and finishing fourth nationally in most interceptions thrown.
There's always risk in taking college football's already small sample sizes and reducing them further, but take a look at the numbers that Sims and Winston put up against Florida, their one common opponent:
| Player | Attempts | Completions | Yards | Touchdowns | Interceptions | Yards Per Attempt | Adjusted YPA |
| Winston | 24 | 12 | 145 | 2 | 4 | 6.04 | 0.20 |
| Sims | 33 | 23 | 445 | 4 | 1 | 13.48 | 14.54 |
Florida State fans will scoff at this comparison, noting that Winston is unbeaten as a starting quarterback and that his experience this year in winning close games would prove to be an asset in a hypothetical matchup against Sims and Alabama. There’s some merit to those arguments, but Sims has also won a number of close games this year as a result of Alabama being less-than-dominant and he has more experience against the upper-echelon defenses that one would face in a four-team Playoff.
In short, Sims has given Bama fans confidence that they will get top-level quarterback play, even if they end up matched up with the 2013 Heisman winner.
See More:
