Even with the youngest Heisman winner, Alabama Football will not win 2022 due to Bryce Young’s individual accomplishments. Breakthrough players in each position group are required for championships. However, should Bryce Young miss important games through injury, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s championship dreams will fade.
Many college football supporters argue that teams cannot be championship contenders without an elite QB.
A counterclaim is that Stetson Bennett disproved that premise last season. How elite Bennett is can be debatable, but his performance in National Championship play was outstanding. Bennett threw for 224 yards against good Alabama football defense and had a passing efficiency rating of 163.1.
Alabama football fans love to debate whether Bryce Young or Will Anderson Jr. will be college football’s greatest player in 2022. But the Crimson Tide can still have strong defenses without No. 31 on the field. Tide offense without Bryce would be much less than with him.
Big arms and strong legs are important for a QB. At least as important is their leadership and decision-making. The decisions quarterbacks make in pre-snap reads and two or three seconds after a snap are the biggest factors in the success or failure of an offensive.
Matt Hayes put it well a few years ago when he said:
If you don’t have a QB, you don’t stand a chance…
What Hayes said then is true today — and some SEC teams aren’t. That means these teams don’t have the essential ingredient to win big games — an elite quarterback.
Alabama Football and Bryce Young are on top
Any list of the best QBs of 2022 should have Bryce Young as #1. Brad Crawford posted one with college football’s top 25 QBs for 2022, and Bryce was at the top.
The list is good, although no list will satisfy the fanbase of some programs. Georgia fans won’t agree with Crawford because Stetson Bennett didn’t make his top 25 list.
Eight of the top 25 QBs of 2022 are on SEC teams. Another eight are in the ACC. The Big Ten has four, while the Big 12 and Pac 12 have two each. You play for a group of five teams.
In the SEC, the teams without quarterbacks on the list are Vanderbilt, Missouri and Georgia from the SEC East and Texas A&M, LSU and Auburn from the SEC West.
Highlights from the Top 25 QB List
- Bryce Young is No. 1, followed by Ohio State CJ Stroud at #2. Caleb Williams from USC and Dillon Gabriel from Oklahoma are three and four.
- Other SEC quarterbacks are KJ Jefferson (Arkansas) at No. 5; Hendon hooker (Tennessee) at No. 6; Spencer Rattler (South Carolina) at No. 8; Will Rogers (Mississippi State) at No. 14; Will Levis (Kentucky) at No. 16; Jason Dart (Ole Miss) at No. 19 and Anthony Richardson (Florida) at number 20.
- The lone guy of the group of five is Coastal Carolina Grayson McCall at #7.
The list is a powerful indication of how well teams will perform next season. Does Stetson Bennett’s absence from the list mean that Tennessee and South Carolina, with their higher-rated QBs, will beat the Bulldogs? Of course not. It could mean that in these two games, should the Dawgs make enough mistakes to provide an opening, the Vols and the Gamecocks could trigger an upset.
In the regular season, the Crimson Tide defense meets five of the QBs ranked in the top 19 on Crawford’s list.
