Alabama Football: Post-Spring game-by-game predictions for 2019
With spring practice in the rearview, it’s time to take an early look at Alabama Football’s 2019 schedule and make some predictions.
Spring practice has reached its conclusion, and now Alabama Football enters the long night of the offseason. With the NFL Draft now also in the rearview mirror, the dog days of summer are sure to set in and leave us with college football withdraws before teams return to the gridiron and begin the 2019 season in August.
The good news is that Alabama can now officially turn the page from the 2018 season, leaving behind the painful memory of the shellacking it took at the hands of Clemson in Santa Clara with the national championship on the line. The pain from that disappointing defeat is sure to be fuel for the Crimson Tide next season as they hope for another crack at the Tigers in what could be a fifth consecutive meeting between the two in the College Football Playoff.
It’s been an interesting offseason for Alabama already, complete with a massive staff overhaul, another No. 1 recruiting class, Nick Saban’s hip surgery, and another crop of talented players being selected in the NFL Draft.
Even with all that talent departing, Alabama returns a loaded roster in 2019, one that could ultimately make history in the 2020 NFL Draft.
There will be plenty of complaints about Alabama’s 2019 schedule to come, with the “marquee” non-conference game coming in Atlanta against Duke. There’s still some tough games on the docket in conference, however, as Alabama travels to Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Auburn as well as drawing LSU at home in what could be another Top-5 showdown in Bryant-Denny.
With a weaker-than-normal schedule, Alabama doesn’t have much of a margin-for-error next season. One loss, even if it went on to win the SEC Championship, could ultimately be too much to overcome depending on how everything else shakes out.
Let’s take a look at the 2019 schedule, and make some early game-by-game predictions for how they might unfold.