Jumbo Package: Gump Day!

Now-former Alabama wide receiver Chadarius Townsend is transferring to Texas Tech, he announced on Tuesday. Townsend entered the NCAA transfer portal one week ago.

“Thank you to the University of Alabama for giving me a chance to become a better version of myself,” Townsend tweeted last week. “Gonna my boys. Hopefully we all meet again. I will be using my last 2 years of eligibility elsewhere. Thank the man above.”

Congrats to Chadarius Townsend. It took him almost no time at all from the time he entered the transfer portal to when he found a team. Townsend was a do-it-all speedster recruit for Alabama a couple of years ago that just never really settled into a position. We saw him at defensive back, running back, and receiver in his three years at Alabama. Meanwhile, the main job he was recruited for— kick returning— saw him get passed up by the transcendent Jaylen Waddle. No shame in that.

Texas Tech seems to be a good fit for him. With his speed, he’ll terrorize some Big 12 secondaries the next couple of years.

It takes more than a willingness to play and a matching of open dates to schedule premier college football programs against one another.

The University of Alabama has been among the most aggressive in scheduling opponents from Power 5 conferences to home-and-home series: from August 6, 2019, to April 8, 2020, UA scheduled six such series, resulting in at least one Power 5 non-conference game for every season between now and 2035, with two such games in four of those seasons. But the dates are far from the only details that get worked out before those games are finalized.

One time I bought a house and the sheer amount of paperwork and legal jargon was absolutely overwhelming. I can only imagine just how convoluted it is to put together an event 5 years in the future with millions of dollars on the line.

Former Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has established a $300,000 scholarship endowment at his alma mater, Saint Louis High School, in Honolulu.

His agency made the announcement Tuesday, adding that in addition to the endowment, “four scholarships will be awarded to students from Hawaiʻi over the next four years, each named in honor of his grandparents: Seumaninoa Tagovailoa, Taulia Fa’avi, Leaniva Tagovailoa and Pa’iau Fa’avi.”

Man, how cool would it be to get to go to college when you didn’t expect to have the funds to do so without going into debt... and all on the dime of who is likely your favorite sports hero?

That Tua is willing to drop that much money even before he really starts collecting on his rookie contract is commendable. What a great guy to have representing the University of Alabama.

Check out Jonathan Allen squatting nearly 600 lbs. Can you imagine that man chasing you with the intent of knocking you flat on your back? I’d go ahead retire from the NFL in mid-play and take the nearest desk job I could find.

Meanwhile, this was teammate Daron Payne’s response:

Never change, big #94.

How Alabama stacks up in nine different ‘Position U’ rankings

Position U is one of the great bragging rights debates in all of collegiate athletics. Which football program produces the most NFL talent for any given position?

Barton Simmons, 247Sports’ director of scouting, recently attempted to settle those debates but took a more recent and more relevant look at what programs are producing NFL talent at every position in the now. In his nine-part Position U series, each NFL draft pick produced received a point value, seven points for a first-rounder, one point for a seventh-rounder and the correlating point value for every round in between.

If you don’t want to click the link, here’s the spoiler:

Linebackers- #3

Defensive backs- #3

Edge rushers- #3

Defensive line- #1

Running backs- #1

Wide Receivers- #2

Tight Ends- #3

Offensive Line- #2

Quarterbacks- #6

Ohio State is ahead of the Tide in every one of Alabama’s non-#1 rankings other than tight ends (which, shocker, the two better are Stanford and Iowa). LSU, Clemson, and Florida are also in the mix with Alabama and Ohio State for the top five teams on pretty much all the defensive positions.

Offense gets a bit more varied with Georgia getting in on offensive line and running backs while Oklahoma makes an appearance on receivers and quarterbacks.

It isn’t stated, but I think the cutoff for his count is the 2016 NFL draft... Which is only four drafts. Go back a few more years, and I think you see Alabama and Ohio State lap the competition even further.

As for single-season records, no recent Crimson Tide defender has come close to reaching Woodrow Lowe’s 134 tackles set in 1973. Alabama’s highest tackle total under Saban came from Reuben Foster, who tallied 115 stops while winning the Butkus Award in 2016. It’s a safe bet that Lee Roy Jordan’s single-game record of 31 stops against Oklahoma in 1962 won’t be falling anytime soon either.

After five straight years of having a defender record 100 or more tackles, Alabama hasn’t had someone reach the century mark since 2016. While school records might be out of the picture, that’s a milestone Moses could certainly reach this season.

Well then. The guys at Rivals have tabbed Moses as the #1 most important player for Alabama in 2020 and are projecting him to win the Butkus Award. That will be no small feat. If he plays that well, though, it likely means the entire defense is playing well... And that’s a good sign. So I’m on board.

If you’re interested, you can click through the links on this article to check out all of Rivals’ rankings of Alabama’s top 40 players.

Former Alabama defensive back Antonio Langham and offensive tackle Chris Samuels are both on the ballot for consideration in the 2021 class.

Langham was a unanimous First Team All-American in 1993 and received the Jim Thorpe Award. He was a three-time All-SEC selection and leads the Crimson Tide all-time in interceptions with 19. In total, he helped lead Alabama to three postseason appearances, highlighted by the 1992 national championship victory over Miami.

Samuels was an unanimous 1999 First Team All-American selection and was awarded the Outland Trophy. He was a two-time First Team All-SEC selection who helped lead the Crimson Tide to an SEC title in 1999. That same season Samuels received the Jacobs Blocking Trophy for not allowing a single sack for the entirety of the season as well as blocking for 1,000-yard rusher Shawn Alexander.

Finally, congrats to Antonio Langham and Chris Samuels for making it to the college football hall of fame ballot. Both should have a very good shot of making it into the hall of fame. After that, we may have a bit of a lull before all the players in the Nick Saban era of Alabama football start coming up for Hall of Fame consideration.

Roll Tide!