How Alabama is preparing for a rare road opener at Florida State

This week’s road trip is a rarity for Alabama. The Crimson Tide has played its fair share of marquee openers. It also navigates a challenging road slate on an annual basis. But starting the season in enemy territory isn’t a familiar feeling for many on the Alabama sideline. 

Alabama’s season opener at Florida State on Saturday will mark the first time the Tide has opened in a true road environment since 2000, when it suffered a 35-24 loss to UCLA in the Rose Bowl. 

The novelty isn’t necessarily exclusive to Alabama, either. Second-year head coach Kalen DeBoer has to go all the way back to 2013 for the last time he was involved in a road opener. 

Then the offensive coordinator at Southern Illinois, his attack gave Illinois a run for its money in a trip to Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. However, the Salukis were unable to pull off the upset in a 42-34 defeat to the Fighting Illini. Despite the valiant effort, don’t expect DeBoer to draw on any past experiences when it comes to preparing his team to play in Doak Campbell Stadium this weekend. 

“It’s been so long,” DeBoer said after stumbling to recall his last road opener. “I think you just go back to any big road games you play. This one’s the first game of the season. The first one’s always big. It’s always the biggest because it’s the next one. I think just getting the season off to a good start, that’s important.” 

Alabama went 2-3 on the road in DeBoer’s first season last year, dropping games at Vanderbilt (40-35), Tennessee (24-17) and Oklahoma (24-3). Saturday will be the first opportunity for the Tide to exorcise its road demons ahead of a schedule that also involves trips to Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina and Auburn. 

“You’ve got to start fast,” DeBoer said. “You dig yourself a hole on the road, it gets hard. The crowd gets behind the home team. That comes down to execution. That comes down to preparation and the work that’s happened on the football field.” 

Saturday’s road trip offers an added challenge, as it will mark the first-career start for redshirt junior quarterback Ty Simpson. 

The last time an Alabama quarterback made his starting debut in a true road environment was back in 2004, when Marc Guillon completed 6 of 18 passes for 57 yards and an interception as the Tide suffered a 27-10 loss at Arkansas. Following an impressive offseason, Alabama is hoping for a better showing from Simpson against the Seminoles. 

Simpson played in six games last season, completing 14 of 25 passes for 167 yards. Only six of those throws came in a road environment, as he went 4 of 5 for 30 yards at Wisconsin before incompleting his only attempt at Oklahoma. That being said, the biggest moment of Simpson’s career to date came at South Florida during the 2023 season, when he completed 5 of 9 passes for 73 yards while adding a rushing touchdown to help lead Alabama to a 17-3 win over USF. 

Alabama’s message to Simpson this week is simple. 

“Just play ball,” first-year offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said. “Ty plays his best when he plays calm and collected, just like any quarterback. I think as long as he stays within himself and doesn’t try to make any play better than it is, he’ll be just fine.”

Grubb’s last road opener came as Fresno State’s offensive coordinator back in 2019 when the Bulldogs suffered a 31-23 loss at Southern California. That game marked the starting debut for Fresno State quarterback Jorge Reyna, who completed 19 of 39 passes for 256 yards and two touchdowns with an interception. 

“He played a good football game,” Grubb said of Reyna’s performance. “It didn’t end up going our way, but I thought he played well. It was the same message [to him]. … You just got to get the guy playing his game. You don’t have to push him to different throws that are outside of it. You just want to get him playing within the structure of the offense and let the plays come to him instead of him trying to have to manufacture everything.” 

One benefit of a road opener is the added time Alabama has had to prepare for it. Grubb said the team has been working on handling noise during practice for the past two and a half weeks and is beginning to get more comfortable in adverse situations. 

“Obviously, those things always take time, and they’ve worked really hard. Just like anything, when we first started it wasn’t perfect,” Grubb said. “And now we’re doing it in all our walkthroughs, all our practices. They’ll be ready for it.”

Alabama and Florida State are set to kick off at 2:30 p.m. CT on Saturday. Last season, the Seminoles went 2-10, including a 2-5 mark inside of Doak Campbell Stadium.