Alabama’s quarterback room has enough talent to make most programs jealous, but CBS Sports somehow left it out of Blake Brockermeyer’s top 10 for college football.
That omission is hard to square when you look at what Kalen DeBoer has assembled. Alabama still doesn’t have a locked-in starter for the 2026 season, but the battle is very much alive between redshirt freshman Keelon Russell and redshirt junior Austin Mack.
Russell has been the name drawing the most buzz, with the consistent narrative saying he has moved ahead and is the favorite to win the job. Even so, Mack remains firmly in the mix and will keep pushing him through fall camp.
The bigger picture is what makes Alabama’s situation so strong. This isn’t just about who starts.
It’s about the quality sitting across the whole room. Russell already has dark-horse Heisman Trophy buzz attached to him, and Mack brings plenty of pedigree of his own as a 4-star recruit and a Top 100 overall player.
Then there’s 5-star true freshman Jett Thomalla, giving Alabama another high-end talent deeper on the depth chart.
That combination is why Brockermeyer’s list feels so off. His top 10 QB rooms for CBS Sports were Oregon, Texas, Utah, Ole Miss, Ohio State, LSU, USC, Miami, Houston and Notre Dame. Alabama wasn’t included at all.
Brockermeyer didn’t explain the snub, but the logic seems to favor rooms with a proven starter at the front. Still, ranking quarterbacks and ranking quarterback rooms are not the same thing. Utah’s Devon Dampier may be the more proven individual quarterback than either Mack or Russell, but that does not mean Utah has a better overall room than Alabama.
From a pure talent standpoint, Alabama has a real case to be at the top of the entire list. Russell was a 5-star and the No. 2 overall player in his class.
Thomalla adds more five-star depth behind him. And if one of Mack or Russell wins the job, the other becomes what might be the best backup quarterback in the country.
That’s what makes the omission so easy to poke at. Alabama may have plenty to sort out heading into 2026, but quarterback doesn’t look like one of those problems. One of Russell or Mack should emerge as an elite option for DeBoer, and the room behind him is loaded with far more talent than most programs can dream of.
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