In any other year over the past two decades, Alabama returning one of the best rosters in college football would almost automatically place the Crimson Tide as the preseason No. 1 team in the country.
However, that level of assuredness of what was in Tuscaloosa, that level of faith in the program, isn’t quite what it once was. Not with Nick Saban off on his budding television career and certainly not given the ups and downs that last year’s group went through, going from one of the top-ranked teams in the polls at one point to all the way out of the College Football Playoff picture in the end.
