Alabama conducted its first football scrimmage of this spring on Saturday afternoon, with the workout inside Bryant-Denny Stadium consisting of nearly 160 plays.
There was plenty of good and bad to go around, according to Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban.
"I think we have some really good players and some guys who can play winning football, but we don't have enough," Saban said in a news conference. "We don't have enough depth on our team. We don't have enough guys who can execute with confidence and play fast.
"We just need to keep working these guys and keep practicing. What a lot of players don't understand is that you don't do things until you just get it right. You do it over and over and over until you can't get it wrong. That's what our young guys have to understand."
Junior receiver Henry Ruggs III missed the scrimmage due to the funeral of a family member.
The scrimmage also marked Alabama's eighth of 15 spring workouts allotted by the NCAA. The Tide will practice Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week before scrimmaging a second time next Saturday.
Alabama's A-Day game will conclude spring drills on April 13.
Saban does not reveal many details from scrimmages, which are closed to the media. He was asked afterward about the quarterback battle headed by junior Tua Tagovailoa and including redshirt sophomore Mac Jones and early enrollees Taulia Tagovailoa, Tua's younger brother, and Paul Tyson, the great grandson of Paul "Bear" Bryant.
"Tua is obviously the starter," Saban said, "and Mac is the guy who has the most experience and got some playing time last year and has made a lot of progress and is the guy who can execute best right now as the next-best player. We let Taulia play some with the twos, and Paul played some as well.
"We need to kind of see who's going to be the next-best guy and if anybody can challenge the first two guys. The new guys have a ways to go. They did some good things, but it was also pretty obvious that it was their first time out there."
There was a brief viewing period for the media before the scrimmage, and reporters saw a first-team offensive line of Alex Leatherwood at left tackle, Evan Neal at left guard, Chris Owens at center, Emi Ekiyor at right guard and Jedrick Wills at right tackle. Neal is a 6-foot-7, 360-pound freshman from Okeechobee, Florida.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.