It’s NFL Scouting Combine weekend in Indianapolis and, freed from the shackles of controlling coaches and sports information directors, recent college football players are a lot more honest about their seasons than they would otherwise be if they were back on campus.
Case in point? Alabama receiver Calvin Ridley was asked about the gap between his statistics in the passing game and those of his teammates like Robert Foster and why there was such a notable chasm.
“Sometimes (it got awkward), yeah because some of the guys made comments, throw up the charts,” Ridley said Friday, per AL.com. “Everybody would have like five catches and I had like 50. It’s just kinda weird. I wish we all had the same amount but we won the championship. And everybody was happy.”
Championship rings do have a way of smoothing things over but the numbers are still hard to fathom. AL.com notes Ridley had 30.1 percent of Crimson Tide receptions in 2017 and the drop off between his team-leading 63 catches to No. 2 Bo Scarbrough’s 17 was... stark. In fact, running backs finished second and third last year for Alabama in terms of catches before a wideout even enters the picture and no member of the receiver group averaged more than a catch per game in 2017.
Quarterback Jalen Hurts only threw it 254 times last year (Tua Tagovailoa added another 77, nearly a third of which came in the second half of the title game) so it’s not like there were a ton of receptions to go around but it’s probably not all that surprising to hear from Ridley that the rest of the Alabama receivers wanted the ball a bit more and that led to at least a little friction in Tuscaloosa. Either way, it certainly seems like the disparity will be something that Nick Saban and new offensive coordinator Mike Locksley will be addressing when they start spring practice later this month.
