Not to overstate the point, considering Duron Carter is still at least as well known for his famous NFL bloodline as anything he's accomplished on the field ?�his only season at the Division I level yielded 13 receptions for Ohio State as a true freshman in 2009, before he was rerouted to junior college as an academic casualty. But barring any unforeseen suspensions, arrests or other instance of outright flakery among the ranks of the contenders, Carter's official commitment to Alabama Saturday could be the biggest development of the upcoming BCS championship hunt that we see between signing day in early February and preseason sessions in August, for the simple fact that it confirms: Yes, Virginia, even with the early departures of NFL-bound stars Mark Ingram and Julio Jones, the Crimson Tide have an offense.
Where their championship ambitions are concerned, of course, the more relevant fact is that the Tide still have a devastating defense. Ten starters are back from a unit that held in the top 10 nationally of every major defensive category despite returning just two starters from the suffocating lineup that anchored 'Bama's undefeated title run in 2009. Assuming they all make it through the summer healthy and in good standing, it's almost impossible to make a case for a better D anywhere going into the season. But addition the addition of Carter, another former top-100 recruit on a roster full of them, makes it that much less likely that the offense ?�and the passing game in particular ?�will undermine the defense's efforts, as it very did on at least three separate occasions in '09.
Along with seniors Marquis Maze and Darius Hanks, Carter gives Alabama three viable options for filling the considerable void left by Jones, and even if none of them are going to come close to replacing Jones as a perennial one-on-one mismatch, a trio of legitimate field-stretching threats will make it that much harder for defenses to gang up on any one of them ?�or on the real start of the show, workhorse Trent Richardson, assuming a full load* for the first time behind that brings back four starters itself. (*Said load pending the number of touches commanded by incoming freshman Dee Hart, which early returns this spring suggest could be substantial.)
The real asterisk hovering next to all of the above is the quarterback, which the Tide does not as spring practice grinds on: A.J. McCarron and Philip Sims are expected to duel well int the preseason to replace Greg McElroy, and there's no particular reason to expect the new QB to come out of a season as spotty as the one McElroy turned in as a first-year starter in '09 as unscathed as he did with an entirely different surrounding cast on both sides of the ball. But if McCarron and/or Sims does fall short of the latest championship mandate, it's not going to be for lack of firepower at his disposal.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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