To borrow heavily from Andy Griffith, it was football, but what it wasn't, was A-Day. Alabama concluded spring practice Saturday with what amounted to an exhibition practice. Of the 90 minutes of practice time, about 10 was spent in some form of scrimmage work – or, as we have come to call it over most of a millennium, A-Day. The rest was more or less C-Minus-Day if you came to Tuscaloosa expecting to get any insight that could be applied to the upcoming season. Between missing a dozen or more players due to injury and a stated desire to keep system-related information under wraps, Kalen DeBoer and staff chose not to have the traditional scrimmage-for-a-steak-dinner format and instead treated a small crowd – 5,000 fans at the most, we'd say – to a 19-period practice full of mostly drills.

With National Signing Day officially in the books – even though December's Early Signing Day has eclipsed NSD as the real signing day of note – Kalen DeBoer and his staff can finally begin the work of actually getting its roster into fighting shape for the upcoming 2024 season. Alabama's 30-day transfer portal period, which kicked into being following Nick Saban's retirement, will be ending soon, and we do not expect to see any further entries. Alabama was hit hard in the days immediately after Saban's departure, but portal entries quickly dried up over the last two weeks, and Alabama was able to add three former Washington players: QB Austin Mack, WR Germie Bernard and C Parker Brailsford. Still, because of the significant losses to the post-Saban portal – especially a total of eight solely from the ranks of the defensive backs, including three expected starters and four others that were expected to break camp in the two-deep – TideFans.com is bringing you an updated roster analysis. More importantly, this will be our first attempt to project a depth chart using Kalen DeBoer's preferred offensive (Air Raid) and defensive (4-2-5 Swarm) systems.

2024 SEC Previews: Tier I. Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Ole Miss