Saban Visits Florida State Transfer

Florida State is losing one of the key players to its national championship team

That would be the back-up quarterback. 

Sophomore Jacob Coker, who is originally from Mobile and played at the same high school as former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, is rumored to be very interested in coming home.

That's why Nick Saban paid the redshirt sophomore a visit Tuesday after Coker had requested and been granted a release from his scholarship with the Seminoles. He had been in 'coy' mode. When asked about transferring a few weeks ago, Coker denied it.

“I don’t know how that rumor started. I’ve heard people toss it around, but I hadn’t said anything about it,” Coker commented. “I don’t know how it got started.”

Well, he doth protest too much, because it's clear he'd been contemplating this move for some time. After all, he'd lost the starting quarterback competition to Jameis Winston, who then assembled what could be easily called a dominant season. Coker wasn't so lucky. He was injured during mop-up duty in the Wake Forest game on 9 November and lost for the remainder of the season.

This is a concern for Florida State because Coker was the only signal-caller other than Winston with game experience. Winston will be playing baseball for the Seminoles this spring, so it means there will be no experienced quarterbacks at their spring practices.

It wasTide senior wide out Kevin Norwood who let the cat out of the bag about Coker coming to Tuscaloosa. 

"[Luke] Del Rio just left. He was a pretty good quarterback," Norwood said to an Alabama radio station. "Then you have a guy coming in from Florida State, a 6-5 guy. I don't know too much about him. But I heard good things about him."

So it looks like Saban will land a Seminole quarterback; just not the one he originally wanted.