Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer acknowledged the obvious on Saturday following the Crimson Tide's first of two fall scrimmages, noting that with each impressive play in an intra-squad scrimmage, there's an accompanying bad one. By way of example, he pointed out that running back Jam Miller gashed the defense on the scrimmage's opening drive, and that he'd like to have seen better defensive gap integrity.

But while the brightside-downside nature of scrimmaging has universal application, every team has its own areas on which improvement is most needed. And therefore, scrimmages can either signal progress in a specific aspect of a team's play, or expose the lack of it.

From that perspective, Alabama got the best possible outcome on Saturday: no interceptions, and sound pass protect

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