Kirk Herbstreit Has Telling Comment On Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa

When Tua Tagovailoa went down with a season-ending injury last month, everyone seemed to have a similar thought: the Alabama quarterback had played his last down of college football. Tagovailoa is still likely to be a first round pick in the NFL Draft and it's likely too much of a risk to come back to school.

Everyone might end up being wrong, it seems.

ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit interviewed Tagoavailoa last week. The star quarterback revealed that it could make sense to return to school.

Herbstreit said this week on his podcast that he now doesn't think it's a "slam dunk" that he leaves.

“I don’t think it’s a slam dunk that he is leaving. Before I went there, I thought it was. … He can’t walk for three months. … There is a long journey back. It’s a positive story because I think he’s in great hands and I think a 100 percent recovery is very likely for him. So that’s all great, but I just sensed that he’s got to take — he keeps telling himself that he has to take the emotion out of it. I can tell you that how he went out — as a fan out there and you hear narrative like ‘get your money and go to the NFL.’ Not all players view the world like that. They are invested in their college experience. They are invested in how thing are going. Look at Christian Wilkins and company (at Clemson). They all could have gone pro, but they weren’t done. They didn’t like what happened to Alabama the year before in the semifinal. They wanted to come back. You can laugh about it and not agree with it, but they wanted to come back and give it one more go. It might sound crazy, but in college football, these players still care about winning and their legacy and how they go out. They came back and they won.

“I just felt like listening to Tua, there is part of him that is not comfortable about how he went out. … I don’t think his career has gone the way he had hoped. And there is part of him — as much as he is looking at the money — that is looking at ‘man, can you imagine if I come back and Dylan Moses comes back and this guy comes back? Can you imagine what we can do next year?’ He said that to me, so there is part of that which he is evaluating. He told me the players will sit down, have a meeting, talk about and figure out what direction they want to go in. I don’t know if they’ll all go one way or the other. I can just tell you what he told me. I would guess that it is still 50/50 right now, and then in the next few weeks he’ll let everybody know his intentions. I think he’s honestly really back and forth at this point.”

Tagovailoa is still expected to be a first round pick in the draft if he comes out, but there's a chance he'd go a lot in 2021 higher if he returns to school and shows he's at 100 percent health.

The Alabama quarterback has until late January to officially make a decision.