re: So I thought Bama returned a lot of contributing players next season?

We do have a lot of contributing players returning. Which means we have guys with real experience ready to step in to a larger role which was vacated, which are the figures reported in the above data.

For example, if we have two guys with similar producing at similar levels of efficiency. Starter who has 75% of the production gets replaced by the lower guy and I would really only view it as having to replace the 25% backup's amount of production.

Also our numbers in that link are skewed by losing starting rb and starting qb, but most bama fans don't get concerned about those positiongs because we usually don't have trouble replacing game management type qbs we have and rbs are typically plug and play for us under Saban.