College football duos: Ranking the 32 best dynamic duos in modern history

21. Tua Tagovailoa and Jerry Jeudy, Alabama

Alabama has had a long history of great duos. That is what happens when the university has the most college football championships in the modern era. (Yale technically has the most but they haven’t won one since 1927.) Tua Tagovailoa and Jerry Jeudy isn’t even the most recent duo on this list, but they were very, very fun. Tagovailoa was a break from the usual Alabama teams under Nick Saban. This wasn’t the Greg McElroys or AJ McCarrons of Alabama’s championship past. This was a player who can make a huge play when it mattered most.

Tagovailoa is one of the most talented college quarterbacks ever. He was a five-star prospect in the 2017 recruiting cycle. Jerry Jeudy was also a five-star recruit during that same cycle (which also included Najee Harris and DeVonta Smith. Alabama really is unfair). They’ve been together from the very beginning and they grew up in a system together.

Both Tua and Jeudy got some time as freshmen, but as sophomores, they both broke out together. In their sophomore seasons, Tagovailoa had close to 4,000 yards passing, 1,300 of which went to Jeudy. They played four teams in the top five that season and they were really good in every game. Jeudy had over 100 yards against LSU and in the National Championship against Clemson.

The next season was the unfortunate year the Crimson Tide lost Tua due to that terrible hip injury. Jeudy only scored one touchdown after Tagovailoa went down over the next three games. Those two were tied together. They won a title in their freshman seasons and then they went off from there.