If not for Baker Mayfield, Justice Hansen may still be in the Big 12.

Instead, Hansen is at Arkansas State, the leader of an Arkansas State offense that will provide a nice early-season test for Tosh Lupoi and the Alabama defense.

"It's going to be one of those fast-paced, speedball games where they're going to probably go as fast as they can," Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. "... A lot of different people get the ball for them. It's not one specific person, but they do have a really, really good scheme. It's a spread scheme, a lot of people all over the place. They've had pretty good balance in their offense and this will be a very challenging preparation for our defensive players."

The feeling at Alabama is that this could end up being a bigger challenge for the defense than Louisville was last week.

Arkansas State ranked 10th nationally in total offense last year and posted 676 yards during a 48-21 win over Southeast Missouri State last week.

The catalyst for that offense is Hansen, a former four-star recruit who began his college career at Oklahoma. Hansen, the 2017 Sun Belt Conference Offensive Player of the Year, threw a conference-record 37 touchdowns last year and accounted for a conference-record 4,389 yards of total offense.

During that win over Southeast Missouri State last week, he was 26 of 36 for 423 yards while throwing for a school-record six touchdowns.

"I think if you play teams like this and they have carryover to other teams that you play, I think it's very helpful to the development of your team," Saban said. "... This team does do a lot things that we'll see in the future in terms of spreading the field, going to the four wideouts, run the ball, throw the ball, do a great job in the screen game and all that type of thing. This is definitely a team that there will be some carryover in the future as to what we have to play against."