The alternating descent statistic on permutations was introduced by Chebikin as a variant of the descent statistic. We show that the alternating descent polynomials on permutations are unimodal via a five-term recurrence relation. We also found a quadratic recursion for the alternating major index $q$-analog of the alternating descent polynomials. As an interesting application of this quadratic recursion, we show that $(1+q)^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}$ divides $\sum_{π\in\mathfrak{S}_n}q^{\rm{altmaj}(π)}$, where $\mathfrak{S}_n$ is the set of all permutations of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ and $\rm{altmaj}(π)$ is the alternating major index of $π$. This leads us to discover a $q$-analog of $n!=2^{\ell}m$, $m$ odd, using the statistic of alternating major index. Moreover, we study the $γ$-vectors of the alternating descent polynomials by using these two recursions and the ${\textbf{cd}}$-index. Further intriguing conjectures are formulated, which indicate that the alternating descent statistic deserves more work.