Jumbo Package: A big Recruiting Week is coming for Alabama

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Coach DeBoer hired an up and coming young TE coach yesterday:

Alabama football is adding to its coaching staff. The Crimson Tide is hiring Noah Fisher as an assistant tight ends coach, Matt Zenitz of CBS Sports reported Monday night.

Fisher updated his social media bios to reflect the move to Alabama. He spent the past two seasons on staff at Louisville as a graduate assistant, where he worked with both tight ends and offensive linemen.

Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is asked about his expectations for Ryan Williams in Year 3 #RTRAlabama head coach Kalen DeBoer is asked about his expectations for Ryan Williams in Year 3 #RTR

The Crimson Tide website lists Fisher as a football analyst.

His biography on the Louisville athletics website notes that he helped with recruiting and assisted in position and playbook meetings with the Cardinals. Before U of L, he spent a season on staff at Georgia Southern.

Fisher is far from new to the Yellowhammer State. He played at South Alabama, lettering for three seasons as an offensive lineman before transferring to Tulane to close out his college playing career in 2018.

There’s definitely some staff connections here, as Noah Fisher was an assistant under Alabama’s new TE coach, Richard Owens. He also would have overlapped with defensive coordinator Kane Wommack when he was the DC at South Alabama.

No unit on Alabama’s roster faces as much pressure as the Crimson Tide’s offensive line, which has seemingly regressed every season since 2021. The Alabama coaching staff recognized issues with the offensive line, overhauling the room by hiring former NFL and Oregon offensive line coach Adrian Klemm and bringing in 11 new players. Alabama will have four new starters on the offensive line after Kadyn Proctor, Kam Dewberry, Parker Brailsford, Geno VanDeMark, and Jaeden Roberts declared for the NFL, and Wilkin Formby entered the transfer portal.

I’m glad Tide 100.9 pointed out that the Alabama offensive line has been constantly regressing since 2021. A lot of people have made it out to be a “Kalen DeBoer issue” but conveniently forget how much the Alabama rushing attack struggled in 2021, leading to Saban changing OL coaches. Then even in 2023 and 2024, a lot of the rushing production came from Jalen Milroe, rather than the running backs.

I’m fairly optimistic about this group (I really like Delgatty and Lloyd), but an OL is only as good as its weakest player, and right now there isn’t a 5th guy that I’m confident in. Hopefully they get that figured out soon.

In recruiting, Alabama hopefully has a big week ahead. This one is paywalled, so I won’t spoil everything.

Now, the focus shifts to a loaded week that could bring several more commitments. Alabama has positioned itself well with multiple top targets, and the latest intel points to the Tide carrying momentum into decision time.

Essentially, we’re expecting decisions from Stafford Willis, Tyler Younger, Cedrick Simmons, Jeremiah Beverly, and Osani Gayles all this week.

Gayles is the big name as an elite wide receiver, and most of the recruiting folk all seem to think he’s strongly favoring Bama. We’ll see, but having some recruiting momentum from pulling in an elite player is always good.

In the broader football world, give this excellent piece from Sports Illustrated a read:

Per Yahoo Sports, Sen. Maria Cantwell, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, fired this shot at the Big Ten and SEC as the bill progressed out of committee: “The politics of these [conference] commissioners moving around deck chairs [with realignment] and making millions of dollars themselves and not thinking about the broad interest to solve these problems has led us to this point. It’s time to listen to some other people.”

Here we get down to the essence of the matter—to a potential reckoning five years in the making. The cardinal collegiate sin of predatory action upon other power conferences has neither been forgotten nor forgiven. It left a gaping wound, and that wound has festered. And since then, the Big Ten and SEC have kept pushing everyone else to the brink.

The pigs became hogs. The hogs are now confronted with the consequences of their gluttony.

I won’t just blame the SEC and Big 10, though. It takes two to tango, and Texas, Oklahoma, USC, and Washington all also acted in self interest. And in a more granular sense, so are all of the players moving constantly. And the coaches.

And that’s not even a knock on any of them. Of COURSE schools, coaches, and players are going to all be acting in their own best interest. It’s why they play a sport. To win. The problem is a total collapse of framework that kept things in some sort of competitive stasis.

Will this new congress bill fix anything? Probably not. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes things even more confusing.

We also got a little bit of news for future scheduling for the basketball team:

Auburn, Miss State, and Arkansas will be our most frequent opponents. Nice!

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