Jumbo Package: Alabama Football lands another great 2028 recruit
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The big news yesterday is that Alabama continues to work towards filling out their 2028 recruiting class with some high end talent – this time pulling in an up and coming offensive tackle, Anthony Blalock.
“Any time you commit to a place like Alabama, you have to fit the physical build,” Parker says. The first thing you see with Anthony are his long arms. He has heavy hands in his punch and he’s pretty athletic for his size. The type of player they are getting is one who wants to be great and is committed to his craft.”
“He loves the game of football,” Parker continued. “He is very, very humble. I think they are getting a selfless player who, I can’t say this enough, wants to be the best and his goals for himself. He has drive. He also has a great demeanor for the position. His teammates can rally around him because he’s not a me guy. He’s never asked for this, but in his daily habits, he’s learning to speak up and be a leader. He’s taking on new challenges as he transitions from a young player to an upperclassman and he wants to do that.”
Blalock’s got on college radars after this past season, where he started every game as a sophomore. Kentucky, Ohio State, Texas Tech, Florida State and others offered.
“His freshman year, he sprinkled in on varsity and helped us out. That was his first taste,” Parker said. “His sophomore year, he was the full-time starter. After that year, he started to get the high-level recognition so now he needs to be elevated on every single detail of every single day. That was new for him as he realized he had to sharpen up and be at his best every day because any weaknesses that coaches or evaluators would see, he had to address those and he’s done a great job with that.”
Blalock is a 4-star recruit out of Ohio (committing to the Tide over the hometown favorite, Ohio State). At 6’5” 320 as only a rising junior in high school, he’s got sky-high potential to become an absolute monster. 247 has him ranked #127 overall and the #8 OT in the class. ESPN hasn’t gotten around to ranking him yet, so the composite scores for him aren’t as good.
With Blalock in the fold, the Tide now holds the #2 overall recruiting class for 2028. It’s still early, of course, but things are definitely starting well.
With us all well into bored season, Athlon Sports went and made projections for all the bowl games. Did they give any rationale, opinions, analysis, etc. into anything? Even just a sentence or two? Nope. They just gave us a really long list of bowls – but couldn’t be bothered to even say something like: “We think Alabama takes a step back.”
Gator Bowl (Dec. 30)
Location: EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla.
Tie-In: ACC vs. SEC
Projection: SMU vs. Alabama
Nice work there, Athlon. That took some real creative brainpower.
In any case, I think if the Tide ends up in the Gator Bowl, there will be a LOT of unrest in Tuscaloosa.
For the playoffs, they had Ohio State, Georgia, Texas, Notre Dame, Indiana, Oregon, Miami, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, LSU, Texas Tech, and Boise State.
On the other end of gumping, I’m not sure Ronald Evans from Bama Hammer has ever once predicted anything but sunshine for the Tide. But hey, there’s never a bad time to take a few minutes to hate on Tennessee, so I’ll take it.
I agree with every word in the video. So, I cannot be even the least bit objective about the Vols. My preview format is to present what others are saying about Tennessee in Josh Heupel’s upcoming sixth Tennessee season.
Let’s begin with some last season perspective: Joey Peterson tweeted, “TENNESSEE DIDN’T BEAT A SINGLE BOWL-ELIGIBLE TEAM IN YEAR 5 OF JOSH HEUPEL.” Maybe the all-caps were over the top, but Tennessee’s 8-5 record overrated the Vols’ performance. Not a single win was impressive. In addition, for only the fourth time since 1975, Vanderbilt beat the Vols in Knoxville, winning by a butt-stomping 45-24.
Evans has the Tide with a 27-21 win here.
While most of the focus was on the kicking game and Conor Talty’s uneven play, I thought the punting quietly escaped the ire of Alabama fans last year, and it shouldn’t have.
The Tide finished the 2025 season ranked last in the SEC in punting, averaging 41.53 yards per punt, and its 53 punts were the sixth-most in the conference. A blocked punt helped bring Blake Doud’s average down. Still, it wasn’t a great year of punting the football for Alabama, which will have a new punter in 2026. Special teams coordinator Jay Nunez will choose between North Alabama transfer Adam Watford, who set the FCS single-season record with 17 punts of 50-plus yards in 2025, and second-year punter Alex Asparuhov, who missed his first season due to injury. There wasn’t much punting on A-Day, so this position battle isn’t clear — a theme among all the specialist spots. Preseason camp will tell us more about the punter race.
Not only did Doud struggle with hangtime and distance, he was also often WAY too slow getting the ball off, and seemed to get nervous when backed up. Maybe Alex Asparuhov can be something decent (he was recruited fairly highly), but Adam Watford is different. We may only get the senior for one season, but the stark improvement from last season to what I think we’ll see from Watford this year is going to be downright glorious.
I mean seriously:
Last, it seems the end to the Monshun Sales recruiting war is near
Five-star wide receiver Monshun Sales has announced that he will be committing to a school on Friday, July 17. He will announce it on the Pat McAfee Show at 11 a.m. CT.
Alabama is in the highly touted prospect’s final five, joining Texas, LSU, Ohio State and Indiana. Sales is a native of Alabama, but now resides in Indiana, where he played his high school football and turned into the household name he is today.
Ohio State seems to be the odd one out. Rivals has reported that Texas and Indiana are beginning to separate themselves at the top of the leaderboard for Sales. This is unfortunate for Alabama, which has done everything it can to land him. That said, Alabama is not completely out of the picture.
This one has felt like a long shot for a little while now, but it’s always possible. We’ll know one way or another on Friday.
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