Jumbo Package: Alabama lands a CB commit, hand-wringing continues
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Happy Monday, everyone. To read some takes on Alabama recruiting, we have reached the “head’s pets are falling off” stage.
In last year’s class, DeBoer recruited the state a lot harder, landing three of the top five players in the state, including the state’s highest-ranked player (E.J. Crowell). Yet, out of the other ten players in the state rated as a four-star recruit, the Crimson Tide only landed one more.
That brings us to the class of 2027. Seven out of the top ten highest-ranked players in the state are already committed, and not one of them is committed to Alabama. The Crimson Tide’s highest-ranked in-state recruit as of this writing is four-star quarterback Trent Seaborn, currently ranked as the 14th-best player in Alabama.
Out of the three top ten in-state players that are still uncommitted, it does not seem as if the Crimson Tide will land any of them.
Undeterred, Kalen DeBoer landed a commitment from a three-star cornerback this weekend. I’m sure that will calm everyone down.
White, a 6-foot-3, 170-pound cornerback from Creekside High School in Fairburn, Georgia, chose the Crimson Tide over Georgia, Cincinnati, and Florida State, among others. He held a total of 19 schools, including SEC rivals Tennessee and Auburn. White visited Alabama for an official visit on May 29.
White is ranked as the No. 451 overall recruit, the No. 44 cornerback, and the No. 49 player in the state of Georgia, according to 247 Sports’ composite rankings. He picked up an offer from the Crimson Tide on January 23, 2026, with the Tide’s offer causing a flurry of Power Four offers to roll in, with Auburn, Florida State, Tennessee, and Georgia offering him after Alabama did.
Recruits are seeing a roster chock full of freshmen and sophomores, and those guys are generally prioritized when it comes to NIL. There just isn’t going to be a lot of room or money to take a huge class this year. Now, if it happens again in the 2028 class that would be noteworthy.
Joe Gaither wrote about the Georgia matchup.
Redshirt senior Gunner Stockton is back for his second season in charge, but he’ll have a new cast of pass catchers to rely on after losing his top three receivers from a season ago.
Georgia, always physical under Kirby Smart, returns four offensive linemen with significant experience, along with two of the best running backs in the SEC in Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens.
The biggest question will be the passing game. Will Stockton take a step forward in his second season starting and find more explosive plays down the field? Did the Dawgs do enough in the transfer portal by adding Isiah Canion as the only receiver? London Humphrey’s 18 receptions for 276 and three touchdowns are the most production returning in the receiver room, making it the biggest concern for the Bulldogs.
You never know until they show up to play, but at this point Alabama’s secondary should hold a significant advantage over the Dawgs receiving corps in that game.
Nick Kelly covered Trah’shawn Brown for the latest in the “50 players” series.
“The other guy that I thought had a nice week was Trae’shawn,” Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said at one point in the spring. “Showed it a little bit today in the scrimmage, but I thought throughout the week, there was a live session, short-yardage, goal-line, things like that, that he showed some pop. He showed some instinctiveness on how to get that first down when it’s 3rd-and-2, 4th-and-1, whatever it might be. It’s never pretty, it’s never perfect, because there’s a lot of dudes up on the line of scrimmage. But I think, overall, he’s had some good progress here this spring.”
Could Brown play a role in reviving the ground game that was one of the worst in the nation a season ago? Perhaps. He’s got momentum from the spring.
A lot of his work in the A-Day spring game came against second- and third-team types, but Brown provided noticeable juice. The freshman finished A-Day with five carries for 25 yards, per AL.com’s unofficial stats.
I have a feeling you will see the running backs used even more prominently in the passing game this season, and that’s where Brown can contribute the most.
Joe Lunardi sees Alabama as a three-seed coming into the summer.
Lunardi recently unveiled his updated way-too-early bracketology for the newly expanded 76-team field. The veteran college hoops guru has Alabama listed as a projected No. 3 seed in his NCAA Tournament forecast.
The most recent update has Alabama facing the Liberty Flames in the first round of the tournament in San Antonio, part of the South Region.
The top four seeds in Lunardi’s summer bracketology are the Florida Gators, Michigan Wolverines, Duke Blue Devils and Illinois Fighting Illini. Joining Alabama as No. 3 seeds are UConn, Gonzaga and Texas.
Remember when Alabama fans were happy just making the tournament every other year or so? Seems like so long ago.
Last, this is a great piece from Austin Meek at The Athletic that captures perfectly what many of us grieve around college football.
For most of its history, college football was a regional sport with a collection of arcane rules, traditions and rivalries that weren’t supposed to make sense to everyone. In the 1990s, cable TV brought that regional sport to a national audience. By watching college football, fans also changed it. Everything that followed — the big money, the chaos of conference realignment, the demise of rivalries, games kicking off at all hours of the day and night — happened because people loved watching college football on TV.
“In the ’90s, there was still some connection to the deep past that is harder to do now,” Klosterman said. “These programs were still connected to, like, the programs of legend and lore. Maybe what we’re talking about when we’re saying the ’90s were so great is maybe that was the end of it.”
Thinking about it that way made it easier for me to see what my fellow millennials and I miss about college football in the 1990s. It wasn’t just the experience of being a kid, at least not entirely. It was the experience of being a kid at a perfect moment in college football’s TV revolution.
A time after the cameras came on but before anyone knew what it meant.
It was different, unique, and special. Beating rivals and winning a conference were the goals to begin the season, and the mythical national championship was a cherry on top when it came around. ESPN started to kill what was great about the sport back then, money grubbing administrators who got drunk on the ESPN money buried it, and betting apps are standing by waiting to cover the casket with dirt.
That’s about it for today. Have a great week.
Roll Tide.
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