Ad Disclosure
Why Alabama’s defensive line machine is even more impressive than you realize
Published:
If you’re looking for another reason Nick Saban’s Alabama dynasty is as transcendent as anything we’ve ever seen in the sport, look no further than the machine that is the Crimson Tide defensive line.
By now, you might know the nuts and bolts. Since Nick Saban took over at Alabama in 2007, he had 15 defensive linemen drafted. Seven were picked in the first 2 rounds. Dig a little deeper and you’ll see that in the past 3 drafts alone, Alabama had 7 defensive linemen drafted and 5 went in the first 2 rounds.
Just for a little perspective on that, Nebraska and Kentucky had a combined 7 total players drafted in the past 3 years.
But that’s not even the most impressive thing that Alabama’s defensive line has going for it during the Saban era.
In Alabama’s 2019 class, there are 7 defensive linemen recruits, all of whom are rated 4-stars or better. In all likelihood, only a couple will even see the field as part of the rotation as true freshmen. For the casual fan, Wednesday’s Early Signing Period will probably be the last they hear about the vast majority of them for a couple more years.
Welcome to the machine.
Amazing it is that in this age of increased transfers and the increased desire to play immediately, Saban’s defensive line pipeline is still pumping at full speed. It bucks modern thinking, yet it usually yields a national championship and huge draft bonuses.
Including recently-named Phidarian Mathis, only 4 Alabama defensive linemen earned SEC All-Freshman honors during the Saban era. That’s it. Mathis, a redshirt freshman, actually became the first Alabama defensive lineman to accomplish that feat since Da’Shawn Hand did it in 2014. A’Shawn Robinson earned the honor in 2013 and D.J. Pettway did so in 2012.
What that means is that of those 15 defensive linemen Alabama had drafted from 2007-18, 13 of them were essentially non-impact players as freshmen. Why? They were behind future NFL players. That’s actually a credit to Saban that not only did he not have to play freshmen, but that so many stayed and developed into NFL talents.
Now some will assume that’s a given. After all, it’s Saban’s attention to detail coupled with Scott Cochran’s strength program. Of course they took “5-star recruit X” and got him to the NFL. There are guys like Jonathan Allen, who came in as a 5-star recruit and didn’t start a game as a true freshman before he blossomed into a Bednarik Award winner as an upperclassman.
There’s also someone like Joshua Frazier, who came in as a U.S. Army All-American and never started a game in college, yet he stayed all 4 years at Alabama before he got drafted. Frazier’s case is especially interesting because he might be the best representation of the Alabama defensive line pipeline. He watched 5 defensive linemen get drafted while he was in Tuscaloosa. The Arkansas native could have gone anywhere, yet he picked Alabama and stuck with the Crimson Tide instead of transferring his senior year, even though future first-round pick Da’Ron Payne was ahead of him on the depth chart.
“As I learned with coach Saban, it’s all about knowing what to do and being in the right place at all times,” Frazier told me back in April. “Besides, we won the national championship my senior year, so I can’t complain.”
The narrative now is that if a blue-chip recruit doesn’t play immediately, he’ll leave. With looser transfer restrictions than ever, that makes sense. Apparently Alabama didn’t get that memo.
Look at Quinnen Williams, who had to share snaps with Frazier and Payne last year. Williams was a 4-star recruit (who isn’t at Alabama?) who redshirted his true freshman year in 2016. Two years later, Williams is a unanimous All-American who finished eighth in the Heisman Trophy voting and looks like a possible top-3 draft pick.
The scariest thing about this system is that there could be more and more cases like Williams in the future.
Alabama’s biggest splash of last offseason might have been hiring Craig Kuligowski away from Miami to coach the defensive line. The longtime Mizzou staple helped develop 24 all-conference players on the defensive front during his 15 years in Columbia. Between Shane Ray, Michael Sam and Sheldon Richardson, Kuligowski’s list of prolific pupils was already staggering before he stepped foot in Tuscaloosa.
It’s almost not fair that Saban went out and hired arguably the top defensive line coach in America. Saban already built a defensive juggernaut as impressive as any. If Saban and Kuligowski are going to continue to turn non-top 100 recruits into consensus All-Americans, forget about it.
Maybe the next Williams is in Alabama’s incoming 2019 class. Lord knows there are plenty of candidates. What seems even more likely is that the next Williams is already at Alabama, patiently waiting for their chance to shine.
Or rather, continue the machine.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
