Jumbo Package: Alabama lands 2026 Linebacker Commitment over Tennessee

“I developed some great relationships with different coaches, but Alabama separated in the end. Why would you not want to be there?

“It just felt right. I just want to go be the best version of myself, and I believe Alabama can get me there.”

Simon is a Tennessee legacy, so committing to Alabama was something of a surprise to many. He absolutely gushes about the coaching staff in this piece, so I think he seems like a dude that’s solid. He’s a top 150 player and the #7 overall linebacker according to 247. Alabama’s recruiting class is still quite small. The Tide’s M.O. through both the Saban and DeBoer regimes has been to take very few commits until June, when things start really picking up with all of the summer camp visits.

Quarterback battles are a lot like horse races before the gates open—everyone lines up with a case, but if you look at the odds, there’s usually one name bettors keep circling. At Alabama, the post-spring conversation still carries uncertainty on the surface, but the numbers behind the scenes are already painting a much sharper picture. And while Kalen DeBoer hasn’t publicly decided the winner of the competition between Austin Mack and Keelon Russell, the outside world may be tipping its hand on how this race is trending.

According to FanDuel Sportsbook Heisman odds, Russell sits at +3000—good for 14th in the nation heading into the summer, firmly in a tier that suggests his legitimate breakout potential. This climb comes after flashes he showed during Alabama’s A-Day scrimmage last month, where the 5-star redshirt freshman gave a glimpse of why the buzz around his upside hasn’t faded.

Russell being 14th in the whole country in betting odds to win the Heisman as a guy who we don’t even know if he’ll play really goes to show just how high the hype is going to be for him. After A-Day, I think most Alabama fans are comfortable with making a prediction he’ll be the Tide’s starter, even though that battle is far from over. If Russell lives up to the hype, it could make for a very interesting 2026 for all of the media that seems so excited to bury the Tide.

“That was my comment the other day,” he told reporters during the ACC spring meetings on Monday. “All of a sudden I’m getting hate mail from people. We have enough. I was just making a point we never had the same as this school and this school if we met at the middle of the field and compared budgets and alumni bases and total revenues, and 5-stars, recruiting rankings—we’d lose every time. You’ve got to have enough, and then it’s about putting it together. We may not have a $45 million roster like some teams, but we’ve got enough. We’ve just got to be good with it. We’ve got to be strategic.”

Swinney didn’t shy away from critiquing Clemson’s results from last season, however, as the team went 7-6, missed the College Football Playoff and lost the Pinstripe Bowl against Penn State, 22-10.

“It’s pretty well documented we grossly underachieved last year. That isn’t a news flash,” he acknowledged. “We just keep beating that dead horse to death. We’re onto the new season. We grossly underachieved and underperformed and did not coach and play to our potential. We’ve had other seasons where we had nobody drafted and won 10-plus games. That’s football. It didn’t work last year. If you do this long enough, you can have a year where it just doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re Roy Williams or Coach K [Mike Krzyzewski] or Dabo Swinney, it doesn’t matter. It’s what you do moving forward. But I think perspective is important.”

Despite the ACC being the weakest of the Power 4 conferences in football at this point, Clemson has just one CFP appearance in the past five seasons and hasn’t won a Playoff game since 2019. Swinney’s aversion to the transfer portal and the changing landscape NIL has provided plenty of challenges for the program, with questions about whether he can adequately adapt.

Dabo Swinney owes Brent Venables, DeShaun Watson, and Trevor Lawrence (Saivion Smith) a whole lot of money for the long career leash that Clemson has given him. At what point do the Tigers get tired of the perennial underachieving and excuse-making despite constantly putting out NFL talent, all because they have a coach obstinately refusing to change his approach from 2019.

The coaches association, which has no official decision-making voice on these matters, wants to move the calendar up and finish the playoff by the second Monday in January.

“The American Football Coaches Association, without picking up the phone with those of us in the decision-making roles, issues a statement and says we want to get the season done earlier,” Sankey said.

The point the commissioner was making involves the complexity of the schedules and multiple interests competing for the same time. He noted the two executive orders issued by the White House that aim to protect the Army-Navy game on the second Saturday of December.

There are NFL games in early December that would cannibalize TV ratings for both if the playoff shifted earlier, Sankey said.

“You know, Commissioner (Roger) Goodell and I’ve talked,” Sankey said. “He would prefer that not happen, as would Commissioner Sankey.”

The current playoff format means playing deeper into January every year to avoid calendar landmines. The 2027 season won’t end until Jan. 25, 2028.

Compressing the schedule to finish in early January isn’t so simple, Sankey said.

“Last I knew, the AFCA is not in charge of dealing with scheduling those postseason games or even the regular season games,” Sankey said. “I mean, the entity or figuring out where they fit in the calendar or dealing with TV.

I don’t really know who’s in the wrong here, whether it’s Greg, ESPN, or whoever. But I think we all know that the way college football has turned into utter chaos in December and the drags late into January has become a real problem.

Between the transfer portal, national signing day, and now cramming an entire playoffs in, all while the “student-athletes” are supposed to be getting Christmas break, we’ve tried to force too much into one spot.

Remember when the recruiting silly season happened after the season, in February? We could all focus on that and it made for fan involvement in the offseason. Now, nobody has the capacity to keep up or care because it all happens right in the middle of conference championships.

And transfers? We COULD have transfers all swap teams during the summer. Like a normal thing for students in schools, and a natural window for that to happen. Fans could get more into “free agency” period during the normally barren months, and transferring players could get a lot more time to scope out the new schools (and ditto for coaching staffs).

But no, we also want to cram that in at the same time in December, then try to shoehorn in exception rules for playoff teams that just makes the whole thing even more disjointed.

Do all of that, and maybe you free up a little time for some more December games. And maybe players actually play in post-season games because they could be showcasing for their next potential school, rather than having to skip so that they can get on a new team in time to not get left out. And then maybe coaches don’t get fired until after the season ends, so we don’t have mass exoduses of players feeling like they were misled and schools having to make new hires in 2 days. Just maybe.

But what do I know?