Meet Alabama Football’s 2024 new recruits: The WRs

With new Head Coach Kalen DeBoer and the highly-acclaimed WR coach, JaMarcus Shephard, coming to Tuscaloosa, there is likely no position going to see a bigger boost to their development/stats/NFL prospects than the WR group.

Alabama had monster run of wide receivers from 2018-2021 (five first round draft picks and a 2nd rounder) as well as a line of a 1st-round receiver on every roster from 2008 until that explosion with the 2017 class.

Since then, though?

Jermaine Burton has been a decent enough receiver for the Tide the last two seasons and will probably be a 3rd round pick. Ja’Corey Brooks flamed out. Traeshon Holden still exists somewhere. Agiye Hall and Jahleel Billingsley were disasters and then went to Texas. Isaiah Bond and Amari Niblack had decent-ish production in 2023 and also went to Texas.

Alabama does return Kobe Prentice and Kendrick Law as guys who have been rotational starters the last two seasons, and 2nd year man Jalen Hale showed some real flashes last season as a true freshman. Past that, though, there’s a lot of room for young players to step in and carve out a role for themselves.

And boy did Alabama sign some guys that could do just that.

As always, I will be be using the 247Sports Composite rankings for recruits – however, I will note when a certain service seems to view the player differently than the others. I also will make note of measureables and athletic tests where I can, but Covid killed an already waning amount of public data from Nike’s Opening Combines, so we’re mostly blind there outside of 100m dash numbers from the players who also do track.

Buckle up, this is going to be a long one!

Amari Jefferson

Jefferson had actually planned on being a baseball player at the collegiate level and committed to the Tennessee Vols all the way back in 2021, after his freshman year of high school. A breakout year in football after that, though, saw him start collecting offers from the likes of Georgia, Florida State, Oklahoma, Miami, Texas A&M, Oregon, Penn State, and Alabama over the next two seasons. He ultimately decided to stick with the football route, and committed to Alabama last summer.

He exploded with 1370 yards and 17 TDs as a junior before following it up with 1401 yards and 20 TDs (and winning Tennessee’s D2-AAA Mr. Football) as a senior.

I’ve seen him listed as big as 6’1” 210, or as small as 5’11.5” 200, so I suppose we’ll see once he enrolls this summer.

Playstyle

To be upfront, I think that Jefferson is likely the most underrated player in this recruiting class for Alabama. He’s built like Amari Cooper and has a similar smooth, powerful athleticism, and he showed significant improvement in his polish and technique at the position between his junior and senior years.

He’s at his best with the ball in his hands. He has an absolutely nasty 45-degree cut at top speed in the open field that leaves safeties grasping for air while he never stops chewing up…