Alabama Found Another ONE at Wide Receiver 🐘
(Paulie) How could we be lost like this? We're in fucking New Jersey!
South Jersey!
- Chris, The Sopranos
It wasn’t long ago that the University of Alabama was thought of as the ‘WRU’ of college football. Indeed, who could argue with the results when the Tide’s 2019 team featured a starting four that eventually all landed in the first round of the NFL draft? Even more remarkable to consider that there were six first round receivers featured in 2019’s iteration of the LSU vs. Alabama rivalry game.
Teams like Ohio State and LSU have probably overtaken the Tide for that title recently. However, given the new staff’s pedigree at UW and Fresno, it’s not a stretch to imagine the lineage of receivers being sent to the NFL via Tuscaloosa will be refortified in the near future.
We all know about Ryan Williams, who is finally 18, and what he did last season. Germie Bernard was brought over with the UW group last offseason—he had a solid year too. Then there’s 6-foot-4 inch tall boundary receiver Isaiah Horton, who was brought in for good measure from Miami (a program who apparently attempted to recoup his services in the spring). So the Tide are certainly doing something right.
However, there is still a need for a starting slot receiver to emerge—a player with speed and quickness in his repertoire. Ryan Williams could probably do this, and he likely will this season as Horton and Bernard take the majority of their snaps out wide.
But behind Williams may be a budding freshman in New Jersey record breaker Lotzeir Brooks. Brooks was rated a three star by 247 Sports and Rivals, and a four star by ON3 and ESPN. There was quite a disparity in his evaluation as ON3 had him as a top 80 prospect nationally, while Rivals had him 78th at his position!
In an offseason interview, his high school coach (Humberto Ayala) compared Brooks to this year’s #1 overall pick Cam Ward (in that he was an unrated gem coming out of high school):
What's interesting is that, unlike Ward, who had only one scholarship offer from FCS Incarnate Word coming out of high school, Brooks did have high-level FBS schools interested in him early on.
Ayala remembers coaches buzzing around Brooks before he played his first game — guys like Fran Brown, who was a top assistant at Georgia and is now the head coach at Syracuse. The Bulldogs offered Brooks shortly after his freshman season, after teams like Rutgers, West Virginia, Texas A&M, Kentucky and Pitt had already jumped on board.
Going into his junior year, Brooks attended a camp at Alabama when Nick Saban was head coach and Bill O'Brien was offensive coordinator. Ayala recalls Brooks running a high 4.3 second 40-yard dash and lighting up DBs in drills.
"Nobody could stay in front of him," he said.
So what gives then? All this sounds like the makings of a blue-chip recruit. According to Ayala, Brooks didn't have the financial means to travel the country and showcase his ability like other players. Ayala took him to Alabama himself. He didn't go to recruiting showcases and have the verified testing numbers that evaluators drool over.
"If he would have went to those camps and was rated the way he should have been," Ayala said, "he would have had every college in the country coming after him."
Maybe being only 5-foot-9 kept Brooks from a fourth star, but Ayala doesn't know why that would be.
"We looked at him as he was a generational talent," he said. "Some kids spend thousands of dollars; I don't think he ever went to a trainer. He wasn't doing speed training. You know how some guys are just gifted? He's that. He's not thinking about it. It's just his natural ability."
And it's more than just speed.
"He's strong as shit," Ayala said. "I think his max squat coming out of high school was 470 pounds. He was power-cleaning well over 220."
Because he didn't do a ton of formal testing, the numbers on Brooks are a little nebulous. They tried to measure his vertical jump with a machine in their weight room once.
"We put it all the way to the max," Ayala recalled, "and then we had to take the ceiling tiles out."
I found it interesting in the article when they mentioned that the old regime made sure to let the group from UW know that Brooks was a priority target when they handed the baton off:
Brooks' dream was to play for Saban, Ayala said, and was a little turned off after his retirement last January. Kentucky turned up the heat after that, pushing hard for a commitment. Brooks was anxious. But Ayala told him that Alabama could be more attractive with an offensive-minded head coach, "So don't write them off."
Ayala, Brooks and his mother visited Tuscaloosa a few months later. DeBoer, general manager Courtney Morgan and receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard had heard about Brooks from former Saban staffers like director of player personnel Bob Welton, and made no secret about how much they wanted him, Ayala said. Associate director of player personnel Eron Hodges was part of the full-court press as well.
Brooks wound up catching 56 passes for 1,260 yards and 16 touchdowns as a senior.
Coaching & System
WR1 PPG AVERAGE — HC: 16.3 — OC: 15.51 (half ppr)
The interesting thing about the current Alabama regime is that they are agnostic regarding which role dominates the target share as WR1; and, of additional note as far as today’s topic is concerned, the slot receiver has led DeBoer’s teams in receiving three times in the last six full seasons.
I don’t know which role Ryan Williams primarily occupied in 2024 but he might have been balanced between the boundary and inside.
Below you can find the list of names under DeBoer occupying his WR1 and WR2 roles since 2018 (COVID year excluded). Though I will add the caveat as someone who owned all three of Penix, Odunze, and McMillan in one league in 2022—and thus watched all of the UW games that year—Odunze was really the WR1 for that team. He missed a couple games (or at least one) where he was healthy scratch who could have played.
What I do find interesting is that despite having perhaps his most talented player ever at WR, DeBoer’s five-year streak of 100+ targets to his WR1 ended in 2024. I don’t suspect that gap will last two seasons. What’s even cooler is that the WR2 saw 100+ targets in his last two years at UW as well.
While it’s unlikely that Brooks finds himself occupying the WR2 role as a freshman this year with the likes of Isaiah Horton and Germie Bernard in the fold, it could be something to keep in mind for next year. Ryan Williams could be the Odunze entity while Brooks takes over where McMillan and Polk left off.
DeBoer and his regime are one of the most balanced systems in CFB. The head coach himself averages nearly a 51/49 split in favour of the pass, while his new/old OC Ryan Grubb averages around 55/45. However, it should be noted that in the two UW seasons the offence averaged around a 59/41 split in favour of the pass.
DeBoer’s first season at Alabama was the exact opposite—the Tide averaged 59% run plays. The QB being Jalen Milroe probably had something to do with it; we all know he was an elite runner.
There is nothing remarkable to report on with regard to DeBoer’s or Grubb’s pace of offence, their system is very average in that regard (~25 seconds per play), though the UW teams got up to 75 and 73 plays per game.
Lotzeir Brooks (5’9, 190)
As alluded to earlier, Brooks was a record breaker in the state of New Jersey for high school football during his prep career. And I know, I know, the Northeast isn’t exactly ground zero for football talent, but New Jersey is a damn good area for elite football players. Probably the best non-southern/Californian state for high school football currently in my opinion.
Current Syracuse head coach Fran Brown knew it when he was at UGA, as evidenced by the mileage he put in. So do schools like Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and of course, Alabama, who have been coming up to this state for years (with mixed results, to be fair—anyone remember Antonio Alfono?).
Indeed, the Tide faithful will be hoping this Garden State product’s career plays out a little differently. By the quotes from the head man himself, that seems likely:
To DeBoer, Brooks — the 5-foot-9, 188-pound freshman — is perfect for the slot. But the Alabama coach only views it as Brooks' starting point.
"You think right away, 'Get the ball to him and let him do his thing'," DeBoer said. "But he's really good down the field too. Has really good body control, can win on defenders down the field. And not just in the first couple yards and when he's got the ball in his hands. So he's been really impressive."
DeBoer is already sold on the New Jersey wide receiver whose name is all over the state's receiving record books with the most touchdown receptions (65) and the most receiving yards (4,514).
DeBoer sees Brooks' explosion and the possibilities of what the receiver could bring. But DeBoer also realizes that Brooks has "a lot to learn" in terms of feeling comfortable in the offensive scheme, in becoming "quarterback-friendly" like Adams in the slot.
But Brooks, DeBoer said, is on his way.
"Lotzeir’s got some of those instincts," DeBoer said. "Sometimes it’s hard to find guys. It’s not hard to find him. And he can finish those plays. When a ball is in the air, he can get that little burst to get underneath of it. Those ones that are just off the fingertips, it seems like he’s finding a way to haul them in. Got that little extra juice and can make good outside-the-body type of catches."
Regarding how high Brooks can climb up the depth chart this year, a writer from 247 mentioned this:
Whether he can climb the depth chart to the point that he's playing alongside Williams, Bernard and Horton remains to be seen, although it's safe to say he's put himself in the mix along with guys like Rico Scott and Cole Adams.
"I'm going to tell you this," Ayala said. "It's going to come to a point where it's going to be hard to not put him on the field."
If he's not technically a starting receiver, maybe he's the first guy off the bench. Maybe he's a slot in four-receiver sets. He has the tools and toughness to work the middle of the field.
Or maybe he gets his feet wet as a punt returner. Ayala said it got to the point that teams were so afraid to kick the ball anywhere near him, they would shank it out of bounds.
"The kid is a play-maker," he said. "I'm not saying anything is wrong with those other guys. It's a crazy receiver room; probably one of the best in the country. But he's going to stand out enough that he's going to have to see the field."
Regardless of whether Brooks carves out a role for himself this season, he feels like a marquee name to tuck away for the (not-so distant) future. ◾
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Sample from 2018-2024, excluding 2020.