QB Reese didn’t see the field much during his first season with Alabama football. The linebacker, a Ramsay High School product from Birmingham, preserved his redshirt, appearing in five games including the ReliaQuest Bowl, and got most of his snaps on special teams.
The former three-star prospect isn’t likely to crack the lineup in 2025 either. Still, he’s impressed on of his veteran teammates, backed up by some of the advanced data tracked by the Crimson Tide’s strength team.
“We’ve got a player load per minute thing, he has the highest out of the linebackers,” Deontae Lawson said of Reese. “That means he’s working the hardest, to be honest.”
Reese was the lowest-ranked recruit in the Crimson Tide’s 2024 class, according to 247Sports. He was one of two linebackers in the class, along with fellow three-star Cayden Jones.
According to Lawson, both of the redshirt freshmen are doing well entering their second year in Tuscaloosa.
“It’s just crazy to see, just from last spring to this fall camp, just watching them grow and understand the scheme more,” Lawson said. “So they’re able to quarterback the defense of their own. It’s just great to see that. They’ve got a lot of pressure on their hands because I’m sure they have conversations or are in their mind about next year or anything like that. So they know they have to get ready for that, and I’m just excited for them.”
Those two aren’t the only young linebackers in the room for the Crimson Tide. UA has a trio of true freshmen, in Duke Johnson, Luke Metz and Abduall Sanders.
Lawson praised those three, with defensive coordinator Kane Wommack also saying they were handling the transition to college as well as could be expected.
“Swimming, struggling,” Wommack said of the three. “I mean, in a good way. I mean, if you’re going to do this at a high level from a linebacker standpoint, you have to embrace the hard times, right? There’s just so much we ask those guys to do in terms of running the defense. And so they have to kind of go and press through these things, and it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back, and then it’s going to be one step forward and two steps back for a little while.
“I told those guys this morning, they just have to keep pushing. And the guys that I think – I’ve seen a lot of linebackers go through and then play at a very high level. The ones that just know they’re going to play each snap like it’s the most important play and just focus on each snap. You do it over and over again, and all of a sudden, it just clicks. But it hasn’t clicked yet, so they’re grinding right now.”
Alabama opens the 2025 season on Aug. 30, with a trip to Florida State. The Crimson Tide will return to the practice field on Thursday.
