Conference ranking and NFL Draft dollars for former Alabama Crimson Tide players
By Ronald Evans
Check out the latest after the 2020 NFL Draft, including how the Crimson Tide and SEC finished, dollars for former Tide players and free-agent deals.
Alabama Crimson Tide fans have plenty to celebrate from the 2020 NFL Draft. As current National Champions often do, LSU led the Draft with 14 former Bengal Tigers chosen. Hey, we never said Coach O cannot recruit.
The Crimson Tide had 10 former players drafted (including Jalen Hurts in the number) to tie Ohio State and Michigan as the Draft runners-up to LSU.
For the 14th straight Draft, the SEC beat out the other Power Five conferences. The SEC had 63 selections, to 48 for the Big Ten, 32 for the Pac 12, 23 for the ACC and 22 from the Big 12. Speaking of the Big 12, who would have thought TCU with five players chosen would lead their league? The Oklahoma Sooners finished with four players drafted.
Former Crimson Tide players not being drafted were Shyheim Carter, Jared Mayden and Matt Womack. Alabama football players did great in the Draft’s first three rounds, but none were selected in the last three rounds. Not long after the Draft ended it was reported Mayden had signed a free-agent deal with the 49ers.
Ole Miss was the only SEC school without a player selected. Vanderbilt had one player drafted. At two players each, were Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas A&M. South Carolina had four players chosen. Mississippi State got five players picked and Auburn, having an unusually good Draft, ended up with six selected. Florida and Georgia each had seven players drafted.
Other notable teams were Notre Dame with six selections and Clemson with seven.
Big dollars come with the NFL contracts for the 10 former Crimson Tide players. How big? $116M -plus is how big. That is contract money. More important are the guaranteed dollars. The guaranteed numbers are less but still a lot of money.
Exact terms of the new contracts will be worked out over the coming weeks. The excellent NFL contracts site Spotrac, shows Tua’s estimated $30.2M as fully guaranteed. Hopefully, that will be true, but more often, even in the first-round deals, the only ‘truly guaranteed’ money is the Signing Bonus. Tua’s Signing Bonus is estimated at $19.6M.
Looking at Jalen’s $6M estimated contract, it includes a Signing Bonus of $1.9M. Going into the third round, Anfernee Jennings’ estimated contract is $4.3M, with a $900K Signing Bonus.
Getting back to the undrafted former Crimson Tide players, cbssports.com cited an observation from Adam Schafter. Schafter concurred with a statement from a less-known source, saying the Pro Football Hall of Fame has more undrafted free agents in it than overall No. 1 picks. Of course, numbers are on the side of the several dozen, undrafted free agents each year, compared to just one player.
Bama Hammer will chase down more free agent news as it becomes available. Hopefully, Carter and Womack will also get deals.