Alabama Football: Jaylen Waddle seen in non-contact jersey

Jaylen Waddle is practicing for Alabama football

The college football world is chomping at the bit to get information on Jaylen Waddle’s availability for the CFP National Championship. While we aren’t sure if he will be ready for Alabama football’s final game of the season, we at least have a bit of new information.

The Alabama social media team released a hype video including a practice montage. While you can’t see Waddle doing a drill, he is seen in the background in a black non-contact jersey.

These jerseys are mostly reserved for injured players and quarterbacks. In practice, defenders simply have to touch them for them to be down on plays. It essentially means that Jaylen Waddle isn’t being tackled in practice.

This shouldn’t be that surprising. Waddle is coming off of a rough ankle injury that has sidelined him for months. Even if he were fully healthy, the training staff would likely put him in a non-contact jersey for the first few days of practice out of precaution.

Waddle needs to work his way back to being fully healthy. He has rehabbed intensively. He now needs to work on routes while on the field. Once he does this, they can add tackling.

While this might worry Alabama football fans, I don’t believe it will impact Waddle’s availability for the National Championship. He could still easily not play, but it won’t be because he wore this jersey for a few practices.

I think the most likely scenario is that Jaylen Waddle sees a limited role against the Ohio State Buckeyes. He might be a decoy for most plays, and he could be thrown to only in clear passing situations. His biggest concern has to be preparing for his NFL future, and you don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize that. If that is the case, he appears to be right on schedule.

At the end of the day, most Alabama football fans didn’t expect Waddle to ever practice with the Tide again. Just having him on the field is good news. We’ll have to wait until Monday to see just how ready he is to play.