Alabama’s offensive line talent pipeline isn’t stopping under Kalen DeBoer

Alabama enters the 2025 season with one of the most highly-touted offensive lines in the country, but Kalen DeBoer knows as well as anyone how important building your team through the trenches is. When DeBoer led Washington to the 2024 National Championship Game, he did so behind the strength of the Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line. So, it’s no surprise that DeBoer is building on a strength in his second offseason at Alabama. 

On Monday, after a loaded official visit weekend featuring one of the most talented groups of recruits visiting anywhere in the country this summer, DeBoer and his staff came away with their sixth commit in the 2026 class, four-star offensive tackle Sam Utu. The Orange County, California, native was predicted to join DeBoer’s former program heading into the weekend, but was quickly swayed and announced his commitment to the Crimson Tide. 

Alabama lands commitment from 4-star offensive tackle Sam Utu

The 6-foot-4, 320-pound prospect has spent his entire career at Orange Lutheran High School playing offensive tackle, but his stout frame and raw power will allow him to play all across the offensive line, likely settling in as an offensive guard at the next level. 

Utu was slated to take official visits to Tennessee, USC, and Texas, but the four-star has officially shut down his recruiting and will likely forgo those trips. In the NIL era, a commitment is far from a guarantee that the player will eventually step foot on campus, but Utu seems to have fallen in love with Tuscaloosa, and without other official visits, that will be hard to shake. 

Kalen DeBoer knows how to build through the trenches

There have been big changes in the transition from Nick Saban to his successor, but one thing that DeBoer has made clear throughout his first two recruiting cycles is that the offensive line is still a massive priority. Center Parker Brailsford was one of the few players who followed DeBoer from Washington to Tuscaloosa, and in the 2025 recruiting class, DeBoer landed two offensive line recruits who were top 50 overall prospects in the country: five-star Michael Carroll and four-star Jackson Lloyd. 

A strong offensive line is one of the most important aspects of a championship contender, and prioritizing offensive linemen has often played out as a very successful recruiting strategy because, as in the NFL, where O-linemen earn second contracts with the team that drafted them at a higher rate than any other position, the big men in the trenches develop more consistently than other top prospects. 

Why Alabama’s O-line underperformed in 2023 and 2024

The Crimson Tide have produced a first-round pick on the offensive line in six of the last seven NFL Drafts, and Kadyn Proctor enters the 2025 season as a potential 2026 first-round pick. Yet, despite Proctor playing alongside Tyler Booker and JC Latham in 2023, and Booker and Brailsford (a second-team All-American last season) in 2024, Alabama’s O-line hasn’t played up to its obscenely high talent level. 

For Alabama to get back to the CFP and maintain its status as a yearly national title contender, the offensive line will need to take a step forward in 2025, and maybe the biggest reason to believe it will has almost nothing to do with the five guys up front. 

For all of Jalen Milroe’s physical talent, he had a tendency of putting his offensive line in difficult spots. Milroe was disastrous against defenses that effectively disguised their pressure looks, think Michigan or Oklahoma, he held onto the ball far too long, especially when he wasn’t comfortable with what a defense presented pre-snap, and as an elite runner, he routinely bailed on clean pockets. In the run game, Milroe was electric when he kept the ball, but he kept it far too often on option plays, leading to an alarmingly high stuff rate. 

Alabama had the talent up front in 2023 and 2024, as they do in 2025, but with Ty Simpson taking over for Milroe at quarterback, the Crimson Tide offensive line may finally play up to its talent level. That’s the task for offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb and offensive line coach Chris Kapilovic, and DeBoer, as he did with the Utu commitment, just has to ensure that the offensive line talent doesn’t stop flowing to Tuscaloosa.