Kalen DeBoer left Washington before the Huskies joined the Big Ten. Still, even with the SEC’s rival league stretching to include the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, and New Jersey, Big Ten country is still the Midwest, and the Alabama head coach is looking to pluck a four-star 2027 safety recruit right out of the heart of it.
Kaleb Elkins will have a busy fall. The four-star safety from Indianapolis has scheduled fall visits to Michigan, Kentucky, Louisville, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio State, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As one of three SEC teams earning a look from Elkins, the Crimson Tide will have a chance to blow him away with the atmosphere at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Indianapolis Warren Central 2027 four-star safety Kaleb Elkins has visits locked in with Alabama, Indiana and Ohio State for the fall: https://t.co/7rr7e8hTi8 pic.twitter.com/hvHCgL84nv
— Steve Wiltfong (@SWiltfong_) August 1, 2025
4-star safety Kaleb Elkins slated for fall visit to Alabama
Across his first two recruiting cycles as the head coach of the Crimson Tide, a pattern has emerged for DeBoer. He tends to start slow on the recruiting trail before surging into national prominence through the summer. His dominant run in late June this year catapulted the Tide into the No. 4 spot in the country, only trailing Georgia, USC, and Texas A&M.
However, DeBoer doesn’t save all his work for late. He entered this summer with long-standing commitments from four-stars Zyan Gibson, Jamarion Matthews, Chris Booker, and five-star Jorden Edmonds as the structural pillars of his class. For 2027, he already has two of those pillars in place with four-star commits Jabarrius Garror and Alexander Ward. Maybe Elkins could be the third.
As for DeBoer’s ability to recruit the heartland, he hasn’t done it with much volume – why would he when he’s situated in the fertile recruiting grounds of the South – but he’s had more success than you might expect.
The 2026 Alabama class features three players from “Big Ten country”: three-star safety Rihyael Kelley from Cincinnati, three-star defensive lineman JJ Finch from Indianapolis, and four-star tight end Mack Sutter from Dunlap, Illinois. In 2025, DeBoer also plucked four-star edge Justin Hill out of Ohio.
Sutter is arguably the best testament to DeBoer’s ability to go north on the trail. The 6-foot-5 tight end is a top 100 player in the country, who chose Alabama over Ohio State and Illinois on his commitment day. Ohio State is the dominant recruiting power in the Midwest, and no surprise, the Buckeyes are in the mix for Elkins, too.