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Eyabi Anoma’s peers among the national top 10 in his recruiting class include Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Georgia and Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Penn State’s Micah Parsons. Did he find himself looking at the impact they made as freshmen and wonder what if?

“Kudos to them,” he says. “At the same time, they might be breaking out at other places, but they’re not breaking out at Alabama. This IS the place. If you come here and you break out, you’re the man. Anyone can go to any other school and be a star.”

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Bruh - Trevor just stomped THE PLACE. Better figure that out.

https://theathletic.com/865956/2019/03/14/alabama-football-the-process-spring-practice-eyabi-anoma-five-star-linebacker/

What it’s like to be a five-star in Alabama’s Process,...

Crimson Tide outside linebacker Eyabi Anoma and others offer insights into the transition from five-star recruit to formative rookie.

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Mar 14, 2019, 2:43 PM

You? were? a five-star? recruit.? Every? big-name college? football? coach in? the country wooed you? to? sign with their team.?? You had played in a high school all-star game on national TV and took home “Alpha Dog” honors as the most impressive guy there because you were so dominant in the week of practices and the game.

And then you get to your first career SEC game. Your team is crushing the other squad. But you expected that. You’re with Alabama now.

Here’s what you didn’t expect. It’s 59-7, and the coaches still haven’t put you in the game.

You’re Eyabi Anoma, and at that moment when you looked up at the scoreboard that September night at Ole Miss, one cold realization came to mind: “We’re up by over 50, and man, I’m not trusted that much to go in?”

Anoma, who eventually did get inserted into the Ole Miss game early in the fourth quarter, recalled this story a few days before the Crimson Tide defeated Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl to get to another national title game. On a team that had 11 other five-star recruits, Anoma didn’t have to look far for examples about how “The Process” at Alabama works under Nick Saban. As frustrated as he was at that moment, he said, “In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Your time is gonna come.’ ”

Anoma said the vibe from how Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa supported each other throughout their much-publicized quarterback battle rubbed off on other Alabama players who were trying to sort out their own individual situations.

“You see how Jalen could’ve transferred easily,” Anoma told The Athletic. “Just to see his character, his dedication to the team — it’s just different. That’s definitely love right there. That (selflessness) is just different. I’m from a place that a lot of that definitely doesn’t get shown.

“Those guys put the team first at all times. Tua saw the frustration in me (around the Ole Miss game) and he gave me some words of encouragement, keep my head up. Tua helped me get through it. ‘Right now, you just have to trust the process and trust everything they’re telling you.’ Him saying that. All these older guys are my big brothers. I have six sisters and no brothers. I’m the only boy. So when these older guys pulled me to the side, and talk to me like their brother, I took that personally. It’s tough staying patient, but when you come to a place full of dawgs, it is what it is.”

Staying patient, especially when you’re a teenager and a former top recruit, is easier said than done, though.

About one month after the national championship game, Anoma put his name in the NCAA transfer portal, only to remove it a day later.

Since 2013, Alabama has signed 28 five-star recruits. Nine, so far, have become All-Americans. Eight have left as NFL first-round draft picks, and three have gone in the second-round and counting. Three others joined those 11 in starting games in the NFL last season. Only two of the 28, quarterback Blake Barnett and cornerback Kendall Sheffield, have transferred out. Few emerged as a standout as quickly as Dylan Moses, who started two games as a freshman in 2017 and led the team in tackles last season. Moses said it’s critical for young recruits to “humble” themselves knowing that it is going to be hard.

“They’re going to push me to my limits, it’s not going to be easy,” Moses said in December. “If you’re a highly recruited player, they’re going to be on you more, so they can challenge you, make you into a better player.

“This place will challenge you. It will challenge you physically and mentally. A lot of kids growing up don’t really have that mental strength enough to deal with this type of heat. You’ll come in top player in the country, be riding the bench the first year. It’s one of those things. If you’re not used to that, you probably want to leave. You’ll be doubting yourself, go into some type of emotional depression.”

No player in the country had a bigger breakout season in 2018 than Alabama defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. The No. 155 player in the 2016 signing class, Williams redshirted that year, made 20 tackles as a backup in 2017 and then became the most dominant defensive player in college football in 2018.

Williams says the key for him was just believing in the process and “believing I know when my time does come, I know I’m going to be ready for it. I know I’m going to succeed in it. Those are the main things. I see people like Ryan Anderson who didn’t play much his first three years and his fourth year, his senior year, he just was an animal. Tim Williams was on our team and he didn’t play much, and those guys was amazing.

“I just had to really put my pride to the side, mature, and really think about Coach Saban has my best interest at heart. Whenever he feels like I should play, then I know I’m going to be a beast.”

The grind at Alabama is daunting and certainly humbling. Egos often get deflated. Every recruit Alabama signs is physically gifted. They were deemed worthy by Saban’s rigid physical criteria in his evaluation process. Most have enough talents to make an occasional eye-popping play during a practice or even in a game setting.

Anoma, at 6-foot-5, 252 pounds with the get-off that makes grizzled old coaches lean up in their seats and rewind their recruiting film a few times, is capable of the kind of GIF-worthy pass rush that would produce a thousand likes on Twitter. But in Sabanland, getting on the field requires much more than that. The Alabama playbook might as well be a second language.

As spectacular a young talent like Anoma can be as an edge rusher, bursting upfield to try and sack the quarterback is far from the only thing tasked on a given snap. What if the defense called is a zone pressure? Or a man pressure? What if he’s supposed to drop back into coverage? In the Alabama system, player at Anoma’s position is expected to know every single one of those responsibilities for that play call. If a player can’t demonstrate consistently throughout the week of practice that he can execute his job, he’s probably not going to get in the game. That is the standard Saban demands his players and staff uphold regardless of what the scoreboard says.

For every Minkah Fitzpatrick who shined in his very first game for the Tide, there probably are a dozen others who were lost and didn’t know what they didn’t know.

“Just how hard it is to stay patient I think really depends on the person,” says Christian Miller, a linebacker who came to Tuscaloosa as the nation’s No. 40 overall prospect. Miller didn’t start until his fifth season in the program but had 11.5 tackles for loss and eight sacks last year. “If you’re somebody that understands how things work and understands that nothing in life is free, that nothing in life is easy, then you shouldn’t have too much of a problem with it. You’re gonna have some days where you might question things or might be a little down, but as long as you understand the end result and what you’re working for, it shouldn’t be too hard. In today’s society, kids are slowly becoming more and more where they’re looking for that instant gratification but at the end of the day, sometimes it does take time but it does pay off.

“The difference from the high school level to college level is a big jump. Some guys just don’t understand. This is not high school football where you can just run around and do this and that. You gotta have an understanding of the game. That it’s a team sport. You have 11 guys out on the field. You can’t just have one guy doing your own thing. The quicker you understand that, the better off you’ll be.”

Safety Deionte Thompson, ranked the No. 44 player in the country when he came out of high school, was in the program three seasons before becoming an all-American and the team’s second-league tackler in 2018. “My family supported me through the whole thing,” he says. “They were on me. There was times I thought about leaving and my parents were like, ‘No.’ They wanted me to stay and fight it out. Just stay and play here. They didn’t want me to go anywhere else because they didn’t think there would be a structure that the Alabama structure is. They got me to stay here, and it worked out.”

In Saban’s system, no staffer plays a more crucial role in the shepherding of young talent than Scott Cochran. The longtime strength coach is by the players’ sides more than any other coach, especially in the offseason. His voice, which sounds like someone tried feeding a chainsaw into a garbage disposal, is the thing most outsiders take note of, but Tide coaches say Cochran’s feel for the psychological aspect of nurturing athletes is what sets him apart.

To reach them, Cochran has to open their eyes, clear away the debris of entourage chatter, high school star rankings, visions of million-dollar contracts and shaking Roger Goodell’s hand on NFL draft night and endless Twitter followers and Instagram highlights, all while also holding them to a standard.

“You’ve gotta talk to ’em,” Cochran says. “It’s important to talk to them through the recruiting process. They’ve never watched. The players have never watched. If they started in eighth grade, they played on an eighth-grade team, or if they started in JV, they played on a JV team. Throughout their entire high school or whenever they started playing, they never watched. Well, now they’re watching. They’re bigger. They’re stronger, faster. They’ve never worked so hard in their life. And they’re watching. To them it doesn’t make sense.

“What I explain to them early, when you come here, you may have a first-round draft pick starting at your position, learn everything you can from him. And if something happens, you can be the guy. When you got to the next place, your dream, the NFL, you’re not going in to watch. You’re on a 53-man roster. You’re there to take that man’s job. That man has a family. Mouths to feed. Mortgages. He ain’t giving you anything. And that company organization wants to trade him off instead of paying him the $50 million or the $100 million. Your job is to take his job. This is the only time in your life where you get to learn while on the job. When you go there, you don’t get to learn. It’s time to be a grown-ass man.”

Cochran’s role means he’s bird-dogging the guys who may be lagging every day, he says. “And (Anoma) ain’t the only one. There’s a bunch of ’em.”

Two days before the national title game, Cochran gazed at a bunch of ’Bama stars in front of podiums surrounded by mics and cameras and was asked for examples of guys who had been challenged the way Anoma has.

“Who you want? I can look around and see a million of ’em,” he says. “From Reuben Foster to Jonathan Allen to even Da’Ron Payne. You gotta understand they’re emotional. They’re young, 17, 18 years old. I’m still helping ’em through. They all go through something. How they handle it, they’re all different. If you know ’em, you’re good. If you don’t know ’em, you don’t have a shot.”

On Dec. 20, 2017, Anoma sat behind a table in front of ESPN’s cameras ready to announce his college choice. He fumbled around with a bag he picked up from beneath the table for about a dozen seconds on national TV before pulling out a crimson T-shirt with the words ROLL TIDE on it.

“And there was a whole bunch of shirts in there,” Anoma told The Athletic. “I picked up a green shirt and I was just like — whoa.”

The Baltimore native said he had taken visits to Alabama, Maryland, Michigan, Notre Dame, Florida and Ohio State and that he had shirts of each of those schools in that bag. Asked if he knew what shirt he was going to pick out that day, Anoma said, “Not really.”

“It was kinda 50-50,” he said. “But I knew that if I picked out a school that was like, somewhat ridiculous. … Since my first visit to Alabama, I kinda fell in love, so you could say that I did know but at the same time … ”

Anoma’s voice trailed off. His answers reflects some of the fickle nature of a teenager navigating the world of big-time recruiting, trying to balance what they think they like with what they believe they need. So much of the college recruiting process is salesmanship from the school. But Anoma says what resonated for him about Alabama was how the place is run and its structure. He knew ultimately that would be a good thing for him, but even he recognized there probably would be some growing pains.

“Where I’m from there’s not a whole lot of structure,” he says. “It’s just a whole lot of craziness happening. So me coming here and seeing how coaches coach, how the players play and the level of intensity of the players — you can feel the love and business mixed in. I just loved it.

“I know that as a player, I’m not going to thrive in a situation that everything is like, boom, give it to me all at once. You plant a tree, you’re not going to get fruit the next day. It’s gonna take time for you to see that. I knew that going into Alabama. It’s going to take time to get all the results that I want. I knew that I wasn’t going to play (and start) right away. It’s just something that I’m going to have to keep working on.”

Since Saban took over in Tuscaloosa, 15 of his defensive players have become first-round picks. But ask Anoma who he wants to be and he’ll point to a player from a different era.

“Derrick.”

Derrick?

He means Tide legend Derrick Thomas, who set an NCAA single-season record with 27 sacks and then played in nine NFL Pro Bowls. Thomas died in 2000 after a car accident.

“I think about how dominant he was,” Anoma says. “How many sacks did he have in that season, 26 or 27? I feel as though I’m capable of doing the same thing. I’m definitely not comparing (myself to him). Not right now, but that’s exactly who I want to be. And not only him. I want to have Christian Miller’s knowledge of the game. T-Lewis’s (Terrell Lewis) athleticism; Anfernee’s (Jennings) strength; Derrick Thomas’ pass rush ability; all of that built into me. That’s why I ask these guys so many questions. In the position room, I probably ask these guys like 20 questions.”

By all accounts, Anoma experienced a roller coaster of a freshman year that probably had a few more twists and turns than the norm of an Alabama freshman who struggles to accept why he’s not on the field. A jolt of reality — and it’s usually more than one — can be tough to take. Anoma also isn’t shy about saying what is on his mind.

“If you ask anyone on the team, I definitely like to argue,” says Anoma, who has done well academically and plans to study criminal law. “I’m the outlier. You probably want one thing, I’m arguing the other thing. Just ’cuz.”

Anoma’s peers among the national top 10 in his recruiting class include Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Georgia and Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Penn State’s Micah Parsons. Did he find himself looking at the impact they made as freshmen and wonder what if?

“Kudos to them,” he says. “At the same time, they might be breaking out at other places, but they’re not breaking out at Alabama. This IS the place. If you come here and you break out, you’re the man. Anyone can go to any other school and be a star.”

Cracking the starting lineup won’t get any easier this season for Anoma. Jennings, who had 13 TFLs and a team-high 11 passes broken up is back at one edge rusher spot. Lewis, a junior who is perhaps the most athletic guy in the entire program, is expected to start on the other side after missing the 2018 season with a knee injury.

But for Anoma, worrying about who is in front of him on the depth chart is the last thing he needs to be thinking about this spring.

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