Alabama football has seen the majority of its NFL Draft decisions made with only three true underclassmen making the leap to the pros and foregoing additional eligibility. Alabama has been fortunate with the pieces it is bringing back next season, with potential day two NFL Draft picks like Domani Jackson and LT Overton returning to the Crimson Tide in 2025.

Unlike most years, Alabama doesn’t have a sure-fire guaranteed first round pick. There are three players who at this point early in the process have a legitimate chance of being picked in the first round. Unsurprisingly, it’s all three underclassmen who declared: LB Jihaad Campbell, OG Tyler Booker, and QB Jalen Milroe.

Depending on where you look, you might see all three slated in the first round. Some mocks only have two, others just one. And every now and then you’ll run into a mock draft that doesn’t include a single Alabama player in the first round of selections.

If that were to happen, it would be the first time since 2008 that the Crimson Tide didn’t have a player selected in the first round. In that draft, Alabama ended up without a single pick across the seven rounds, which is a good indication of what Nick Saban inherited when he first arrived in Tuscaloosa.

I expect Alabama will have at least one player selected in the first round of the upcoming draft to continue the streak.

In ESPN’s latest mock by NFL Draft analyst Jordan Reid, the Crimson Tide has two players projected in the first round.

Two projected first round picks in latest ESPN NFL Mock Draft

In Reid’s Mock, the first Alabama player doesn’t come off the board until pick No. 23 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Reid has star Tide LB Jihaad Campbell as that selection.

Campbell had an outstanding junior season as the Crimson Tide’s leading tackler and I expect his stock to continue to rise as more people watch him on tape and he gets the opportunity to work out for NFL teams at the combine.

Campbell is a high-level athlete and a swiss army knife on defense, similar to former Penn State and current Cowboys LB Micah Parsons. A smart NFL team will try to utilize him in the same manner Dallas does with Parsons. He’s a really good LB, but his gifts as a pass rusher were underutilized in college and I think whichever NFL team drafts him will deploy him in creative ways.

Later in the first round at pick No. 30, Reid has Tyler Booker coming off the board to the Baltimore Ravens, which seems like an excellent fit. Booker is a road grader in the running game and putting him in a system like Baltimore’s that is heavy run and heavy play action seems like a glove-like fit.

The Tuscaloosa to Baltimore NFL pipeline is strong with the Ravens having Derrick Henry, Marlon Humphrey, Jaylen Armour-Davis, and Eddie Jackson.

Jalen Milroe is not in Reid’s Mock. He only has two quarterbacks – Miami’s Cam Ward and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders – going in the first round. Milroe certainly didn’t help his stock with a poor performance in the ReliaQuest Bowl against Michigan. He will be one of the most talked about and analyzed players in the pre-draft process.