Alabama Football: 5 Tide 2019 signees who’ll have instant impacts

2. Trey Sanders (RB/Bradenton, FL) – 5 Stars

The nation’s No. 1 ranked running back, five-star Trey Sanders, signed with Alabama during the early signing period and boldly proclaimed that he would win the Heisman Trophy as a freshman. While that’s obviously a stretch, the pathway for early playing time for Sanders is obvious.

Alabama lost two of their top three running backs with Damien Harris exhausting his eligibility and Josh Jacobs electing to leave early for the NFL Draft. Rising junior Najee Harris has the starting role essentially locked up, but Saban likes to rotate runners as much as possible, opening up the door for Sanders to get a lot of snaps in his first year.

Sanders will have to compete with with rising junior Brian Robinson Jr. and redshirt freshman Jerome Ford already on campus, as well as four-star Keilan Robinson, who signed with the Tide on Wednesday. Sanders will have the talent edge over all of them, but will have to pick up the playbook, particularly the pass blocking schemes, quickly as he wasn’t able to enroll early as was previously planned.

That means Sanders won’t get to Tuscaloosa until the summer, and while he’s undeniably talented, running backs often struggle to get on the field for meaningful snaps if they aren’t reliable pass blockers.

There will be a role for Sanders regardless, and while he might start the season behind Robinson in the pecking order, I expect him to supplant him for the No. 2 spot behind Harris at some point during the 2019 season.