Alabama Football: Ranking Crimson Tide’s last 10 recruiting classes

5. 2012

Best Player: Amari Cooper
Best Value: Dalvin Tomlinson

There are honestly two best players in this class. Amari Cooper is a top-three receiver in Alabama history and contributed every year on campus. Landon Collins was a ferocious safety that rung bells with the best of them.

Collins and Cooper should be enough to justify 2012 as a top-five class. Having an offensive and defensive generational talent is a win, even by Alabama’s standards. But this class also has T.J. Yeldon, an underrated running back. He wasn’t an Ingram, Richardson, or Henry, but he was a quality back for the Tide.

This class also had Kenyan Drake, a changeup back that saved this team in their first National Championship Game against Clemson. Drake could catch the ball out of the backfield, and his speed was a great way to change the pace after Derrick Henry ran the ball between the tackles.

Defensively, this class was loaded. Outside of Collins, you also had Cyrus Jones. Jones was a great defensive back with talent as a punt returner. Reggie Ragland is a second-tier linebacker, but a second-tier linebacker at Alabama is a generational talent at over half of the other programs in college.

Ryan Anderson was another star as an outside linebacker. He was part of that rotating front seven that stayed fresh and wreaked havoc in college. However, the greatest value in terms of ranking is Dalvin Tomlinson. Tomlinson never got the stats, but he eats up blocks in the middle of the line and stops gaps for running backs to find. He made other people’s jobs easier.

Not all players panned out, but this class was still extremely successful with the Crimson Tide.