Position Week: Bold predictions for Alabama’s wide receiver room

BamaOnLine will spend the next 10 weeks breaking down position groups on Alabama’s 2024 roster leading up to the start of preseason camp. We continue with the wide receiver room.

To conclude WR week, the BOL team staff shared its bold predictions for the upcoming fall.

Charlie Potter

Alabama will have three players with 40-plus receptions

Only three times since 2009 has Alabama had three wide receivers catch 40 or more passes in a single year. It’s happened five times actually, but 2016 and 2020 saw a tight end and running back cross the 40-reception mark. The Crimson Tide welcomes back a starting quarterback who has worked to improve as a passer this offseason after throwing for nearly 3,000 yards on 187 completions a year ago. Increase those numbers at least a bit, and it’s not difficult to envision three players finishing with 45 or so grabs over the course of a season.

Should Alabama make the College Football Playoff, you’re looking at roughly three catches per game for guys like Germie Bernard, Kobe Prentice and Kendrick Law – or maybe even a young guy like Ryan Williams. The tight ends and tailbacks will factor in, sure, and the run game will be heavily featured this fall, as well, but I think Kalen DeBoer is going to want to throw the football quite a bit in Year 1 and feels good about the Tide’s receiving corps.

Travis Reier

For the third straight season, Alabama will not have a 1,000-yard receiver

But it will have no fewer than three receivers with 700 yards or more. This isn’t going to be Washington’s trio of Michael Penix Jr., Rome Odunze and Ja’Lynn Polk from a year ago. Not this season, anyway. Different skill sets across the board and too much talent at running back to think Kalen DeBoer‘s first offense at Alabama will be quarterback/wide receiver-centric. Still, those spots will produce impressive numbers in the passing game, likely in excess of what they put up in 2023.

Jimmy Stein

The race for WR3

I believe WR1 will prove to be Washington transfer, Germie Bernard. He will have the most targets, receptions and touchdowns in the wide receiver room. And I believe Kobe Prentice will serve as Robin to Bernard’s Batman. They will form a dynamic duo of sorts at the top of the wide receiver heap.

But who will finish with the third most targets, receptions and touchdowns in the group? I boldly predict it will be freshman star Ryan Williams edging out junior veteran, Kendrick Law. Williams is young. Williams is wiry. Williams is also Uber-gifted. Another player on the team has DeVonta Smith’s name, but Williams has quite a bit of Smith’s gifts.

Clint Lamb

Alabama fields two 1,000-yard receivers in 2024

I’m not even sure how bold this prediction is under new head coach Kalen DeBoer, but from Alabama’s perspective, it’s certainly up there considering we’ve only seen it done twice in school history. Those two seasons were recent though. DeVonta Smith (1,256 yards) and Jerry Jeudy (1,163) did it in 2019, and then Jameson Williams (1,572) and John Metchie (1,142) achieved such a feat just two years later in 2021.

Who will the two receivers be? My best guesses are Washington transfer Germie Bernard and returning contributor Kobe Prentice. Prentice only has 67 career targets while Bernard has even less with 57, so they’ll need to double those totals (or close to it) if they want a chance to top the 1,000-yard mark. I will say that this prediction hinders the chances of my original take, which was five-star freshman Ryan Williams leading the team in receiving yards over the final six games of the season. That felt a little too bold though, especially after all of the hype surrounding Malik Benson last offseason.

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