The Player
Alabama fans: Has the luster of a strong 1998 recruiting class started to fade? Are those repressed memories -- Arkansas, Louisiana Tech, a screen pass to Ed Scissum -- haunting your nightmares?
Cock your ear this way. We bring you Tidings of great joy (perhaps): "He’s Alabama big time," said the coach of The Player. "That’s in his heart. He wants to be with the Crimson Tide."
The coach is W.C. Johnson, the defensive coordinator at Blount High School in Prichard. The Player is defensive lineman DeMarco McNeil. McNeil is good. Really good.
"He’s the best I’ve coached," said Johnson, who’s coached seven years and played defensive line at Mississippi State. "When I first saw him play, I knew he had the tools to make my job real easy."
McNeil stands 6-foot-3 and tips the scales at 295 pounds. He will be the state’s top prospect on the two-time defending Class 5A state champions next year.
"He may be the best defensive lineman in the Southeast," said former Blount head coach Ben Harris, who was hired as the assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach at his alma mater Alabama State in January.
McNeil was honorable mention all-state as a sophomore and a member of the "Super 12" this past season. He nearly captured player of the year honors in the sportswriters vote after totally dominating the Leopards’ 21-0 destruction of Etowah in the 5A final. McNeil had 10 tackles and two sacks in the game and was named MVP.
"It seemed like if you ran straight at him [McNeil] he made the tackle, and if you ran away from him he still made the tackle," Etowah coach Raymond Farmer said after his team gained just 54 total yards. "It was really sort of a helpless feeling."
McNeil had 183 tackles and 16 sacks during the 1997 campaign. He bench presses 375 pounds and squats 450. He averaged 14 points and 13 rebounds for Blount’s basketball team. Last year, he pitched for the baseball team. This spring, he plans to throw the shot put.
The Student and His Style
What’s more, he’s already qualified. He owns a 3.45 GPA and scored a 17 on his first ACT test. Nonetheless, he plans to take the ACT again. "I think I can do a lot better," he explained.
While McNeil is a dominating athlete, the academic success points toward what may push him ahead of the handful of other elite defensive linemen who share his size and quickness. McNeil is a student of the game -- in the real sense of the phrase and not in the coaches-always-say-that-stuff way. He likes watching film and he likes using technique to beat his man. Ask him about his skills and he talks about anticipating snap counts, swim moves, reading keys, taking note of how offensive linemen lean in their stances -- all what he calls football’s "mental side."
He’ll go on so long about it, you’re forced to go, "All right, already, but what about stomping people?"
"I like to do that too," he said. "But offensive linemen usually underestimate my quickness. So I usually try to swim over them before they get out of their stance."
Oh. The 295-pound guy likes to swim over them before they get out of their stance. Isn’t that nice.
Almost seems unfair, huh?
Anticipating Next Year
Blount, which returns 17 starters, will be the odds-on favorite to three-peat this fall in Birmingham and capture its fifth state title in the 1990s. While McNeil is the state’s top prospect, his teammate, receiver Deandre Green, may be No. 2. Green, a legitimate 6-2, 210-pounder, is a bruising, physical receiver with soft hands and good speed for his size.
Though both anticipate a hypefest, they plan to take a low-key approach during the recruiting process.
"We don’t talk about it that much because we don’t want people to think we have big heads," McNeil said. "[Former teammate and Auburn defensive lineman signee] Robert Malone told me how recruiting is going to be. I’m not really anxious about it but I do want to get it out of the way."
By the way, when Malone was asked about McNeil’s favorite schools for next year, he replied, "I think Alabama’s got him."
McNeil won’t show his cards just yet. He only said he wants to stay close to home and play in the SEC. And he didn’t sound like a guy who would grow wide-eyed when the nation’s big-time coaches come calling.
"You can say, ‘Bobby Bowden is in my living room,’ but this is a business,’’ he said. "I’m not going to let a coaching legend or anything else influence me one way or the other."
Blount and its Prichard rival, Vigor, have produced a number of quality college football players in recent years, including Willie Anderson, Dameyune Craig, Larry Casher and Malone. The common characteristic among the aforementioned is they all went to Auburn. The question is: Will McNeil break the Tigers’ stranglehold?
"I ain’t going to say I’m a big-time Alabama fan," he said. "But I’ve been liking their style of playing since Gene Stallings was there. I like how they stick to the basics. I don’t like that high-scoring stuff."
Shoot, he should fit right in then.
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