Crimson Tide Top 5: All-Time Football Players

Throughout the month of June, BamaCentral writers will pick the best five players in each Alabama sport, and for each position group in football.

Christopher Walsh | Jun 28, 2021

A year ago, BamaCentral identified the Top 100 players of the Nick Saban era, and had no trouble filling the list.

It was also before Alabama ran the table and won nearly every major national individual award while winning the 2020 national championship.

So to pick an all-time top 5 is tricky due to Alabama having so much success over the years, in addition to the obvious: Someone could be a worthy addition at any time.

There were a lot of players who could have been included on this list, from Jonathan Allen to Don Hutson, and Lee Roy Jordan to Tua Tagovailoa:

5] Mark Ingram II

Being the first Heisman Trophy winner in program history pretty much made him a lock for Top 5 status. He was the 2009 SEC Offensive Player of the Year and a unanimous All-American while helping lead Alabama to an undefeated season and first national title since 1992.

During the 2009 SEC Championship Game rushed for 113 yards and three touchdowns, while also catching two passes for 76 receiving yards to combine for 189 all-purpose yards against Florida and Tim Tebow. While doing so he surpassed Bobby Humphrey’s single-season rushing record for the Crimson Tide (1,471).

Ingram was named the Offensive MVP of 2010 BCS National Championship Game after rushing for 116 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries. For the 2009 season, Ingram rushed for 1,658 yards and 17 touchdowns, and also had 334 receiving yards with three touchdowns

He finished his Crimson Tide career with 3,261 rushing yards in 41 games (24 starts), and had 42 rushing touchdowns, along with 60 receptions for 670 yards and four more scores.

4] John Hannah

He was a two-time All-American and was the fourth-overall pick in the 1973 NFL Draft despite playing guard. With the New England Patriots was named All-Pro an incredible 10 times (1976-85), and selected for nine Pro Bowls.

Other honors included being one of the few players named to an NFL All-Decade Team twice, for the 1970s and 1980s. He was also the top guard listed on the NFL 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994.

Bryant once said of Hannah, “In over 30 years with the game, he’s the finest offensive lineman I’ve ever been around.”

That's good enough for us.

3] DeVonta Smith

Despite being a wide receiver who was constantly described as skinny and small, won the 2020 Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award and Walter Camp Award as college football's most outstanding player, and the Biletnikoff Award as the game's best receiver.

Smith was also selected as the Associated Press Player of the Year, making him the first wide receiver to win the award.

The unanimous All-American selection was named the SEC Offensive Player of the Year, and was Alabama's first recipient of the Paul Hornung Award, as the nation's most versatile player.

He's the only receiver in SEC history with multiple career games totaling four or more receiving touchdowns, and holds both the SEC and Alabama career record for receiving touchdowns with 46, topping the previous mark of 31 held by Amari Cooper (2012-14) and Chris Doering of Florida (1992-95).

Smith's also the Alabama and SEC all-time receiving yards leader with 3,965.

2] Derrick Thomas

Per the NCAA record book, Arizona State's Terrell Suggs officially holds college football's single-season sacks record with 24 in 2002. It’s considered one of those records that will probably never be broken.

Alabama fans claim it already had been, by Thomas.

He had 27 sacks in 1988, a dozen years before the NCAA recognized the sack as a statistic, and six years after the NFL formerly started counting them.

The season before, Thomas had 18 sacks. He notched 52 during his collegiate career, to go with 68 tackles for a loss and five blocked kicks.

“The Sackman” was a unanimous All-American, won the 1988 Butkus Award and was the fourth-overall selection in the 1989 NFL Draft.

Thomas, who died in 2000 at the age of 33, was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009, and the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014.

1] Derrick Henry

Yeah, he was that good.

Henry's hardware collection includes the 2015 Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Award and Doak Walker Award. The unanimous All-American selection was also the SEC Offensive Player of the Year after rushing for a school- and league-record 2,219 yards, which led the nation and was the fifth most in a single-season by an FBS player in college football history.

Henry also set an SEC record with 28 rushing touchdowns, snapping Tim Tebow and Tre Mason's old mark of 23. He set the Alabama single-season record with 10 100-yard rushing games and four 200-yard games, which broke Bobby Humphrey's school record (three) set in 1986.

He's only the third running back in SEC history (Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson) to have four 200-yard games in a single season.

Oh, and he also became Alabama's all-time rushing king by breaking Shaun Alexander's record for most career rushing yards in Alabama history. Henry played in 39 games over three seasons and totaled 602 carries for a school-record 3,591 yards and 42 rushing touchdowns, to go with 285 yards on 17 career receptions with three receiving scores.

Henry's still at it, having just won his second straight rushing title and became just the eighth player in NFL history to total 2,000 rushing yards in a single season.

Specifically, Henry finished the 2020 regular season with 2,027 rushing yards, the fifth-most in a single season in NFL history, and more than 23 teams managed to tally. He's the first player to defend his rushing title since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2006-07.

The NFL Offensive Player of the Year also led the league in attempts (378), yards (2,027) and touchdowns (17). His 250 yards in the regular-season finale marked his third 200-yard game of the season, topped only in NFL history by Earl Campbell's four in 1980.

The Crimson Tide Top 5 will appear every day during the month of June on BamaCentral.

Crimson Tide Top 5: Introduction

Nick Saban Assistant Coaches

Men's Track and Field, Cross Country

Running Backs

Women's Track and Field, Cross Country

Football Assistant Coaches

Published Jun 28, 2021

CHRISTOPHER WALSH

Christopher Walsh is the founder and publisher of BamaCentral, which first published in 2018. He's covered the Crimson Tide since 2004, and is the author of 26 books including Decade of Dominance, 100 Things Crimson Tide Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, Nick Saban vs. College Football, and Bama Dynasty: The Crimson Tide's Road to College Football Immortality. He's an eight-time honoree of Football Writers Association of America awards and three-time winner of the Herby Kirby Memorial Award, the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s highest writing honor for story of the year. In 2022, he was named one of the 50 Legends of the ASWA. Previous beats include the Green Bay Packers, Arizona Cardinals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, along with Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks. Originally from Minnesota and a graduate of the University of New Hampshire, he currently resides in Tuscaloosa.