To best understand why one of Alabama football's 2025 tight end signees is still in El Dorado Hills, California, and won't practice with the Crimson Tide until the summer, you have to understand who Kaleb Edwards has been for Oak Ridge High School.
Meet Edwards, the basketball star: the 6-foot-6, 255-pound goggle-wearing behemoth of a paint protector, a player who broke his high school's single-game rebounding record against a Division I-bound forward and made Oregon football coach Dan Lanning giddy; a player whose name is all over Oak Ridge's basketball record books, joining the likes of Ryan Anderson, the 12-year NBA veteran.
But when Edwards was asked to describe himself as a basketball player, he paused. He chuckled, admitting he's never been asked that before. That's not where his future lies.
Edwards is a football player, a self-described "Swiss Army knife" of a tight end, a matchup problem who leaves linebackers and safeties alike clueless, teaming up in the defensive backfield and trying to stop him.
But, physically, that's where the overlap lies. Edwards is big. He's strong. He's long and able to finish through contact. He uses his size to his advantage.
"That competitive spirit definitely just transfers over," Edwards told the Tuscaloosa News. "Probably is even more in football than basketball: that drive to win and trying to do my best to make sure that happens."
Edwards very nearly never played football.
Randall Edwards, Kaleb's father, never played. His parents didn't let him play. And that conversation carried over to Kaleb, with both Randall and his wife, Heather, sharing their qualms with a local coach ahead of their son's seventh-grade year.
"We were just mostly concerned about concussions and CTE and all that stuff," Randall Edwards said. "Once I did some research, I found a helmet and just kind of said, 'Let's give it a go.'"
Kaleb Edwards had always been an athletic kid. His father, 6-foot-1, and his mother, 5-11, always dreamed Kaleb would be a basketball player. It's what Kaleb thought he would be, too. But as he watched his friends play football, he gravitated toward its physicality and was eager to give it a shot.
That seventh-grade season? It ended after three games when Kaleb broke his ankle skateboarding. The next season, with COVID, wasn't much better.
Ninth grade was Kaleb Edwards' first true introduction to the sport that would turn into his future. And for Edwards, that future was always going to be at tight end.
At tight end, Edwards could do "a little bit of everything" from blocking and pulling at the line of scrimmage to running routes and scoring touchdowns.
"A good tight end can really elevate a team into a great contender," he said.
Casey Taylor can attest.
The Oak Ridge football coach lined him up in the backfield, at the line of scrimmage, out wide and all around.
"I just think he's a total matchup problem," Taylor said.
On the field, that "problem" turned into 2,185 receiving yards and 23 touchdowns across three varsity seasons, per MaxPreps , and made Edwards a consensus top-10 tight end prospect in the 2025 recruiting class.
Edwards was a tight end Kalen DeBoer and Nick Sheridan wanted at Washington, a desire that transferred to Alabama once the pair of coaches landed there.
And once Edwards got onto campus, from his experience at the Crimson Tide's 2024 A-Day spring game and walking through the tunnel for the first time, to a dinner with the coaching staff, he realized that Tuscaloosa was where he wanted to be. He chose Alabama over Oregon, Texas and Auburn.
"All those things kind of accumulated to (a) 'I have to go here' kind of mentality," Edwards said. "This is an amazing place, and I really want to be a part of it."
But not yet. Not early, like the majority of Alabama's 2025 recruiting class. Basketball was too important.
A week before Edwards announced his commitment in early July, Oak Ridge basketball coach Marcus Bray approached the incoming senior. Bray didn't necessarily need to know where Edwards would commit, assuming it would be Alabama. He had other, more pressing matters.
"'What are your plans? I need to know,'" Bray remembers asking Edwards, the all-league junior who very well could have been on a path to start college in January.
Edwards put Bray at ease.
"No, I'm playing," Edwards told Bray.
And that was that. Oak Ridge had the player who would end his senior season top-10 in school history in scoring – falling 12 short of 1,000 career points – and the second-most rebounds in team history behind Anderson.
It was the player Bray saw when Edwards first arrived at Oak Ridge, hearing about this "6-4, 6-5 freshman" who was better athletically than everyone with whom he shared the freshman football field.
"His first practice, I think it took me maybe 15 minutes tops," Bray said. "I told the freshman coach, 'Hey, you're losing this kid. He's going up to JV.'"
By the end of Edwards' first high school season, he was on varsity, showcasing a body that was "just physically bigger, stronger (and) faster than everybody else," Bray said.
Mark Lavrenov, a Rocklin High School forward who later signed to play Division I basketball at Sacramento State, matched up with Edwards on the court. Edwards produced a school-record 21 rebounds head-to-head in front of Lanning and Oregon tight ends coach Drew Mehringer.
"I don't know if it was just trying to impress them in that game or what," Edwards said with a laugh.
To Bray, Edwards leaves as one of the better basketball players in Oak Ridge history. But to the basketball coach, that's not the only impression Edwards leaves.
"(Edwards) was always someone if you asked him to do something, he would do it," Bray said. "Never complained, showed up every day, played through injuries. He's a high-character person, too. To me, that's more important than his athletic ability."
Outside of football, and basketball, Edwards tries to be as kind to everyone he crosses paths with, never knowing which relationships will linger.
To Taylor, it's what made him gravitate to Sheridan and DeBoer, saying Edwards is "not a car salesman-type guy."
But the goggles always made him stand out.
"Those goggles, he's been wearing those goggles … God, he wore them every day probably from age 5 until he was 11," Randall Edwards said.
Kaleb Edwards prefers goggles to glasses. It's how he was recognized both on and off the field, something that's always stuck with him.
"If people are going to recognize me by that, it's fine with me," Edwards said.
Ahead of his move to Tuscaloosa, Edwards may try contacts, saying he's worried about the combination of goggles and humidity, But Randall Edwards is skeptical.
"The goggles are him, man," Randall Edwards said.
Kaleb Edwards' basketball season is done. He accomplished what he set out to do as an Oak Ridge senior.
Now, he's getting anxious.
"It might be a little bit of the senioritis kind of kicking in over the last few months," Edwards said. "Yeah, I'm super excited to get out there. I can't wait."
The plans are set: Edwards graduates on a Friday. His flight for Alabama leaves Saturday afternoon. Every day, Randall said, Kaleb is talking about what he needs for his dorm, what he needs for practice.
Kaleb Edwards knows what could be waiting at Alabama. It's a tight end room with room to make a statement, something he said DeBoer and his staff made clear.
"They said nothing is guaranteed," he said. "So if I work for it, they'll have no problem playing me as a freshman if I'm that good enough or if I'm that caliber as a freshman."
Bray knows the kind of impact Edwards makes when he walks onto a field or into a gym.
Before last season, Bray hired a new assistant coach to his basketball staff. That assistant coach's introduction to Edwards was on a football practice field. And Bray's message to that new coach was a simple one.
"Just wait until Kaleb's out here," Bray said. "He's going to change everything."
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Meet Kaleb Edwards, the goggles-wearing Alabama football 2025 tight end
