Why Nick Saban's 2025 hand-picked cornerback still chose Alabama football

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The Tuscaloosa News
Why Nick Saban's 2025 hand-picked cornerback still chose Alabama football

Colin Gay, Tuscaloosa News · The Tuscaloosa News

Thu, Apr 3, 2025 ·

9 min read

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Chuck McDonald III is usually stoic, a California cornerback who never gets too high or too low. But he quickly turned into an anomaly.

McDonald was a West Coast corner unlike any other in the 2025 recruiting class, one who held an Alabama football offer when he first stepped onto campus in June 2023 before his junior high school year, one who Nick Saban pointed at during a camp rep and asked his assistant coaches, "Is that the guy?"

"Chuck got an interception, Nick Saban pulled him to the side and said, 'You got the interception, but I need you to do this, that …'" recalled Chuck McDonald II, the cornerback's father. "And Chuck is just taking this coaching like he's coached by one of his normal coaches."

Chuck McDonald III was wanted by Saban, something the legendary Crimson Tide coach doubled down on before the cornerback and his family left Tuscaloosa, personally extending an offer and leaving the McDonald family "on cloud nine," the player's father said.

As Chuck McDonald II and his wife, Tameka, flipped out from the front seat, their son sat in the back stoic. Not too high, not too low.

But then he broke.

"'I ain't going to lie,'" the father remembers his son saying. "'That was pretty cool.'"

Nearly two years later, Chuck McDonald III remains the same fast, physical, athletic and rangy cornerback who caught Saban's eye. McDonald is now signed with Kalen DeBoer and the Crimson Tide and is counting the days until he enrolls this summer.

But football means more to McDonald now. It's a passion cultivated through adversity, through grief. It's a love that held McDonald steady.

It's what made McDonald into the player Alabama will soon see every day.

"Most kids haven't (gone) through half of what he's been through," Chuck McDonald II said. "For him, that's what I've seen is his ability to keep going and his mental capacity to push through anything that life throws at him."

'She was the backbone': Alabama football signee lost his mother

Chuck McDonald III always knew where his mother was at his games.

It didn't matter where he was, on the football field or the track, or during his brief forays into basketball and baseball. Tameka McDonald never missed a game. She was the consistent "team mom" Chuck could always hear.

"I will always remember, if I scored a touchdown she's back there cheering for me, screaming for me loud," McDonald said. "Was a very distinct scream, like you knew it was her screaming."

On Oct. 21, 2023, in the middle of McDonald's junior season at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, Tameka McDonald died after a "massive heart attack" according to a GoFundMe page set up by her sister, Marissa Watkins.

"She was the backbone to her family," Watkins wrote. "She was their anchor, she held them down."

The loss of the "backbone," the "anchor," was felt almost immediately.

As Chuck McDonald II navigated grief, especially after the loss of his father who died during the COVID-19 pandemic, he struggled. He stopped eating. He looked weak. A friend, he said, helped him out of that space, encouraging McDonald to remain strong for his sons, to be that anchor. McDonald returned to a consistent gym regimen for the first time since he was in the military, failing to miss a weekday.

"For my boys, when they look at me and when people look at me, I look strong," he said. "I might have pain, but I look strong. And it really shows that I am fighting. I'm fighting. I'm not giving up.

"(I) need everyone to know I did everything I could to be here with them and for them."

The patriarch's energy was contagious.

Chuck McDonald III, who had worked his way back to full strength after breaking his leg the fall before his freshman season at Mater Dei, initially questioned his want to play football after his mother's death. But once McDonald returned to the field, he was "more ferocious than he was before," his father said.

Chuck McDonald III had something, or someone, for whom to play.

"That was real low for everybody. It hurt a lot of people. (It) hurt me. It still does," Chuck McDonald III said. "What really pushed me is knowing that she's watching me from above, and I have to do it for her, and she would be proud, most definitely. My mom has pushed me a lot through that. She (has) been there for me through all of it, so she (pushed) me a lot through it."

That mentality has not wavered since.

"When all of this happened, and when the dust settled, you know, as a father looking at my son, not even from a football perspective, like life, it's like, 'Man, you are just going to keep going until you get to where you need to get to,'" Chuck McDonald II said.

Choosing Alabama football and choosing it again

The moment Chuck McDonald III returned on the second night of his Alabama official visit, his father knew the Crimson Tide would be his son's home.

Chuck McDonald III was in different clothes, different sweatpants than he had been wearing before. When Chuck McDonald II asked his son where he had been, the cornerback didn't hide anything. He was with Zabien Brown , his closest friend from Mater Dei and then-Alabama freshman.

"'We decided not to go out,'" Chuck McDonald II heard. "'(We) went and got work all night.'"

Chuck McDonald III didn't need to be sold on Alabama. He had seen enough.

After Saban's retirement, however, the Crimson Tide was nowhere to be found on the cornerback's shortlist. That changed after a two-hour in-person meeting at Mater Dei with Alabama defensive coordinator Kane Wommack and co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach Maurice Linguist . Each pitch from Wommack and Linguist was was echoed by Brown and Domani Jackson ‒ the recent Alabama transfer and McDonald's "measuring stick" from Jackson's time at Mater Dei – as "still good" even with no Saban.

In Linguist, McDonald saw a teacher, one who instructed technique slowly and effectively, whose gift for development was clearly showcased in some of his closest friends, players he's known his entire football life.

But the connections between McDonald and Alabama only began there.

McDonald soon found that his father's offensive coordinator from youth football played for DeBoer in high school, one who praised the Alabama coach effusively even back when DeBoer was the head coach at Washington. Then, McDonald found that Linguist shared the exact same birthday – day, month and year – as his father.

Mater Dei three-star linebacker Abduall Sanders Jr. was already a member of the Crimson Tide's 2025 recruiting class when McDonald made his Alabama official visit. California five-star cornerback Dijon Lee – a player with whom McDonald trained in middle school – would soon pick Alabama too.

For a player who was considering Alabama alone when hand-picked by Saban, McDonald picked the same place, only to find it felt a lot more like home.

"I always thought of Chuck as a loner," Chuck McDonald II said. "It never was in the books for him to go somewhere because other people were there. When he first went to Alabama, he was going to Alabama with no one there. This just made it way more easier."

'I see McDonald playing right away'

For Chuck McDonald III, it's always been about others at Mater Dei.

Ahead of Raul Lara's first season as the Monarchs' football coach, he instantly saw McDonald as the one to carry his culture, to buy in so that everyone else around him would.

For the Mater Dei track team, sprints coach Sam Collins has McDonald as his captain.

"When the freshmen come out," Collins said, "I'm like, 'Whatever you see Chuck do, do that because it's the right thing.'"

Then there's McDonald, the athlete.

On the track, McDonald is a rangy and lanky sprinter who "looks like a bodybuilder" up close, Collins said; who helped Mater Dei to a school record in the 4x100 relay at 41.44 seconds; whose vertical leap rivals and even exceeds those participating in the NFL combine.

On the football field, McDonald is an agile, long, twitchy cornerback who paired with Penn State signee Daryus Dixon at Mater Dei; who's flexible, who has the speed to recover and catch a wide receiver if he gets beat.

"I see McDonald playing right away," Lara said. "I see him contributing and helping the team next year."

That is the athlete Alabama sees in McDonald.

Tight end Kaleb Edwards , a 2025 Alabama signee, calls McDonald "one hell of a corner" who made him better playing against him at the All-American Bowl.

To Brown, McDonald is "my boy," a cornerback who is "fast, strong" and has "got a lot ahead of him," saying all this with a smile and excitement in his eyes.

To DeBoer, McDonald will "fit right in" as the next Mater Dei corner to make a seamless transition to the Crimson Tide, who will be "ready when the summer hits."

"He's going to come in and do his thing," DeBoer said.

As an athlete, McDonald is ready to compete and battle, to do what he's always done.

"That's what they are getting: (a) hard-working and competitive guy that is always going to go to work," McDonald said.

Chuck McDonald II sees more for his son.

There are a lot of talented players out there, he said. But what separates Chuck McDonald III is what brought him to Alabama in the first place.

"A lot of people, when they go to those types of schools, they're really afraid they're not going to play. And they are looking at who's there, looking at who's going," Chuck McDonald II said. "And Chuck, he just doesn't care. He's going to go to compete. He's going to play hard. And he's going to keep playing until he gets on the field. And I don't know what that looks like, and I don't know when that is going to happen. And I know that the competition is high.

"He's already shown that nothing can knock him off of what he's supposed to do."

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: Why Nick Saban's 2025 hand-picked cornerback still chose Alabama football

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