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.”

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.