Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson iscounting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.
Alabama enjoyed arguably the greatest three-season run in program history from 2015-17, and probably its best overall player during that period was a New Jersey prep school graduate who wasn’t even the highest-rated defensive back in his own recruiting class.
Minkah Fitzpatrick — who wore No. 29 — signed with the Crimson Tide in 2015 out of St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, a Top 50 overall prospect but less highly touted than fellow signees Deionte Thompson and Kendall Sheffield. But by the end of his freshman year, Fitzpatrick was on his way to being one of Alabama’s all-time greats.
In three years at Alabama, Fitpatrick played on two national championship teams and another that was national runner-up. He was twice first-team All-SEC and twice All-American, and as a junior in 2017 won the Jim Thorpe Award as the top defensive back in college football and the Chuck Bednarik Award as the country’s best overall defensive player.Alabama head coach Nick Saban was so fond of Fitzpatrick, that Crimson Tide players and others around the program often referred to him as “Coach Saban’s son.”
“He’s the exact model you love to have as a coach,” Saban said in a 2018 interview. “The guy is very talented. He’s smart, bright, can learn. He really competed to be the absolute best at what he does. I don’t even know if I can describe him well enough.”
Those traits were on display from nearly the beginning of Fitzpatrick’s Alabama career. He started 10 games at safety as a true freshman in 2015, totaling 45 tackles, 11 pass breakups and two interceptions — both of which he returned for a touchdown (he also both blocked and recovered a punt for a touchdown in a 38-10 win at Georgia that season).
Alabama beat Clemson 45-40 to win its first national championship in three years in January 2016. The Crimson Tide did not win the title the following year — losing 35-31 to those same Tigers in the championship game, but Fitzpatrick had an otherworldly season.
Fitzpatrick compiled 66 tackles, five pass breakups and six interceptions, again scoring on two of them. He had a school-record 100-yard pick-six vs. Arkansas — a game in which also tied a program mark with three interceptions — and also scored in the Crimson Tide’s 54-16 win over Florida in the SEC championship game.
In addition to overwhelming talent and football acumen, versatility proved to be Fitzpatrick’s chief asset. Then-Crimson Tide defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt was quick to point out that Fitzpatrick could — and often did — play all six positions in Alabama’s secondary.
“Coach thinks I am versatile and I think I am pretty versatile, too,” Fitzpatrick said after one practice in 2017. “I can play multiple positions and he trusts me to do that. I am just out there wherever Coach needs me to play at. I played all corner yesterday. Then, the day before that, I was playing safety and corner.”
Added Alabama cornerback Anthony Averett: “He pretty much can do everything in my eyes. Put him at corner, safety, Star, wherever you want to put Minkah he can play. Wherever Saban wants to play him or wherever he wants to experiment with him, he’s willing to do that.”
Alabama got back to the mountaintop in 2017, and Fitzpatrick was one of the biggest reasons why. He was a unanimous All-American, totaling 60 tackles, eight pass breakups, five tackles for loss and an interception as the Crimson Tide went 14-1 and beat Georgia 26-23 in overtime in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
That capped a stellar career for Fitzpatrick, who played on Alabama teams that went a combined 41-3. He entered the NFL draft after the season, and was drafted No. 11 overall by the Miami Dolphins.
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