With Alabama in the rearview mirror, Tyler Booker eyes the next chapter of his football career with the upcoming NFL draft

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — With the 2025 NFL Draft beginning Thursday, the Alabama Crimson Tide will be well represented once again.

Tyler Booker, a 6’5″, 325-pound guard from New Haven, Connecticut, joined Alabama in 2022. In the south, football reigns supreme over every other sport. There’s not many atmosphere’s like Saturday’s on a SEC campus in the fall. Basketball is the cream of the crop up north, but for Booker, he fell in love with football at a young age. His uncle, Ulish Booker, played for Nick Saban at Michigan State. He also spent time in the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons and Pittsburgh Steelers.

“Football has been a part of my life since I can remember, since I was born, my dad put a football in my crib a couple minutes after I was born,” Booker said. “So football has been a huge part of my life, and my uncle playing, my dad’s brother, so my dad just going on the journey with him. And my dad never playing himself just saw how much fun my uncle was having, and he was like ‘Man I want my son to be a football player.’ I think that definitely worked out for him.”

Booker played football at St. Luke’s School before transferring to highly coveted IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. He was a five-star offensive tackle and ranked the No. 11 player on the ESPN300. Over the years, Alabama has established a pipeline at the prestigious high school, with players like JC Latham, Jihaad Campbell, Evan Neal, and more have suited up for the Ascenders before eventually deciding to play for Bama.

Considered the No. 3 player in Florida, Booker chose Alabama over Florida, Georgia, and Ohio State.

“Just being at IMG, your perspective changes on how things should be done and on what is available to you. So we had all the resources in the world at IMG, just as they did here at Bama. When you’re in an environment like that, your mindset’s just like ‘I’m among the elite.’ And that’s not a sense of arrogance, that’s a sense of confidence. So when you have that confidence, why would I be a big fish in a small pond, when I can be a big fish in a big pond,” he said.

Booker had immediate success at Alabama, getting playtime as a freshman. To step onto the field early at Alabama, especially during the Nick Saban era, you had to be a special player. He became the starter at left guard during the 2023 season, and earned All-SEC honors from the Associated Press in his sophomore and junior season.

With the NFL Draft approaching, Booker feels like Alabama has put him in the best situation to be successful.

“The only way to have this much success at Bama is to be a pro, and you have to be pro from day one. That means be in the meetings early, that means taking care of your body, that means eating the right stuff, taking care of the classrooms, just doing everything so your coaches never have to worry about you…,” he said. “Being at Bama you’re forced to be a pro, and if you’re not a pro, you’re gone. And you can see how many people transfer out of Bama, and a majority of them don’t do as well as they were doing at Bama because they just weren’t a pro.”

Alabama’s storied A-Day scrimmage game was markedly different this year, a change reflecting the changing landscape of college football. With NIL and nationally televised spring games, practice games have become a chance for other college teams to watch players who may not start and offer them a chance to leave their teams and join them through the transfer portal with a chance to get more money, maybe even a chance to start with them. So with that, university officials decided to not televise A-Day, reducing it to a practice fans could come watch at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

However, one tradition that didn’t change though was the naming of the permanent captains. Booker was selected as a permanent captain alongside Jalen Milroe, Malachi Moore, and Deontae Lawson. It was an accomplishment that Booker was able to scratch off the list.

“It really meant the world to me. I had a few goals coming into college that I wanted to accomplish before leaving, winning a SEC Championship was one, winning a national championship was one, and having my handprint in front of Denny Chimes,” Booker exclaimed. “I know I wasn’t able to win a national championship, but just me being able to have my handprint in Denny Chimes shows that I was a leader, I meant a lot to the team and the community, it shows me that I have influence.”

“I was really blessed to be able to have the trust and respect from my teammates and coaches, and that’s going to be immortalized. I’m going to be able to bring my kids back to Tuscaloosa and be like ‘Hey look at your dads handprint and cleat print.’ So that was very cool to me.”

When Booker came to the Capstone, his head coach was Nick Saban, arguably the greatest college football coach in the modern football era. After Saban’s retirement in 2024, Kalen DeBoer made the trip from Washington to Alabama to replace him.

From an outside perspective, when you watched Saban coach you saw the raw emotion and passion in every game, while DeBoer’s approach looked more relaxed, calm, and laidback. Booker said it may have appeared that way, but it certainly wasn’t the case.

“I feel like people got that impression from coach DeBoer because we were doing that. He let us do us, he was like ‘this is y’all team., y’all handle it.’ And it’s not like he didn’t want to do it, but he wanted us to take pride in our work, and take pride in the product that we put on the field,” he said. “So essentially us as leaders, we were the disciplinarians on that team. Along with the coaches of course, they would do what they had to do as coaches, but he felt like ‘this is their team, I’m going to let them handle it.'”

“That’s how that could be perceived as him being more laid back, but he would get after us as well, he’s a coach in the SEC at the end of they day,” said Booker. “I think the biggest difference between them is coach Saban has success broken down to a science. ‘So we’re going to do this this way because I had 10 other guys go to the NFL doing it this way.’ Coach DeBoer was like ‘whatever you need, we’re going to come together and figure this out together.’ I’m not saying that one is better than the other, it’s just that they’re two different people, two different philosophies, two different backgrounds.”

There’s always ways for a young player to improve. The skill gap from high school to college, and from college to the NFL is night and day. For an NFL player entering their rookie season, they quickly find out that everyone is dominant and that they must continue to work on their game if they want to continue being on an NFL roster. For Booker, although he dominated at Alabama, he knows he has things to work on ahead of the draft.

“My technique, specifically my hand placement and footwork. Just because I know, as you mentioned, I’m a dog. That’s my mindset, that’s how I approach the game and that’s how I approach every snap, to really dominate the person in front of me. I was successful doing that, and my strength, my power, would make up for lack of technique on some plays. I know that at the next level, everybody is going to be just as strong as me,” he said.

One thing Connecticut and Alabama is their lack of a professional football team. Booker grew up a Steelers fan because his uncle spent time there on the practice squad. Throughout the draft process, he was able to meet Ike Taylor, a two-time champion with Pittsburgh. He said the way they played football is his style of play, referencing the Steelers defense in 2010 which featured legends such as Taylor, Troy Polamalu, James Harrison, Ryan Clark, and more.

Booker said it doesn’t matter where he’s drafted, considering it a blessing just to play in the NFL, but that it would be a cool moment to suit up in the iconic black-and-gold Pittsburgh colors.

As he gets ready to embark on a new journey and begin what he hopes to be a long and successful NFL career, Books wants the league and its fans to know one thing:

“Tyler Booker is going to leave wherever he goes better than he found it. Everything in my being is going to be towards making that team, that program, that community a better place. I’m going to do that by just giving my all every single day and outside of the facility,” he said. “Making sure I’m doing everything in my power to lead, everything in my power to create opportunities for those who don’t have them in that community. I’m just very excited to get into whatever city is going to draft me and really start leaving my mark.”

The NFL Draft is scheduled for April 24-26 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The first round will begin at 7 p.m. 11 Alabama players are draft eligible.