MEET DYLAN MOSES
“I wouldn’t have had this end any other way,” Moses’ father says. “We spent many hot summers getting to this point. Many days it was just me and him on a field. Now we’re about to let the bird out of the cage and let it fly after all these years. He’ll be just far enough away for him to be able to grow and to miss us—and close enough for us to make it to him if he needs us.”
The young man known affectionately in Twitterland as an athletic “freak” is as prepared to play SEC football as anyone could be. He spent his senior season honing his skills at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., graduating early with straight A’s. This came after playing at the University Laboratory School in Baton Rouge since middle school.
Moses is known for his athleticism—his speed and vertical leap—and for having a genius-level football IQ. He knows the position, the nuances of being a great linebacker. He studies it like a Rhodes scholar and is about to work with some good tutors. Alabama’s staff has told him they feel like they’re getting a well-polished linebacker and they’ll work on the finishing touches.
It was the summer of 2012 and Dylan Moses was 14 years old and heading into his eighth-grade year. His goal? To hit the football camp circuit and make a name for himself, maybe turn a head or two.
More than four years later, it almost makes you chuckle thinking about that goal and how it has turned out. While on the campus of Louisiana State University that summer, the Baton Rouge, La., native dominated. He knocked around kids his own age for sure, but also those older than him. Then-LSU head coach Les Miles and his staff continued to test the young prospect and couldn’t believe how well the middle schooler responded. It defied logic.
A scholarship offer came from the performance. A scholarship offer—for a middle schooler! Most Division I offers come late in a kid’s junior year of high school.
“Actually, I was in bed when I first found out about it,” Moses tells Parade. “After I did really well at the camp, they offered me. My dad saw it first on the internet, and he ran into my room and told me about it.”
Several months later, Alabama coach Nick Saban also extended an offer. The sports talk shows went wild—Moses was an eighth-grader with offers from two of the greatest programs in the country. The debate raged: What was coach Miles thinking, starting a bidding war on a kid this young? How could coach Saban rob the cradle? What’s next, coaches recruiting fifth-graders?
“None of us expected [the early offers]. It certainly surprised me. He was surprised, himself,” Moses’ father, Edward Moses Jr., tells Parade. “When he asked me to play football at age 6, I agreed to let him play with the condition that he become the best at his position. Let that sink in—he was 6 years old. I worked him and he did the work that was required.”
Young Moses kept doing the work required after the offers and didn’t let his success go to his head—he even kept watching cartoons. SpongeBob
SquarePants was his favorite.
ALABAMA-BOUND
Flash forward to the present and Moses is not watching cartoons anymore—unless he’s hanging out with his little brothers. He committed to the University of Alabama, graduated from high school in December 2016 and enrolled at Alabama in January so he could get acclimated earlier. The long—exceptionally long for football recruiting—road has ended.
This year’s Parade All-America Player of the Year is a linebacker with fire in his belly and all the right moves.