Alabama’s starting tight end was the MVP of last season’s championship game.
The Crimson Tide’s backup tight end is apparently hard to handle as well.
While O.J. Howard is Alabama’s indisputable top player at the position, having capped his junior year with 208 yards and two touchdowns in the 45-40 defeat of Clemson, Brandon Greene is giving Nick Saban’s offense a different kind of wrinkle. Greene, a 6-foot-5, 307-pound fifth-year senior, split time last season between tight end and tackle but is now a full-time tight end.
“To have a guy like that at that position certainly creates a lot of problems, because he’s a mismatch,” Saban said during a news conference following Wednesday’s practice. “I know it gives us problems in practice when he’s in there.”
A consensus four-star tackle in the 2012 signing class out of Cedar Grove High School near Atlanta, Greene redshirted his first season and since has bounced back and forth between the two positions. He played in all 13 games as a tight end in 2013, even making one start, but did not have any receptions.