In the back room of an old forklift training facility, Leonard Stephens spent the summer shaping Alabama’s newest defensive threat. Stephens first started working with D.J. Dale in early May following the freshman defensive lineman’s breakout spring camp with the Crimson Tide. The 28-year-old owner of Step By Step Sports Training came highly recommended due to his detailed approach which takes athletes through drills specifically designed for their positions. At the time, Dale carried about 328 pounds on his 6-foot-3 frame. The weight didn’t slow him down during the spring as he supplanted himself into Alabama’s first-team defense at the nose guard position. However, Dale was still roughly 30 pounds heavier than Quinnen Williams — the Crimson Tide’s starter at the position last season — and lacked some of the agility Alabama desired up the middle.

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Stephens’ challenge was to help Dale shed weight and create more explosion off the line without ridding the powerful defensive lineman of the strength needed to muscle through double teams. The plan involved studying several NFL defensive linemen and schemes to create high-rep workouts with low weights which not only improved Dale’s agility but also created muscle memory for movements he’d be making in games. “I wanted to make sure he could move,” Stephens said. “When you take a large amount of weight and put it on certain athletes, they become big and beefy. But when you take small amounts of weight and get him to move around in different ways, it actually allows him to be more agile as far as the rotation of his arms and his ability to explode and extend fully.” For four hours a week, the two sweated out grueling workouts inside an unair-conditioned room in east Birmingham, Ala. The result was a 6-foot-3, 308-pound “freak of nature” capable of wreaking havoc on any offensive line that stands in his way.

“You’re the type of crazy I need”

Stephens still remembers one of the first conversations he had with Dale. Following their first training session, the winded defensive lineman turned to his instructor and shook his head.

“You’re crazy,” he said, “but you’re the type of crazy I need to get to the next level.” Stephens prides himself on a customized regimen which differs from traditional workouts. One of the initial drills the trainer put Dale through involved the defensive lineman laying flat on his back with his feet pressed against a wall, his arms extended over his head and his lips puckered around a blue balloon. The exercise forced Dale to take in air through his nose and cycle it down through his diaphragm before exhaling into the balloon. The process teaches the body how to take in more oxygen in order to build up endurance under strenuous conditions. Another drill had Dale lay on his stomach with a medicine ball placed between his butt and his knees. From there, he would move his feet in a running movement without letting them touch the ground. This allowed him to not only strengthen his hamstrings but also build up his foot speed at the same time. Every one of Stephens’ exercises came with an explanation of how it would benefit a certain aspect of Dale’s game. After some brief apprehension, the defensive lineman quickly bought into the program. “You could see it in D.J.’s face that he was kind of skeptical. He was kind of like, ‘Eh, what is this guy doing?” Stephens said. “… We went about an hour, probably an hour and a half in that first session. I think then he kind of knew that I knew a little bit about what I was talking about, and he gave me the opportunity to get him into the shape that he’s in now.” Along with positional-based drills, Stephens also used his workouts to attack areas of weakness. For Dale that meant plenty of running and endurance work. Of all the strenuous workouts Stephens subjected Dale to, none came as unwelcome as the arduous three-mile trek up and down the dirt trails of Cosby Lake in their hometown of Clay, Ala. Shuffling through sticks and gravel, the 300-pounder begrudgingly labored behind his trainer during the early-morning strolls which typically began shortly after the sun came out. Still, not a single run was missed. Stephens recalls one particular time when he almost caught Dale slipping. It was Memorial Day, and the freshman had just taken part in a pool party the day before. Stephens knew that, so by the time 7 a.m. rolled around, he dialed Dale’s phone and listened for the half-asleep voice on the other end. “Be there in 15 minutes coach, I’m in the car now,” Dale said hurriedly. “He got there in about 10 minutes,” Stephens said with a laugh. “He hated every minute of us running around that lake. But the best part about it for me was when he finished. After we were done, he came up to me and told me, ‘Coach, you’ve always told me anything we start we’re going to finish.’ “He might have hated every bit of those three miles, but when it was all said and done he did it. That moment right there let me know that everything we worked on this summer was worth it.”

Alabama Crimson Tide defensive lineman D.J. Dale. Photo | Alabama Athletics

Keeping it clean

There’s a myth that follows Dale from his high school days. It’s brought on by a pre-game vice which has yielded undeniable results. Whether you view it as a good luck charm or merely circumstantial, any time Dale ate chicken wings before a game Clay-Chalkville could expect a big performance.

“I thought they were playing at first, but it’s true,” Stephens said. “If his mom snuck him wings before the game, the kid would go crazy. He turned into an animal.” The numbers don’t lie. During his junior year, Dale collected 38 tackles, including 14 for loss, en route to earning Class 6A all-state honors. He followed up that feat this past season despite fighting off several double- and triple-teams. Whether or not the wings helped spur on some of that success is a debate for another time. This offseason, the favorite snack wasn’t on the menu. Stephens, as well as Dale’s longtime trainer Kevin Brown, worked with the defensive lineman this summer to build a cleaner diet. The process was gradual, but eventually, grilled chicken breasts and veggies replaced some of his greasier favorites. “I used to kind of tell him, ‘Hey man, be easy on those chicken wings,’” Brown said. “I don’t like to make my kids quit cold turkey on the things they like, just use moderation. I just told him, ‘Hey if you normally eat chicken wings three or four times a week, just cut that down to one.’” For the most part, Dale has done a good job of managing his calorie intake. Although, he still gets a call from Stephens once a week to ensure he doesn’t stray off track. During a recent FaceTime call, freshman quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa accidentally turned Dale in while excitingly announcing that the defensive lineman was teaching him how to make pork chops. “I was like, D.J., you eating pork chops?” Stephens said. “He goes, ‘Well, Coach I had to try the first one to make sure I was teaching him right.’” All jokes aside, the disciplined approach to dieting has already paid big dividends. Earlier this month, Dale suffered a sprained knee after a teammate fell on the side of his leg during practice. While the injury only sidelined him for 10 days, Dale told Stephens that the added mobility from his new weight allowed him to wriggle away from direct contact, saving him from a more severe setback. Dale has since returned to practice and has shown no limitations while working with the first-team unit during drills. Monday, the freshman was named as the starter at the nose guard position on the team’s official depth chart. “He’s probably getting back to pretty normal,” head coach Nick Saban said last week. “But we’ve been really pleased with his initial quickness. He plays with power. He’s very conscientious, smart player. Learns well. Executes well. Doesn’t really act like a freshman at all. We’ve been very pleased with him.”

The next big thing

Dale was turning heads at Alabama long before his transformative summer. After arriving on campus as an early enrollee in December, his name first started generating buzz when he was mentioned by Williams after the Outland Trophy winner announced his decision to leave for the NFL in January. “I feel like he’s a great person to come in and learn the ropes, learn the process,” Williams said at the time. “He’s a very humble person, and he’s from where I’m from, so we’ve got that same trait, that same mindset, myself and him. But he’s bigger coming in, he’s way bigger than me coming in.” Williams actually played a vital part in recruiting Dale to Alabama. The two trained with Brown, who owns Xtreme Fitness and Performance in downtown Birmingham. Before Williams’ breakout season last year, his plan was to return to Alabama this season and bring in Dale to serve as a partner up front. The hype around Dale only continued during the spring as starting defensive end Raekwon Davis stated the freshman “plays just like Daron Payne,” comparing him to the former Alabama great and starting defensive lineman for the Washington Redskins. Like Williams, Payne is a fellow Birmingham native who trained with Dale under Brown. In fact, Payne was one of the freshman’s role models growing up and a big reason why he chose the No. 94 at Alabama. Brown said he can see the comparison between his two former trainees. Although, while both Payne and Dale feature a rare blend of power and athleticism, Brown's advice to the freshman was to enter Alabama looking to make his own name. “I told him to be himself. Daron did what he did, but now D.J. has to go and be better than Daron,” Brown said. “There’s going to be the ‘Daron 2.0’ stuff and all that. They even gave him the number 94. But in the end, D.J. is going to have to be his own player to succeed. “Last year he was playing high school ball, and now we’re having a conversation about him as a true freshman competing for a starting spot at a major university. The sky’s the limit for what his ability can be.” Unlike Payne or Williams before him, Dale will begin his college career as a starter. He's not stopping there either. According to Stephens, Dale has set a goal of 10 sacks for this season which would make him the first Crimson Tide freshman to record double-digit sacks in his first year. He’ll get his first shot at that total Saturday as he suits up for Alabama’s season-opener against Duke at 2:30 p.m. CT inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. “To be honest with you, D.J. at 330 was already a monster,” Stephens said. “But D.J. at about 308, he’s a freak of nature now. It’s not every day you get a kid who is 300 pounds who can move pretty much just as well as a linebacker. He’s going to be exciting to watch this year.”

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Andrew Bone, of BamaInsider.com, is a real estate broker in the state of Alabama.

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