Alabama may be close to adding a veteran player to its tight end room.

The Crimson Tide hosted North Carolina graduate transfer Carl Tucker on a visit this past weekend and seems to be the current favorite to land the 2018 Pro Football Focus first-team All-ACC selection.

“The visit was awesome,” said Tucker’s father, Carl Tucker Sr. “Obviously the stature of Alabama football is so huge that we really didn’t know what to expect, but we knew it would be something that we hadn’t seen before. … But it was really good. They really wanted to figure out what questions and concerns we had for Alabama. And they did a really good of explaining why they wanted Carl, what they saw in Carl and where they felt he would be able to help Bama.”

The 6-foot-2, 250-pound North Carolina native started 20 career games at North Carolina, including four this year.

While the Tar Heels’ top three tight ends combined for just 17 total catches this year in the team’s new Air Raid offense, Tucker had 16 catches for 265 yards and two touchdowns in 2018.

Tucker entered his name into the NCAA transfer portal in late December.

While schools such as Florida State, Tennessee, Wake Forest, Washington and Missouri have all been in contact, Florida State and Alabama are the only two schools Tucker has visited thus far.

It’s unclear at this point if he’ll take any other visits.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Tennessee or Missouri wants him to visit, but I just don’t know at this point if Carl is going to take anything,” Tucker’s dad said. “I know this week he’s not. Possibly the following week. But then again, I don’t know. He had a really good visit at Alabama. Let’s just say that. He could see himself playing at Alabama. Alabama really filled all of the blanks where Carl was and with his concerns.”

During the visit to Tuscaloosa, Tucker and his family reconnected with an Alabama staffer they’ve known for a while.

Tide analyst Butch Jones recruited Tucker back when he was the head coach at Tennessee. And the family talked to Jones during the visit about — five years later — possibly now getting a chance to be part of the same program.

“There’s definitely a relationship there. And when we got there, the first person I wanted to see was Coach Jones,” Carl Tucker Sr. said. “It was really good to see him. We had several conversations during the weekend about how this could be full circle. I think Carl would have probably gone to Tennessee if he hadn’t gone to Carolina. So we felt that it was full circle that Coach Jones was there and he had something to do with bringing Carl into the conversation of going to Alabama.”

Matt Zenitz is an Alabama and Auburn reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mzenitz.