Vikings select former St. Thomas Aquinas star Turner No. 17 overall
Dallas Turner is officially the latest in a long line of great St. Thomas Aquinas edge rushers to go in the first round of the NFL Draft.
Turner, who was the Miami Herald’s Broward County Defensive Player of the Year for Classes 8A-6A in his lone season as a Raider in 2020, is heading to the Minnesota Vikings as the No. 17 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft after an All-American career at Alabama
The 6-foot-3, 247-pound outside linebacker was the third defensive player picked in the 2024 Draft and the first of potentially more than a dozen players from South Florida who could get selected this weekend, including potentially a handful from St. Thomas Aquinas.
Unsurprisingly, Turner wound up at the top of the list, just as he was throughout his time in Broward County. Turner was a five-star prospect in the 247Sports composite rankings for the Class of 2021 and one of the best defensive players in Florida throughout his time in high school. Turner started out at American Heritage in Plantation, won a state title as a freshman and then was the Herald’s Broward County Defensive Player of the Year for Classes 5A-2A as a junior before transferring across the county to play his senior year with the Raiders in Fort Lauderdale, where he repeated as a Broward Defensive Player of the Year and won a second state championship. Turner had 74 tackles, 19 tackles for loss, 16 sacks and three forced fumbles as a junior, and 41 tackles, 25 tackles for loss, 13 sacks and four forced fumbles in only nine games as a senior, then headed for the Southeastern Conference.
In three years with the Crimson Tide, Turner racked up 120 tackles, 33 1/2 tackles for loss and 23 1/2 sacks, and had at least 30 tackles, eight tackles for loss and four sacks in each of his three seasons in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was a freshman All-American in 2021 and a consensus All-American last year after exploding for 53 tackles, 15 1/2 tackles for loss, 11 sacks, two forced fumbles and one pass defended.
Along with his massive production, Turner brings an impressive athletic pedigree to the Vikings, too. Delon Turner, the defensive end’s father, played basketball at Florida A&M and left as the second-leading scorer and third-leading rebounder in program history before playing more than a decade professionally overseas. Turner also played for an impressive array of coaches, dating back to high school when he first played for Patrick Surtain when the former All-Pro cornerback was the coach at American Heritage and then for Jason Taylor when the Pro Football Hall of Fame edge rusher was the defensive coordinator at St. Thomas Aquinas.
“I mean just look at the guy. He’s built like a Clydesdale,” Taylor said in 2021, shortly before Turner signed with the Crimson Tide. “He’s got everything ... but what separates him the most is he is super competitive. I coached him hard. He responded well to that and led us. For a kid to come into a program like this in his first year, not be as established as others － he came out and was a leader from Day 1.”
At Alabama, he got to play for the best, ending his career with the Crimson Tide just as coach Nick Saban did, too.
