Jahkeem Stewart, the five-star football recruit with the million-dollar question

NEW ORLEANS — Jahkeem Stewart has played in 12 varsity football games, the last nearly a year ago. And yet, when college football’s early signing period opens on Wednesday, the 17-year-old will choose between Ohio State, Oregon, USC or LSU. As ESPN’s top-ranked defensive end prospect in the 2025 cycle, he is expected to receive a multimillion-dollar NIL package from the school of his choice.

How did Stewart—one of the most fascinating questions at the top of the 2025 class—get here?

Once ranked as ESPN’s No. 1 overall prospect in the 2026 class, this fall should be Stewart’s junior season. But when the Louisiana High School Athletic Association ruled him ineligible to compete after an in-season transfer in September, he reclassified for the 2025 cycle and is now the 11th-ranked recruit in the ESPN 300.

Stewart, sidelined for the past three months, has traded a traditional path through high school football for a professional training program, a decision he and his camp believe will prepare him to compete for playing time once he lands on a college campus as an early enrollee next year.

“How many times do you have to listen to Beyoncé sing to know she’s a good singer?” Clyde Alexander, Stewart’s trainer and guardian, told ESPN. “Look at the game film. Look at the camp film. Since this kid stepped foot on a national stage, he’s been either No. 1 or No. 2 in the country his entire life.”

Despite his lack of high school playing time, college scouting departments view Stewart as a potential generational defensive talent—a unique blend of top size with an elite, 82.5-inch wingspan, 4.8-second 40-yard dash speed and versatility to play over the line. But rarely, if ever, has a more coveted prospect ended up in college football after playing so little. Stewart presents a potential multi-million dollar gamble, a test case against the conventional norms of prospect development.

“He’s not going to come in with reps at that position,” one ACC player staffer said. “So where is he mentally from a football point of view? You can’t recreate the game environment.”

Added one FBS director of player personnel: “I don’t care how big and strong you are, it’s still a developmental sport where reps are the first, second, and third most important things for your growth and development. For someone to If you jump over that, I would have many reservations.”

Two weeks from his commitment date, sitting in a booth at Neyow’s Creole Cafe a few miles from Bourbon Street, Stewart laughs off the criticism.

“When people see me go get 10-plus sacks next year,” he said, “they’ll see I lived up to the hype.”

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LIKE SOCCER team at New Orleans’ Edna Karr High School practices on a recent November night, Stewart works out in the school’s weight room. When the Cougars’ varsity team returns for a film session an hour later, Stewart drops the weights and takes the team’s spot on the turf, running sprints and agility drills alone under the lights with Alexander.

That’s what football has been like for Stewart for the past few months, since the September night Alexander took Stewart to a bench on the west bank of the Mississippi River and told him he wouldn’t play high school again this fall.

Not long after Stewart’s 85-tackle, 20-sack sophomore season last at New Orleans’ St. Augustine High School, Stewart and Alexander sat in front of a blackboard, weighed the pros and cons, and decided Stewart was ready to go to college a year early. But St. Augustine resisted Stewart’s plan to reclassify in the summer, sparking an ugly exit when the school ultimately rejected his bid in August. Weeks into the new semester, Stewart left St. Augustine and signed up for Edna Karr in the second week of September, hoping to play again in the fall before the State Athletic Association ruled him ineligible for the rest of the season.

“The kid had grown tired of high school football and had dominated everything and everyone that ever stepped in front of him,” Alexander said of the decision to reclassify. “It was no longer a challenge. For someone to stand in the way of his dream? I had a real problem with that.”

Alexander has been present at nearly every mile marker in Stewart’s journey since 2019.

An Edna Karr alum who played football at Nicholls State, Alexander began coaching prospects a decade ago with the goal of helping local football players land college scholarships. Soon he was driving athletes to football camps across the region a dozen at a time in a rented sprinter van. Among the long list of New Orleans-area prospects emerging from Alexander’s “Edge Assassins” program are Texas’ Barryn Sorrell, LSU’s Sai’vion Jones and Ole Miss’ Cam East.

One of the core principles of Alexander’s development program is flexibility. Scouts often talk about the unique flexibility of Stewart’s powerful frame, and on a busy day at Edna Karr, Stewart soars through an agility drill, throwing himself over and under a series of track obstacles.

Minutes later, back in the weight room, Edna Karr’s football coach helps Brice Brown explain why Stewart has been relegated to individual training this fall.

“The second snap, he ran over the pulling guard and tackled the running back and hit the quarterback at the same time,” Edna Karr coach Brice Brown said. “The season he would have had this year — I think a lot of people would have said to themselves that he doesn’t need to play a senior season because he’s so far ahead of a normal high school player.”

Stewart was a 6-foot-4, 340-pound sixth grader when he started working with Alexander. Two years later, he was 60 pounds lighter with a transformed body, an elite long-arm move and a list of offers that included Alabama, Georgia and LSU. By the time Stewart graduated high school, he had already turned Nick Saban’s head at Alabama defensive line camp and tormented Julian Lewis in the 8th grade Under Armor All-America Game.

Two important developments unfolded around this time: Bigger, faster and stronger than all the kids in his age group, Stewart gave up youth travel soccer to begin training with Alexander full-time. And after the Stewart family’s home in Reserve, Louisiana, was destroyed by Hurricane Ida in August 2021, Stewart began living with Alexander, about an hour away from his family in Reserve, eventually enrolling in St. Augustine in 2022, where transfer rules barred Stewart from playing college football in his freshman year.

So when Stewart was sidelined earlier this fall, Alexander already had a training program in place. Without after-school training and Friday matches, the pair have simply gone harder. Extra time in the home gym and weight room at Edna Karr has Stewart up to 290 pounds this fall. Multiple practice sessions with BT Jordan, a New Orleans-based pass rush coach with a client list of nearly 200 NFL defenders, to sharpen technique and film study skills.

Stewart has not featured as a high school player in some time. Within his camp, there’s not only a belief that Stewart’s early exit from high school football won’t hurt his development, but a sense that he’s become an even more complete prospect this fall.

“I’ve heard people say that this whole recruiting process is rushed or rushed, but that’s really not the case,” Alexander said. “From day one, he trained to be a pro. Not even just physically, but trained to have a pro mentality.”

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FOURTEEN DAYS BEFORE the early signing period, in the booth at Neyow’s, the end goal of everything Stewart and Alexander have worked for over the past five years feels close as Stewart downs a pink lemonade.

Soon, Stewart will have to answer the questions that have hovered over him this fall.

“I only played one year of high school football, but every time I stepped on the field – it was chaos,” Stewart said. “I had a lot of head coaches stress about playing me. Nobody in high school right now could block me one-on-one.”

Whether the choice is Oregon, Ohio State, LSU or USC, Stewart believes he will be ready to compete when he arrives on his new campus. And his lack of playing time hasn’t dampened interest from the nation’s top programs in chasing what will be a lucrative signing on Wednesday.

Stewart’s camp expects him to be ready to compete for starting time in Year 1 and hopes he will make at least $6 million across the three seasons he plans to spend in college football. Other sources offer slightly more conservative estimates of what Stewart could command. In any case, his next program will be placing a significant bet on the promise of his measurables, camp performance and a limited slice of high school action.

“If he was still a top prospect in 2026, you’d pay a– for that kid,” said one SEC scouting director. “Kids like that don’t grow on trees. It’s a risk you can afford to take.”

Risks may still exist. Personnel departments typically place red flags on prospects with multiple high school transfers, while others are generally leery of prospects who chose to forgo multiple seasons of high school football. Several personnel sources are curious about how Stewart’s season away from competitive football will affect his technique and football IQ.

“I’ve never seen a high school player as developed and polished on the field and in football knowledge as Jahkeem,” Jordan, who began coaching Stewart in the summer, countered.

A general manager of a Big Ten program points out that the reclassified prospects who succeed early in college typically arrive with a broad body of work from high school. Star Alabama freshman Ryan Williams, for example, has emerged as one of college football’s breakout stars this fall since reclassifying last December, but only after amassing more than 4,400 yards of total offense and scoring 76 touchdowns in 39 high school games.

“If a guy produces like that, that’s one thing,” said one FBS director of player personnel. “But fast forward four years: If Jahkeem was a college kid who didn’t play for a season and just went and worked with a trainer, no one would say he’s getting better right now. The story would be he’s not playing .”

Stewart and Alexander believe they have answers to all of the above questions. They bet significantly on themselves in the autumn. Stewart’s signing ceremony, which will take place inside Edna Karr Gymnasium, is at the end of a road considerably less traveled.

Two weeks ago, they returned to the bench on the banks of the Mississippi River, where Stewart learned his high school career was essentially over. Staring out over the water at the New Orleans skyline, he weighed the balance between one defining experience he’s about to put behind him and the other that lies ahead after Wednesday.

“If I would have played this year, I never would have had the time to do what I’ve done the last three months to get ready for college,” Stewart said. “It was fate.”