Alabama State Hosts Nine Hornets at 2026 Pro Day With NFL Scouts Present

Nine former Alabama State Hornets got their shot at NFL scouts Monday at the Houston Markham Football Complex, hosting a pro day workout that drew personnel from four professional teams exactly one month before the 2026 NFL Draft kicks off in Pittsburgh on April 23.

Alabama State football held its 2026 Pro Day on Monday, March 23. The event drew a mix of NFL-area personnel and regional pro scouts, giving former Hornets a controlled environment to display measurables and position-specific skills in front of decision-makers who will have their draft boards locked within weeks.

The stakes were sharpened by a notable absence from earlier in the pre-draft calendar. The NFL Draft is set for April 23–25 in Pittsburgh, and none of the nine participants had been invited to the NFL Scouting Combine in February, making Monday's workout at Houston Markham the primary live audition for each player in this class.

Jaeden Day was among the former Hornets drawing individual attention at the event, with coverage from Montgomery highlighting him specifically among the nine participants putting their athleticism on display for pro evaluators.

The pro day carried added weight given where the program has been. The 2025 Alabama State squad finished one of its best seasons since 2004, yet the talent that drove that success went unrecognized at the Combine level. Pro days give NFL decision-makers another opportunity, in some cases their only one, to see players perform on-field drills and learn their official measurements. For this group of Hornets, that was precisely the situation: Monday was the only sanctioned evaluation opportunity with live NFL personnel present.

Pro day season is in full swing, with schools across the country giving their draft-eligible players one final opportunity to impress scouts, coaches, and general managers before the 2026 NFL Draft. FCS programs rarely draw the same concentration of evaluators that Power Four schools attract, which made the presence of scouts from four NFL teams at Houston Markham a genuine opportunity for players who have operated outside the national spotlight throughout their college careers.

Pro days allow NFL hopefuls to operate in a more familiar and controlled environment; while pro day workouts must be taken with a dash of salt, they remain an important piece of the pre-draft process. With the draft now less than a month away, the nine former Hornets who worked out Monday have done what they can. The rest is up to the scouts who made the trip to Montgomery.