Many people discouraged Mac Jones from going to Alabama. After all, Crimson Tide already had a quarterback named Jalen Hurts a year before him and another named Tua Tagovailoa in his 2017 recruiting class.
Why go to Tuscaloosa if you are not even the best QB they are bringing?
Many people encouraged Mac Jones to leave Alabama. After all, in the middle of his third season on the Jacksonville, Florida campus, the Jacksonville native tried a total of 33 passes. Oh, and Nick Saban hired a five-star California recruit, Bryce Young, who many thought would be the holder of Day 1 for the 2020 season.
Why stay in Tuscaloosa if you will never be anything but a backup / insurance policy?
That was never how Mac Jones saw it. This is not how many Alabama players see things.
Which is why you keep watching Alabama do things like it did on Friday – attacking Notre Dame, 31-14, in a playoff semifinal to advance to its eighth game for the national championship in the past 12 years.
Jones launched for 297 yards and four touchdowns on Friday. He now hit 36 in the season, completing more than 77% of his passes. He is a finalist for Heisman and a game of creating a perfect national title season.
The paragraph above would have been incomprehensible for many years ago, when he was entrenched in the bank. Even Jones cannot be willing to acknowledge everything.
“I’m not very athletic,” said Jones after completing 25 of the 30 passes against the Irish. “I just try to get the ball to the right people.”
He was asked if he was preparing a speech for the Heisman ceremony.
“This is a matter of rat poison,” said Jones, setting aside anything but the team’s goals.
Jones may not be the obvious poster boy for the machine Saban built in Alabama – certainly not before the parade of powerful running backs (like Najee Harris, who made his way 125 yards against the Irish) or talented wide receivers (like like DeVonta Smith , who hit three touchdowns) or aggressive striker (like Alex Leatherwood, who dismantled parts of Notre Dame’s defense) … and we didn’t even get to the defense.
However, he is them and they are him, all part of what – in this age of transfer portals and opt-outs and instant gratification – makes Alabama so unshakable at the top of the sport.
Jones dared to go there and then dared to stay, in part because Saban was not looking for just the most talented players, but the most talented players who might be able to handle being surrounded by equally, if not even more talented players . The Venn diagram is smaller than you think.
They may be mega-recruits willing to wait and work in turn, like Harris, a five-star who had only 55 shipments as a freshman, but is now almost invincible; or Smith, who entered the field in just six games as a freshman, but has now reached the SEC record of 20 touchdowns this season and is also fit for Heisman; or Leatherwood, who used to see only photos at the time of trash, but is now an Outland finalist and possible choice in the first round.
Or it could be someone like Jones, who never knew if his time of glory would come, but decided it was worth the effort anyway.
Early on, Jones’s father came up with a way for Mac to define himself while fighting for training reps, let alone championship trophies. Mac was a “starting quarterback just waiting for his turn”.
That’s it. So continue.
Of course, he could have kept his commitment to Kentucky and probably started earlier in his career, and he certainly could have transferred to several schools and played immediately, but Jones did not choose Alabama because it would be easy.
He chose it because it would be difficult.
And he didn’t stay in Alabama because he was promised an initial job, but because he would have to earn it and keep earning it. The pressure to play time never decreases.
Hurts won Tide in a national championship only to stay on the bench in favor of Tagovailoa, who then won another. Jones ended up replacing an injured Tua last season and can now join the other two to bring his own title back to campus.
Keep running.
In a different era, when the number of scholarships could be around 150 or more in the largest programs and therefore the playing time was increasingly difficult to win, Michigan’s Bo Schembechler tried to stay motivated by stating that ” those who stay will be the champions. “
The concept was easier to sell. It is almost impossible now. The transfer market is relentless. And Schembechler was talking about the ten big crowns, not the national ones, which are the only standard in Alabama today.
However, Saban managed to work, an old school concept that seeks old school souls at this very modern time for college football. Here, when everyone wants something now, patience is a prerequisite inside the Tide football team building.
Jones accepted and ended up enjoying the moment. Harris, Smith, Leatherwood and everyone else too.
They are, in their own way, as manic of competitors as Saban, who against Notre Dame received a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct while climbing 24 points with just over three minutes to play and before he almost broke an ESPN headset that didn’t it worked during the interview break.
He never stops.
Not the guys who play for him. Or those who still hope to play for him.
Mac Jones was one of those guys and now he’s a game of everything – defender of an undefeated national champion as he displays video game statistics and turns the heads of NFL scouts.
Maybe no one noticed it, except him. But then again, if you spend your time worrying about what others think, you won’t be long in Alabama.
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