'He Thought I was a Walk-On': Mac Jones Recounts First Day at Alabama

Former Alabama quarterback Mac Jones made quite a name for himself while he played for the Crimson Tide.

He competed in a room with Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, and in his lone season as the starter, he led Alabama to its 18th national championship. Jones finished third that year in votes for the Heisman Trophy, won three national quarterback awards and was college football's leader in passing yards, passer rating and completion percentage.

But his success took a lot of time, as he had to start all the way at the bottom, redshirting as a freshman in 2017. Jones realized this would be the case the moment he arrived in Tuscaloosa.

"I think my mindset was there, and I had to build that my first day," Jones said on the Bussin' With The Boys podcast. "When I did that lift, because the lifts were insane — Scott Cochran, who was obviously a legendary strength coach — we would go in, you do the warmup, everything is so organized and structured.

"And then you're running to every lift, so like you'll back squat and then run to the rowing machine. You're dying. They don't give you water, pretty much. Well, they do...we'll say they do. The first day, I'm hallucinating. I can't even finish an hour workout. And these other guys like Minkah Fitzpatrick and everybody else, they look like they're 10 years older than me."

It was on this first day that a brutal seed was planted in Jones, but it played a massive role in determining the rest of his football career.

"One of the strength coaches, not Scott Cochran but an assistant, he thought I was a walk-on," Jones said. "So he put me in the other group with the walk-ons on the first day. I didn't know [anything], so I'm like 'I'm going to lift my a— off.'

"There's a coach there, coach TJ, he's like an old school strength coach, and he'd always call me, 'You're my walk-on, you're my walk-on.' Even when I was starting, 'You're my walk-on, you're my walk-on.' So that's where that story came from, but eventually that pissed me off.

"I'm not a walk-on, screw that. So that motivated me right there, and I was going to prove to everybody that maybe I don't look the part right now, but I'm going to show them I'm a dog. And I did throughout the four years."

Jones explained Alabama's fourth-quarter program, where players run and lift in the spring. He opened up about working out against Hurts and Tagovailoa, and it only made him stronger.

"You get a shirt after every week if you do well, they maybe hand out 10 of them for the whole team," Jones said. "So all four years in a row, every week I got a shirt. So I got it like 16 times or whatever, and it was a huge deal for me. That was my goal every week: get the shirt, at least try to be the first one. I couldn't really beat Jalen because he's faster than me, but I gave him a run for my money.

That was fun. It helped me mentally to run against those guys, lift, compete and it made me grow up quickly. What [Nick] Saban was talking about in that [first] meeting, 'You need to develop,' It took really all four years for that to happen.

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