“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.