MOBILE, Ala. – If one is looking for an example of the value of the college experience, for someone who has taken advantage of the opportunity to learn, grow and prepare for life beyond school, they need to look no further than the offensive backfield of the University of South Alabama football program.
Over the course of the last three-plus seasons, they would have seen senior running back Xavier Johnson's numbers advance to the point now — midway through his final campaign — where he is just yards shy of becoming the Jaguars' all-time leading rusher. But to ask members of the South coaching staff about Johnson's performance since coming to the Mobile campus in the fall of 2013, his production on the field may not match his advancement off of it.
Though the process did not come without some growing pains.
"I was in another room coaching at the time, but when I would talk with [former assistant] coach [Robby] Brown about Xavier we were discussing trying to reach him at the level he was at," says Tim Bowens, Johnson's position coach. "You can be in a program for four or five years, and every year we should be able to see growth. But what happens is you see a person who has been there for five years that they have five years of experience so you think they've grown but a lot of times they've been there for five years but are stuck; they end up with one year of growth over five years. In Xavier's first year or two he may have been in the same place, but we saw the next year that he changed a little bit and the next he changed a little bit more, and you could see him changing in the right direction.
"Xavier has made tremendous strides, he's grown leaps and bounds."
When asked if there was a member of the staff most influential in Johnson's development, USA head coach Joey Jones hesitates. Because what Johnson has done off the field over the last few seasons didn't come at the snap of fingers but rather over an extended period of time.
"I don't think I can pick out any one individual, I know our coaching staff has done a great job with Xavier," he explains. "It's not like one day he was one way and the next day he was another, it was a gradual process. But you could see every year he was taking that step.
"I love this young man, he's been truly a great ambassador for us."
But there is a person who Johnson points to as playing a key role in his developed maturity. Ironically, it was one of the individuals whose presence limited what Johnson could show on the field his first two years at South.
"Jay Jones came and took me under his wing, and from that moment I tried to just learn and mature and grow as a person on and off the field," he says. "I think I've grown a lot. My freshman year I was just a follower until Jay showed me the right way."
Bowens would contribute to the process as well when he was shifted from wide receivers to running backs coach prior to Johnson's sophomore season. "Coach Bowens is like a father figure to me," observes Johnson. "I asked him to be my mentor, I felt that I wanted to get closer to God and he helped get me to that. He taught me as a person and a football player, that it's not just about football but life. Coach Bowens has helped get me to where I am today."
"I had a great mentor who told me, 'Tim, make sure you coach the heart of your players, not the talent.' I try to do that, and I think when you do and can get a kid to buy into who you are as a person and believe that off the field — and Xavier has expressed to me that he has — then on the field he's going to give it everything he's got," Bowens says. "Xavier has been trying to do that, he's been trying to do all the little things on the field to make sure he is paying attention to the details of what he's been taught.
"In his early years you could ask why he cut over there when your aiming point was right here and he would respond, 'Coach, I got 27 yards.' And? You might've been able to score if you went in the right direction. I've seen him go from wanting to bounce it outside when I first took over running backs, he wanted to do it all the time until one day I asked him why he didn't and he said, 'Coach, I didn't want to make a bad play worse.'
"The growth and maturity that I've been able to see in taking the coaching and being receptive to it, it's not easy to always jump in and start trusting someone, and he's had three coaches in that room. I've been the most consistent thing he's had in the last three years, and that's a responsibility that I don't take lightly as a coach or a person. I want to make sure that I am giving him the best, I talk to different running backs coaches across the country about drills, plays and getting your players to maximize their full potential. We believe that Xavier has made tremendous strides in understanding the little intricacies of playing the position and not just being a fast person with the ball in his hand."
It has been said that patience is a virtue. It is an area that Johnson has shown improvement in for no other reason than he displayed virtually none when he arrived on campus.
"Coming in as a freshman, I came in thinking that I'm automatically going to get some playing time," he recalls. "I knew there were already some great backs in front of me and that I was going to have to work harder, but I was impatient because I wanted to play."
Entering the 2013 campaign, playing time was going to be difficult for Johnson to find. Not only was Kendall Houston beginning his fourth season at the collegiate level, but Jag coaches had recruited a pair of junior-college transfers to add to the backfield in Jones and Cris Dinham. The trio combined to rush for 1,180 yards and 13 touchdowns that year while Johnson sat out and was a member of the scout team.
"At first I was mad because I felt like I could play," he says of sitting out his first year. "But Jay said there was a reason why they were redshirting me that I needed to learn the plays and just get bigger. It gave me time to get the plays down and practice my craft."
With Houston and Jones back the following year, playing time was still not a guarantee. It was a month before Johnson would record an impactful appearance, running for 70 yards on just 10 carries in a 47-21 victory at Appalachian State the opening weekend of October. Two weeks later the Jaguars moved to 3-1 in Sun Belt Conference play with a 30-27 win over Georgia State, but at a cost; Jones suffered an injury in the fourth quarter, one that would end his season.
Six days later — wearing Jones' No. 8 jersey — Johnson recorded the first 100-yard game of his career after gaining 107 and scoring a touchdown in a defeat of rival Troy. He finished the year with 438 yards, which ranked second on the team, and an average of 5.4 yards per carry, and the seeds were planted for what has grown into and one of the more prolific careers in the short history of the program.
"It was a very emotional week," Johnson says of the days leading into the Troy game. "Jay was like one of my brothers, he was my best friend. Before that game I went to the sideline and gave him a hug, it brought tears to my eyes to see him on the sideline; I don't want that to happen to anybody. When I scored my first touchdown, he was the first one I looked for. I gave him a hug and said 'This one is for you.' After that, I just wanted to honor his number."
Once it was apparent that Johnson was maturing before the coaching staff's eyes, the sky was the limit.
In 2015, he went from third string on the preseason depth chart to featured back while adding duties running back kickoffs after the graduation of T.J. Glover. The results were 956 yards on the ground and 1,477 all-purpose yards — both school season records — as he would be named honorable mention all-conference. He earned the same honor a year ago running for 831 yards and 10 scores to go along with 523 yards returning kicks.
Entering Saturday's Homecoming game against Louisiana-Monroe, Johnson needs just 14 yards to pass Houston and become the school's all-time leading rusher. He already owns the program record with 3,871 all-purpose yards, is second with 26 total touchdowns and third with 156 points.
What Johnson might be able to accomplish as a Jaguar upon his arrival in 2013 was a question many within the football field house would ask. But once South's coaches saw his development after a couple of years in Mobile, the results are not a surprise.
"Once he got here and got past his redshirt freshman year we knew Xavier was going to be a special player," says Jones. "He has great God-given talent and he has used it."
Bowens believes that with the skills that Johnson has improved over the last couple of years that more honors are possible at the end of this season.
"You have to be an all-around back, you need to be able to catch the ball out of the backfield, block and run with great vision, and with power and speed," he says. "There are teams with good running backs all around the conference, but some of those guys have just power and some have just speed. Xavier is not the biggest back in the conference, obviously, but he has power when he runs and he is playing with purpose and passion. And he has the vision to see the hole and then burst and hit it. When he has those things going consistently — I mean all the time, not missing a beat or a day — and continues working to perfect his craft, Xavier can be a really good Sun Belt running back."
That Johnson has a chance to be one of the all-time great running backs at USA is a testament to his ability to grow once he arrived on campus. It also highlights his ability to adapt quickly, seeing how he only played the position three years prior to coming to college.
There is one other person Johnson credits with influencing his development in the sport, his father Frederick. That was the individual who first introduced him to the game as a seven-year-old in Tampa, Fla. "From that moment on, on Saturdays he would take us out to play and practice," Johnson remembers. "I was taught to love the game of football because you never know when it will be your last time playing. My dad used to take us out to just play, we would play with friends, my apartment would play the other apartments. We would really compete, and if they would beat us on Friday we would come back Saturday to get our rematch.
"I really appreciate what he did, because if it weren't for him I wouldn't be where I am at today."
One of the other ways those games helped Johnson develop was in the mindset he brings to the field to this day.
"When we used to play the other apartments I always told myself that big-time players make big-time plays in big-time games. I've said that for the longest time, and it drives me to try and be one of the playmakers when the team needs me."
When playing in organized youth football, though, one position Johnson never played was running back.
"I wasn't always fast, I was chubby as a kid," he laughs. "In little league football I never played running back, I was a receiver and played on defense. When I got to high school I played receiver until I was switched to running back. It was something I wanted. The coaches kept moving me around from receiver to defensive back and kick return; I like to return kicks so I didn't have a problem with that but I wasn't used to being a receiver."
It wasn't until his sophomore year at Chamberlain High that Johnson finally found his way to the offensive backfield. The individual results were impressive — 2,000 total yards and 18 touchdowns as a junior, 1,100 yards and 12 scores the following season — but doing so on a team that couldn't qualify for the state playoffs made getting attention more difficult.
In fact, Johnson's thoughts early in his high school career were focused on finding a job after school than earning a scholarship. "As a sophomore I thought I might play at a D-II school, but at the time I wanted to work at McDonald's because I wanted to make extra money." It was that same year that he started hearing from college coaches, however, and caught off guard Johnson wasn't sure how to react.
"That's when I started getting letters [from college coaches]," he recalls. "I received my first D-I offer from UMass, and at that moment I wanted to commit just like that [snaps fingers]. My coach told me I didn't want to do that because I might mess everything up, but I asked him 'What if no other offers come?' I wanted them to think that I wanted to be there, but I waited for other options."
Jones understands why Johnson had concerns about hearing from more schools. "Actually, the high school team Xavier played on was not very good so at times he didn't look great because they weren't blocking very well for him," says Jones. "But the more you watched him, when you would see him break out in the open, you knew he could make big plays even though he didn't have 'great' stats or four- or five-star status. But we knew he could play."
As the recruiting process continued, it wasn't just the efforts of the Jaguars' recruiting coordinator at the time, assistant coach Brian Turner, that helped land Johnson. He was very familiar with a pair of players in the program — C.J. Bennett and Glover.
"C.J. and I played together in little league football, his dad used to coach us on the Packers. I thought that's my boy, I grew up with him," says Johnson. "And then I found out T.J. Glover went here, I knew him from Plant High School and thought he was cool. I took a visit and I wanted to commit.
"I had never lived outside of Tampa, I wanted to get out of there and try something new. When I came here I fell in love with the players and the atmosphere here, I had never seen anything like this before. And I felt like I had a connection with the coaches and that this was the school for me."
Johnson's maturing off the field hasn't only been noticed by the Jag coaching staff, as three National Football League teams have already visited with him during the course of the semester. A wiser Johnson knows not to let that distract him from the task at hand this fall.
"It's important, but my team is first," he says. "If I just work on what I have to do for my team and how we play, I believe we will get to a bowl and the NFL will come next. It's very exciting, I've been waiting on this moment since I was young, but I never thought it would really happen for me with everything I've been through."
"When Xavier got here as a true freshman, to be honest he came here with some rough life skills, let's put it that way," Jones explains. "But, I've never seen a kid grow as much as he has from his redshirt freshman to his senior year. He is what you want right now, he cares about the team, he is a leader, he is very competitive and selfless — all those things that great senior leaders do, he possesses."
Making Xavier Johnson a prime example of the growth that is possible once exposed to a collegiate environment.
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com, and follow the Jaguars at www.twitter.com/USAJaguarSports. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
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