MOBILE, Ala. – "You probably won't believe this, but I was very unsure of myself growing up. I didn't believe in my potential, I never thought I was good enough. I would second-guess myself because I was younger and I was smaller, I didn't think I had the ability to play at a high level. My dad would tell me that I could be a good player and that I needed to work and put effort into it, that I was a late bloomer and that I needed to trust the process.
"That's my motto now, 'trust your process.' I didn't start believing until my junior year, then my senior year I blossomed."
That trust has led University of South Alabama safety Jeremy Reaves not only to recognition as one of the elite defensive players in the Sun Belt Conference, but to the cusp of a career in the National Football League. But it was a long road travelled from his days growing up in Pensacola, Fla., to get to this point.
The son of parents in the military — his father was in the army, his mom a member of the air force — Reaves first was introduced to football as a five-year-old in the Florida Panhandle. Initially, the results were not pretty.
"I was a stocky kid but I wanted to get into sports, we were playing on dirt fields and we didn't have matching uniforms like Ensley," he recalled. "My parents registered me, I was nervous because I had never put pads on; I didn't know what I was stepping into. The first thing we did was called the 'Tiger Line' — a one-on-one drill — and the first time I went I got my bell rung and I started crying that I didn't want to play anymore. But my dad said I was going to give it a shot. I went through plenty of times getting knocked down and the wind knocked out of me, but finally I started to catch on and found a love for it.
"Where I played was very competitive because not all the kids were as fortunate as I was to have both parents. Everybody played with a chip on their shoulder because most kids there were looking to get out of the situation they were in."
His little league coach moved Reaves to quarterback where he would run most of the time, and he continued to handle the ball as a combination running back/slot receiver in high school. Despite experiencing success in baseball as a center fielder on youth recreation and travel teams — "Most of my trophies are from travel baseball," he explained — Reaves gave up the sport to focus on football going into his junior year at Pensacola Catholic High.
But that wasn't the only decision at that time that would affect his journey. That season his head coach and defensive coordinator decided they wanted to try him at safety. "I was all for it," he said. "I have to give them all the credit, if it wasn't for them I might not have gotten a shot to go anywhere. They really helped me become the player that I am now."
That may be the case, but the journey from that point forward was not as simple as it might sound.
Reaves was a first-team all-area selection after posting 77 stops and three interceptions his first season on defense. Midway through his senior year he picked off a pass but in landing on his rear he suffered an injury that nearly derailed everything. The following week Reaves' back hurt, and although he visited the doctor he kept practicing and played in the Crusaders' next game. "Typical me, I'm not about to miss a game for anything," he laughed.
But when the pain got so bad that when Reaves sat down he couldn't get back up on own, an MRI revealed a hairline fracture of the L5 and L6 vertebrae, and doctor said he was finished for the year and that the recovery would be 12-month process.
"I was doing everything and I was getting calls from all kinds of places, visits from coaches; it seemed like I was on top of the world at the time," he explained. "It's like Christmas for a 17-year-old kid thinking that all these coaches are coming to see you. I was going to have to call all of these coaches and tell them what was going on.
Everything was going so right and then this happened, it brought me back down to Earth. I think it was because I wasn't humble and I wasn't thankful for the gifts that had been given to me, I took it all for granted. That was God's way of telling me to remember why I was doing this and who I was doing it for."
The last game Reaves played prior to the official diagnosis, one in which he limped around the entire time, was the first then Jaguar assistant coaches Kevin Sherrer and Travis Pearson had come to watch him play. Instead, he would spend six weeks in a full brace — "it's still at my house on top of a shelf, I look at it every time I go home as a reminder to be thankful, said Reaves" — from waist to chest that he had to wear every day.
"I started reading the Bible a lot during that period, I used to fall asleep with the Bible in my hand," he recalled. "One day, at six in the morning, I dropped my phone in the bathroom and I bent down to pick it up even though I didn't have my brace on. I didn't realize what I had done when I was walking back to my room. I went to get an X-ray and Dr. [James] Andrews said my back was fine, he signed off and I ran out the door calling everybody to tell them that I was cleared. I was basically back to square one, I had to go through conditioning and tests but I ended up playing in our rivalry game."
Despite missing half the season, Reaves was an honorable mention all-state selection after finishing with 39 stops and five interceptions. He had scholarship offers from both Southern Mississippi and UAB, and was being recruited by Memphis and Arkansas State, but it was the faith of the South coaching staff that led to his commitment to the Jaguars.
"Coach [Brian] Turner used to call me every other day and I would talk to the whole staff," said Reaves. "We played in the 7-on-7 camp before my senior year and when I was in his office he told me he was going to stick with me. They stuck with me through all of it; I chose here because I owed it to Coach [Joey] Jones and Coach Turner because they could've got out of it just as quick as everybody else did but they saw the bigger picture. I am very, very grateful because I don't know where I would be now."
"We loved Jeremy as a player, watching film on him he did some great things," Jones stated. "When the injury occurred, in some ways we thought it was good luck for us because we were going to stick with him through heck or high water — we thought that was probably the way we were going to sign him. We hated it for him obviously, but it ended up that he was able to come to South Alabama and that was big for us."
Why take a chance on a player who has suffered a significant back injury? That was part of the growing up process too.
"My parents let me become a young adult through trial and error, they didn't hold my hand through everything," Reaves said. "They let me walk my path. But as far as respect and discipline, they expected that from a young age — everything was 'Yes, sir,' 'No, sir,' 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, ma'am' — and my mom was just as strict as my dad. I love that they did that because you don't see that as much now so people really appreciate it. My parents instilled that in me at a very young age, it was something that wasn't taken lightly. They established that we weren't friends.
"They are my best friends now, I'm older and wiser and I'm past the child stage so I talk to them about everything. But growing up they made it perfectly clear that they were parents and not to confuse that."
"Brian Turner recruited him, he kept telling me those things," explained Jones. "As a coach I only got to see him once in the recruiting process because of NCAA rules, so I didn't get to know him as well, but Coach Turner always told me what a great young man he was and how he was going to be one of the guys who would be the face of our program one day.
"He has certainly turned out to be that."
But just because Reaves signed a National Letter-of-Intent with the program didn't mean the journey was complete. Sure, he saw action as a true freshman despite playing three different positions in the secondary from the start of camp through the Jags' appearance in the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl. And he became a starter the following fall, racking up 96 total tackles — including eight for loss — six passes broken up and a pair of interceptions.
Last fall, under the guidance of first-year defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, he posted 85 tackles with 5½ behind the line of scrimmage, three interceptions and seven other passes defensed. But despite being a two-time all-Sun Belt Conference selection — including garnering first-team accolades in 2016 — Reaves had areas in which he could improve.
"I'm my biggest critic, I will criticize myself more than anybody and I will take the blame for a lot of stuff that goes wrong," he recognized. "If we didn't play to the level we should, that's my fault not just because I'm a leader but because I'm the last line of defense. That comes from my parents being hard on me growing because they wanted the best for me, and in turn I want to make them proud. I push myself like that because I expect more out of myself, and I know people back home and people who look up to me expect more out of me too. I'm very critical of myself, but I just want to be the best player that I know I can be.
"I still have a long way to go."
"Jeremy is a guy who handles himself really well and has never been a problem — he's never had any issues — but he has matured a great deal in terms of how he handles adversity," Wommack explained. "He is probably one of the hardest people on himself, and so when he had snaps that he didn't play the way he wanted to or to the standard of our defense or to his standard, he was very disappointed by that, and sometimes he would let it affect him on the next play. He has drastically improved and matured in that way, understanding that he can make a big play or give up a big play and he's even keeled. That to me is the sign of a great leader on your defense with the example that he sets of how he handles success and adversity."
"When I got here I had just turned 18, I was a baby," Reaves added. "I have always been the youngest player on my team, so maturity is something that I've struggled with because I've been so far behind everybody else. When I got here I was very immature, and when Coach Wommack got here he could still see last year there were immature instances here and there and that I wasn't grown up yet. This offseason they challenged me to grow up and be a leader, to take responsibility and ownership of myself and my team. I really took that personally and have grown a lot — you can ask anybody in the building, me compared to last year is night and day as far as taking responsibility for my actions and being a good person that my younger teammates can look up to. There are guys who say 'I want to be like you,' and I didn't hear that last year. And I'm glad I didn't, because I wasn't where I wanted to be, I wasn't the model I wanted people to follow.
"I was very playful all the time, you could tell I had a little kid in me. I still have it now, but I know when to use it and when not to use it, when it's time to get serious and when it is time to play around. My decision making has always been good thanks to my parents."
That's not the only reason Reaves looks back on his upbringing with pride when it comes to mom and dad. "I see myself as a natural-born leader. I've always been younger than everybody, but I've always led where I've been whether that was little league or high school football," he stated. "That's what my parents instilled in me, that I'm a leader and that people will follow me in life so I need to lead by example. It was hard at first to understand because they were older than me and I didn't think they would follow me, but over time I have noticed that your age doesn't matter when people are looking for a role model, not just in football but in life. It's all about your ability to lead, people see that."
In addition to making the off-field improvements Wommack was looking for, Reaves added approximately 20 pounds in the offseason. Coming into today's Senior Day match-up with Arkansas State, the senior free safety is among the conference leaders with 72 stops, seven passes broken up, three forced fumbles and a pair of fumble recoveries. While the immediate goal includes a win in the contest and the two that follow to help South participate in a postseason bowl game for the third time in his four years with the program, the trek on the field is not likely to come to an end with the Jaguars' season.
That's because Reaves is a candidate to join former teammate Gerald Everett in the National Football League. It's something he's heard in the background for a while, but was not willing to pay heed to until recently.
"A couple of weeks ago to be honest," is when Reaves said he began to believe in the possibility. "I had always heard it whether I was home or through social media that I would get drafted and play in the NFL. That's a whole other level. I grew up watching guys who I wanted to be playing with and against — Tyrann Mathieu, Patrick Peterson, Darius Slay — elite players in the secondary and thought, 'Me in the same category as them? No way.' But I've built up my confidence and believe I can play with anybody; I recently Tweeted that I will be the second player drafted from the University of South Alabama, and I believe that.
"If you had asked me that question five or 10 years ago, I would've said no way just because I didn't have the confidence in myself."
"When you look at Jeremy, he has improved himself in every capacity from his junior year to his senior year in my first two seasons with him," Wommack added. "He's changed his body completely, he looks how they are supposed to look now at 207 pounds, he has drastically improved his footwork, the patience that he plays with in the game. He was always a playmaker, he's always had a knack for the ball — he walked in the door at South Alabama having that — but the tools that you surround that skill set and that instinct with are light years from when I first got here to where he is now.
"The two things that were most important to give Jeremy a chance he has done. A year ago he made a ton of plays, but he also looked out of whack doing it sometimes because his eyes were not in the right place or his feet were not patient enough. Now it shows up on tape how deliberate he is with every move that he makes. Those are the first two things that are going to jump off the page at the next level, and when you have a guy who is as instinctive and productive as Jeremy is, who can run like he does with that body type, he's going to have a great chance."
Part of Reaves' schedule this fall is an internship at the campus recreation center. Because whenever his playing days are over, his desire to leave the world of athletics won't be.
"I want to get into the business side of athletics, whether that's administration or any other aspect of an athletic department. Or I want to go to law school and become a sports agent. It's kind of a toss up right now."
And where he will be when he crosses that path is unsure, but likely not where the foundation was laid. "Don't get me wrong, I love Pensacola. Pensacola made me Jeremy Reaves," he said. "But I've seen so many people get stuck in Pensacola, my father and mother always told me once you get the chance to get out of here don't come back; it's a place that will trap you. I love it — it's my hometown — and I will represent Pensacola until the day I die; I have a lot of love for that city, it has a special place in my heart, but that's not where I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life."
Because settling down in the professional world — whereever that may take him — doesn't mean Jeremy Reaves' odyssey will be complete.
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).
Join the Jaguar Athletic Fund (JAF) Priority Fund, the unrestricted giving option of the University of South Alabama Athletics. Contributions to the Priority Fund directly support all 17 sports in addition to various support programming. For more information on how you can join visit: http://jaguarathleticfund.com/sports/2013/3/13/Gridiron%20Club.aspx?id=22
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