Alabama’s QB is a Heisman front-runner. He could have been UK’s starter.
Mac Jones is having his way with the Southeastern Conference.
Alabama’s starting quarterback leads the league in pass completions (139), completion percentage (78.5) and passing yards (2,196), among several other throwing stats. The Crimson Tide are 6-0 and Jones is a front-runner for this year’s Heisman Trophy; most sports books entering last weekend had him as their favorite or just behind Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields.
Jones and his squad this weekend will host Kentucky, which between two starting quarterbacks this season (Terry Wilson and Joey Gatewood) hasn’t been able to crack 1,000 yards passing through seven games. Differing offensive philosophies is one factor in that discrepancy, but so is Jones, a more traditional pocket passer and a four-star prospect coming out Florida in the 2017 recruiting class.
That cycle brought a bounty to Lexington: Lynn Bowden, Lonnie Johnson and Josh Paschal were among the biggest names in a class that yielded multiple multi-year starters. It did not, however, provide much of a return in the quarterback department: Both of the two who signed with Kentucky that year, Danny Clark and Walker Wood, did not play much and have since transferred (Clark to a junior college before landing at Vanderbilt, and Wood to McNeese State).
Who it didn’t bring, in the moment and especially in hindsight, matters more: Jones was committed to Kentucky, the first Power Five school to offer him, for a year prior to backing off that pledge and committing to Alabama, one of several schools to get into his recruitment late after the Wildcats pounced early.
UK more recently has made a habit of besting Alabama and other juggernauts for recruits — Michael Drennen, Justin Rogers and John Young quickly come to mind just in the 2020 class — but at the juncture when Jones made his call it had still yet to have even a .500 season under Stoops; Alabama was coming off a national title and would play for another a few weeks before he signed.
Alabama was Alabama and Kentucky was Kentucky. There wasn’t anything more to it than that, recruiting coordinator Vince Marrow told the Herald-Leader in a phone interview last week.
“Now the Alabamas, the Ohio States, they show up and our kids don’t flinch because they see what we have built here,” Marrow said.
Gordon Jones, Mac’s father, told The Athletic last month that he “probably” would not have de-committed from Kentucky had it kept Shannon Dawson, who was fired in December 2015 after just one season coaching the offense. It’s worth noting, though, that Mac Jones remained in the fold all the way up until two months after the Crimson Tide offered him.
Lane Kiffin, now the head coach at Mississippi, then was Alabama’s offensive coordinator and rubbed in Mac’s flip with a simple tweet the day it happened: he shared a Bitmoji image of himself wiping his hands together with the words “Done and Done.” An hour after Mac’s announcement, Hinshaw on Twitter shared a quote from former Mormon leader James E. Faust regarding the consequence of choices and deciding between good and evil. It was interpreted as a subtweet at Mac, who later shared a subtweet of his own.
“Nothing but respect to the program yet an old man is acting like a 12 year old,” he wrote in 2016.
Mac Jones’ apparent admiration for Dawson didn’t follow him to Southern Miss, where he spent three seasons after UK let him go. Whether retaining him would have kept Jones on board amounts to nothing more than a “what if?” in the larger “what might have been” when it comes to Kentucky’s last few years at quarterback. Jones coming here probably would have kept the recruitment of Terry Wilson from happening, and instead of biding his time for two years at Alabama (and it would have been three had Tua Tagovailoa not suffered a season-ending injury last year), he probably would have been thrust into action much earlier at UK. It’s impossible to know that the Mac Jones playing today would have been the same one that could have formed in Lexington.
Marrow believes at one time, as he waited patiently behind Tagovailoa, Jones debated a transfer. Kentucky would have been on the list.
As it played out, Marrow is happy with whom the Wildcats ended up with and has nothing but good things to say about one of the bigger “ones that got away” in his time as Kentucky’s recruiting coordinator.
“I’m very impressed with Mac,” Marrow said. “I am not surprised by what I see. He looks like, to me, he’s gonna be a first- or second-round pick in the NFL.”
Next game
Kentucky at No. 1 Alabama
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
Records: UK 3-4; Alabama 6-0
TV: SEC
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 8:18 AM.
