Broncos rookie Jerry Jeudy could be better in the NFL than he was at Alabama, coaches say

Before he was Jeu, JJ4, The Juker, The Man, Jerry Jeudy had another nickname in Broward County prep circles: The Meal Ticket.

“When you covered him and you did good,” Marquise Waters explained, “you’d gain a lot of recognition from the scouts, the scouts who didn’t know you.”

About four springs ago, Jeudy, the Broncos’ first-round draft pick and former Alabama wideout, and Waters, a safety at Duke, were peers — south Florida prospects who found themselves matched up, 1-on-1, at a 7-on-7 tournament.

Jeudy was to wideouts what Johnny Ringo was to gunslingers — the baddest hombre on the block. He raised your game, scared the crud out of you, or juked you out of your shorts. Usually the latter.

“But he didn’t score or catch a pass on me,” Waters recalled. “So that’s when a lot of offers came in. After that, I started to get recognition.”

West Virginia extended an offer, Waters’ first. At least 21 more schools came flying in over the next 10 weeks.

If you could run with Jerry Jeudy, brother, you could ball.

“You can’t have a false step,” Waters said of Drew Lock’s new toy. “That minute you have a false step, believe it or not, he knows where you are, even if he’s not looking (at you). Crazy peripheral vision. If you watch the game, you’ll see that he knows where you’re at. Even though he’s not looking at you, he feels you.”

Jeudy and Waters were teammates with the Florida Fire, a 7-on-7 football program in Broward County whose roster of alumni also includes Calvin Ridley (Alabama), Trayvon Mullen (Clemson), Stanford Samuels III (Florida State), Josh Metellus (Michigan) and Derrick Tindal (Wisconsin). It’s one of the country’s unsung cradles of wide receiver and defensive back prospects.

“Certainly top 10 all-time,” Fire founder Dennis Marroquin said of Jeudy. “Of receivers, (he’s) probably top 5.

“Hard worker, man. I had a call (Friday) morning and an old pal said, ‘One of the coaches was on the beach, the sun hadn’t come out yet, and Jerry was out there running on the sand on his own.’ Those that are great, they’ve got to put in extra. Some of these guys, they’re good, but they don’t want to put in the work to be great.”

Jeudy did, pushed by angels seen and unseen. When his baby sister, Aaliyah, passed away in November 2016 at the age of 7, the future Bronco tweeted out a picture of her and wrote:

I swear I’m going to make it for you and mommy.

“I’ve always said, he’s one of those kids that’s got a ‘why,’” offered Jevon Glenn, Jeudy’s football coach at Deerfield Beach (Fla.) High School. “And when you’ve got a young man that’s got a ‘why,’ and the death of his sister, Aaliyah, that just added to his ‘why’ — that’s all he sees when he’s grinding, that focus, and that’s the fuel that ignites the flame that everybody all over America has been able to see shine.”

Taking care of family

It shines for his mother, Marie, who left her native Haiti for the States at the age of 14 and worked as a single mom to keep the family fed. It shines for Aaliyah, who was born with trisomy 18, a rare chromosomal disease that required tubes to help her breathe and eat. Jeudy keeps a picture of his late sister in the center of a star of David pendant that he wears around his neck.

“It feels good, just knowing what we came for, knowing all the stuff we’ve been through (as a family),” said Jeudy, who named his daughter, born last month, Journee Aaliyah Jeudy in his late sister’s honor.

“I finally have the opportunity to take care of them, take care of all my loved ones. So it’s a great feeling. It’s a surreal moment. I worked my whole life for this moment. I’m just thankful all the hard work paid off.”

Jeudy wears that grind, like his heart, on his sleeve. Glenn jokes that the kid’s No. 1 hobby is pretty much laying down ladders and working out. That if he runs into a former classmate or teammate, even if they’re out working a 9-to-5 gig or making deliveries, he’ll try to rope them in, too. Anything that gets him better.

“He’s a guy, once he’s passionate about something, he’s passionate,” Glenn said. “He doesn’t know how to give you a half-effort. He’d rather give you zero than give 50 percent.

“All I had to do when he came to me was to find a way for him to get passionate about the things he needed to be successful.”

Glenn turned him onto eating better, resting his body, and devoting more of that passion to his schoolwork. Jeudy got so into his grades that one semester, when he figured he had clinched straight A’s for the first time, he was aghast when his classical literature grade came back with a B-plus.

“He called me, he’s going crazy,” Glenn recalled.

“She changed my grade,” Jeudy said.

“Don’t worry about it,” his coach replied.

“Naw, man, this is my first time, you’ve gotta call her, you’ve gotta call her.”

Glenn did. They checked the coursework, and it turned out the lit teacher’s math was off. Jeudy got his A.

Fixing the diet? Like with many teens, that one took a little more persistence.

“Chicken fingers were better than hot chips,” Glenn laughed. “So that was the first habit: We would probably have chicken fingers everywhere we went. And subs were a little better (than fast food). He didn’t go straight into being a ‘fruit’ guy. That was a little tougher.”

‘Probably a better pro’

Glenn and Broncos wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni go way back. The latter recruited Jeudy — unsuccessfully — to Tennessee.

Now he’s got his guy. And to hear Maryland coach Mike Locksley tell it, he’s got a gold mine.

“I’ll say this, because I know he won’t,” Locksley, the former Alabama co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach, said of Jeudy.

“In the NFL game, it’s different for a receiver than in the college game. In college, being able to get jammed and bumped for the whole time the ball is in the air, they really have to work hard to create space and separation. And I think in the NFL, given that after 5 yards they can’t get their hands on you, I think he’ll probably get to be a better pro than he was a college guy, because of the rules of the pro game.”

As a college guy, Jeudy was a beast. A Biletnikoff Award winner after his sophomore season in 2018, the Florida native’s 26 career touchdown receptions at Bama rank second all-time in school history behind Amari Cooper’s 31. And his average of 17.2 yards per catch with the Crimson Tide ranks second in Alabama annals behind only Ozzie Newsome’s 20.3 per grab.

Early on, Tide coach Nick Saban and Locksley would notice him drifting, especially on run plays. So the latter wrote up a contract for Jeudy and the two of them signed it, demanding 100% for all four quarters and in practice.

“When you put your name on something, I tell all my players, when you put your name on something, that’s your bond,” Locksley explained. “It wasn’t because he wasn’t capable of doing it. (We) just used that as an example of, ‘When you write your name on something, that’s basically your bond. You’re going to be accountable for it in life.’”

It’s one thing to run great. It’s another to run with greatness. The jukes were a gift from above, but refined by backyard games with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who grew up nearby. He’s worked out with former NFL greats such as Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson.

Glenn loves telling the story of the time Jeudy, then a high school junior, tore it up at the Under Armour Future 50 Experience, where another legend, Deion Sanders, was coaching the defensive backs.

While Jeudy was schooling dance partner after dance partner, Glenn got out his phone and started Googling the last names of the dudes his guy was turning into toast.

“It was like, ‘he’s the best cornerback in California,’” Glenn laughed. “And ‘he’s the best cornerback in Georgia.’ And he really got under Deion’s skin the way he was (crushing) his DBs. I called one of my coaches back in Deerfield Beach and I’m like, ‘Jerry is good, for real. I know we messed around a lot, but he is for real.’ It’s like there was almost a white light that came over him, and I looked at him like, ‘Oh, snap.’”

Fast forward to last August, when Waters and Duke were playing Alabama in Atlanta. The Tide isolated Jeudy on a quick screen to the short side of the field, the right hashmark. Waters, his old sparring partner and Fire pal, was the only defender in the zip code for a few seconds.

“Nobody can run as fast forward and just stop on a dime like that,” Waters explained. “Down there, that’s how they teach you to run routes. He’s really mastered it. Nobody runs routes like that in a game. Trust me.”

He’s got the skid marks to prove it. Jeudy took the ball with his back turned, a few yards behind the line of scrimmage. Then he sprung, like a viper, wheeling over his left shoulder without breaking stride.

Waters got close enough to touch a shoulder before Jeudy zipped away, following blockers up the alley for a 21-yard touchdown.

“At his size, you don’t see too many guys who can turn and shift like that,” Waters said. “He can completely change direction in a hurry. You’ve got to put a little trick in there and try to slow him down so that everybody else can grab him. That’s the best way to get him.”

Johnny Ringo feels you. And he doesn’t take prisoners.