Article on Marcel Jones

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

Linky-Doo

 

Before this whole Nebraska football adventure, Marcel Jones wanted to be a young Shaq.

 

Imagine taking your Hoop it Up squad to the concrete courts and finding a 6-foot-7, 310-pound Jones waiting for you in the paint.

 

Talk about your match-up problem.

 

“I didn’t really think about football too much because I came in with a basketball heart,” Jones said. “So I guess a lot of people just kept telling me you got the football body. So I finally gave into them and said, ‘All right, I’ll take this route.’”

 

But the basketball footwork sticks with you, even in the thick of fall football camp.

 

And teammates notice it, especially when a redshirt freshman offensive lineman like Jones is going one-on-one against a senior defensive end like Barry Turner and holding his own.

 

“He’s got some of the best footwork I’ve seen,” said junior center Jacob Hickman. “He looks like a basketball player.”

 

He also looks like a pretty good football player to Husker coaches, who can’t say enough good things about the job he has done working with the first-string this fall camp.

 

With Jaivorio Burkes having missed all of camp to this point with high blood pressure, Jones has taken his place at right tackle and has been anything but a weak link.

 

“We talked in the spring how he was going to give Jaivorio a run for his money and he’s really lived up to that so far,” Hickman said.

 

Husker head coach Bo Pelini offered similar praises after Tuesday’s practice, while also expressing optimism about the return of the sophomore Burkes.

 

“We think he’s pretty close,” Pelini said of Burkes.

 

It’s a friendly competition between Jones and Burkes, who treat each other like brothers.

 

“We’re really tight. He helps me a lot,” Jones said. “Now, that he’s out, he’s watching my footwork and letting me know, ‘Hey, you got to get there. You got to keep pushing.’

 

“I know it’s not easy for him. He tells me every day how he misses the game. On the O-line, we miss him a lot.”

 

From Phoenix, Jones was torn between NU and Arizona State when it came time to pick his college.

 

It was hardly an easy thing to go so far from home, but he knew of the tradition of Husker offensive lines of the past.

 

“I was like, ‘I got to be that. I got to get to that position.’”

 

And while the flattery from Husker teammates and coaches is good to hear, Jones is the first to say he still has plenty of work to do.

 

Perhaps the biggest thing has been trying to adjust to such a vast playbook.

 

“In high school, your playbook is about a notebook size,” Jones said. “Out here, your playbook is about the same size as a dictionary.”

 

So Jones is still trying to catch up to the older guys. Granted, the learning curve has been made easier by the way the veterans and younger guys on the line have connected.

 

Seniors like Lydon Murtha, Matt Slauson and Mike Huff have done a good job of pulling the younger guys up, Jones said.

 

“They know we work as a unit and we can’t have one guy straggling.”

 

Certainly you don’t want to lose any guys for practices, and especially one of Burkes’ talent. But Hickman said Jones is just an example of how the Husker line now has the kind of depth where there’s no drop-off at a position if a guy goes down.

 

It’s probably the best depth he’s seen on the line since he’s been here.

 

“We’ve always had guys who could shift around and save us, but if we had a couple injuries, we’d be in trouble,” Hickman said. “But right now, we don’t have to shift anybody. We have enough guys to where if anybody gets hurt, it’s no problem. The next guy can come in and we’ll be fine.”

 

And it doesn’t hurt if that guy coming in has Jones’ brainpower. He carries a 3.56 GPA and was named to the Big 12 Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll each of first his two semesters.

 

A smart guy with good footwork and 300-plus pounds equals an offensive line coach’s dream.

 

Jones said he just considers it a privilege to be working with the No. 1 line.

 

“I’m just trying my hardest to not let them down,” he said.

[huskernumerouno]

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