For JaMarcus Shephard, Alabama football is “war,” whether it’s on the practice field or on Saturdays. And with that intensity and physicality comes injuries like the lower-body ailment that ended Cole Adams’ season.
It’s part of the game, Shephard said. And with that comes a lesson, one the Alabama wide receivers coach has repeatedly conveyed to his group.
“Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready,” Shephard said. “That’s really been the lesson for them. When your moment comes, you better have prepared in a way that you are at an All-American level of preparation. That’s all I can tell them to do. You never know when your time is coming. You never know.”
It’s what Shephard saw immediately from Ryan Williams.
In one of the Alabama freshman wide receiver’s first practices, Shephard remembers veteran members of his room flocking toward him, saying, ‘Hey, get the ball to No. 2.’
“That’s the thing about here at the University of Alabama,” Shephard said. “These guys, they recognize who is playing at a high level.”
Williams and Germie Bernard have done the heavy lifting in the passing game, combining for 65 of the team’s 146 completions for 1,165 of the team’s 2,033 yards receiving and nine of the team’s 13 total touchdown receptions.
But those two aren’t the only ones producing.
Shephard was focused on the ones that people may not see. Players like Caleb Odom: the former four-star tight end recruit-turned-wide receiver whose growth has been “exponential” and “reliable.”
It’s other young players who are “getting a ton of reps,” receivers that are “consistently getting feedback” on how to improve and how to see the field.
“When you talk to all of these recruits, you know, we played a lot of young guys on this football team,” Shephard said. “A lot of young players have played on this football team, and they’ve played at a high level and given us an opportunity to win football games, OK? And that’s part of the development.”
No matter who is taking the majority of the starting reps for Alabama at wide receiver, whether it’s Williams, Bernard, Kendrick Law or Kobe Prentice, Shephard said the expectation remains the same from the rest of the receiver room with four games left in the regular season.
“They expect each person, whoever’s in there, to play at a high level,” Shephard said. “And so they don’t care who’s doing the work. They just want the work to be done. I don’t really care who pays my bills. I just want my bills paid.”
Alabama will take on LSU at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Tiger Stadium on ABC.
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him atcgay@gannett.com or follow him@_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
