At 4 years old, all Jake Coker wanted to be was a country star.
In his family’s home in Mobile, Jake’s mom, Michelle Spires, often walked into a room to find her son standing on chair, belting out the lyrics to Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love it,” as if he had an audience.
“It was hysterically funny,” she said, remembering her son’s performances. “He loved that song.”
Now, standing at 6’5” and 232 pounds, Jake would break that same chair if he tried standing up and dancing on it, but he still likes to sing and dance to country music – if you’re lucky, you may catch him out and about doing so on a night off.
Instead of making himself at home on a chair-turned-stage, Jake is making himself comfortable on a 100-yard field, reading coverages and calling plays as Alabama’s starting quarterback, more Tom Brady than Tim McGraw.
***
It didn’t help Jake’s singing career that he was raised in a family full of athletes, not entertainers. His mom was, and still is, one of the best competitive tennis players in Mobile. Whenever Jake is home, she likes to challenge him to a quick match.
“It never goes well for him,” she said. “He thinks just because I’m a woman and older than him that he can beat me, but that will never happen.”
Then, there are his three siblings – all athletic. Before graduating in 2010, Jake’s older brother Patrick played free safety at the Air Force Academy, where his younger sister Shelley currently plays volleyball. The youngest, Peyton, is playing basketball at St. Paul’s Episcopal School, like his brother did before him.
Peyton may be younger, but he’s caught up to his big brother in height.
“Jake asks him to please squat down in picture,” Spires said. “He doesn’t like his baby brother being taller. It’s pretty funny.”
The family is a close-knit one, even when spread apart. With Patrick facing deployment with the Air Force, Spires rallied the children for a reunion in Athens, a surprise for Jake. Under the watch of his family, Jake completed 11 of 16 passes for 190 yards and one touchdown.
The 38-10 win may be a great memory, but being able to be with his big brother, his hero growing up, was more important than any final score to both him and the rest of his family.
“It was a really, really special moment,” Spires said.
***
Jake’s family would have never been able to see him play football at the collegiate level if it weren’t for the University of South Alabama’s current track and field coach Paul Brueske. In eighth grade, Jake debated taking a break from football, but thankfully, for the sake of Alabama’s future, he didn’t follow through with that decision.
As a former assistant football coach at St. Paul’s, Brueske was able to get to Jake before he could leave the sport, and kept his request simple: he needed a quarterback, and he wanted Jake to fill the roll.
“He just decided he wanted to play quarterback, so he did,” Spires said. “He practiced and practiced.”
Once his talent kicked in, it was time to embrace and enhance it, so David Morris, founder of QB Country, a year-round quarterback training and developing program, began working with the young athlete.
“The high school Jake was a lot like his is now – real hard-working, real humble and loves the competition,” he said.
Morris also trained former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron since he was a freshman at St. Paul’s, the same school Jake attended.
The pair – Morris and Jake – continue to work together only during the off-season, since Jake’s busy enough, getting his masters and playing Alabama football. That doesn’t mean they don’t stay in contact, however.
***
Morris looks at Jake, along with other quarterbacks he trains, like a younger brother.
“We still jab at each other here and there just to talk a little smack from a distance,” he said. “It’s fun, though.”
When the two get together, the smack talk doesn’t stop. The pair will normally get into a heated game of QB Horse – similar to the basketball game.
“I beat him most of the times,” Morris joked, despite the evenly distributed results. “As he got a lot older, bigger and stronger, he started winning more, which I guess was kind of fun for me because I hope he’s beating the coach.”
As evidenced by his 81-yard touchdown pass to Calvin Ridley during the Arkansas game, Jake has a cannon for an arm. Alabama defensive lineman Dalvin Tomlinson has personally felt the heat of Jake’s hand during practice. He recalled it as probably the hardest pass he’s seen thrown – mainly because he felt it.
“It was point-blank range and I blocked it,” he said. “My hand was numb for a few days.”
Jake knows his strength. He’s tried using it to his advantage against Morris.
“He likes to challenge me with the deep ball kind of stuff, but I don’t let that happen,” Morris said.
***
Sometimes the strength of his arm gets him in trouble on the field. He has thrown six interceptions in four games, two last week against Arkansas. One was a poor decision, Alabama coach Nick Saban said, but one was not. Spires also holds no punches when discussing the game with her son.
“We’re like, ‘Sorry, you cannot do that. You cannot do that. That was not a good decision, Jake,’ ” she said.
Each and every time, Jake responds, “Yes, ma’am.”
The longer someone is a quarterback, they are bound to notch mistakes, but that doesn’t mean Jake is OK with the errors. It’s how he handles himself after a mistake that is key. Yes, he gets mad at himself, but he does not let it affect him or his team.
“He’s just always positive, no matter what it is,” teammate Richard Mullaney said. “He’ll take the blame for it, I know he will, but it’s not always his fault. He’s always positive, always talking to us.”
***
Being true to his teammates is something Jake has always held his ground on – that’s why he stayed at Florida State University as a backup to Heisman-winner Jameis Winston as long as he did. He gave the team his word.
“One thing he did do that people don’t realize, when he didn’t win the starting job at Florida State, we had a long conversation,” said his high school coach at St. Paul’s, Steve Mask. “He said, ‘Coach, I’ll stick with this. I gave my word to my teammates that I would be here.’ He supported Winston, but in the end, he needed to something better for him.”
Jake played in seven games at Florida State, completing 18 of 36 passes for 250 yards. His first collegiate touchdown pass was a 19-yard pass to Kelvin Benjamin against Savannah State, but Winston continued to hold the starting position.
“I was real proud of Jake for the way he handled that situation in not winning the job but being a great teammate and being a leader,” Morris said. “When he transferred to Alabama, it made sense.”
It’s not to say that he didn’t enjoy his time at Florida State because he did. He made good memories and good friends that he still stays in contact with who came and surprised him earlier this year. They cheered him on, albeit still decked out in Florida State spirit wear, as he got off the bus after a game.
He was a good teammate, but eventually, he wanted more and wanted to move forward in his football career. So he and his mom talked to coach Jimbo Fisher and came up with a plan that enabled Coker to be eligible for two more years while playing football somewhere else – if he wanted to.
“I told him, ‘If you want to go play football somewhere else, do it for you. Don’t do it for anyone else but you,’ ” Spires said.
Three years later, he graduated from Florida State with a bachelor’s degree in social science and is now a graduate student at Alabama pursuing his master’s.
***
It was a shock to many, but not to those that know him, when Jake scrambled his way into the end zone on a three-yard run. Before he decided to pursue collegiate football at Florida State, he also played basketball, and it’s safe to say he was pretty good at it too. As a senior, Jake was named the Mobile County Class 54 basketball player of the year.One of Alabama’s top running backs, Kenyan Drake was even impressed by Jake’s ability to weave his 6’5” figure through defenders.
“It’s interesting to watch him run,” he said. “I just stand behind him and watch in awe as he runs sometimes.”
Jake finished ahead of Drake against Ole Miss with seven carries for 58 yards with a long of 26 yards. He has always been able to run, however. Mask said he ran the ball in high school a lot, if not more than he does now.
His basketball skills still come in handy when he needs to make his way down the field or if he needs to show off to his teammates off the field.
Earlier this year, Jake and other Alabama quarterbacks played some wide receivers in a game of basketball at the Student Recreation Center. Spires warned against it since he hadn’t played in so long and he could have hurt himself.
Jake sent his mom a text afterwards saying the quarterbacks won and, to his mom’s relief, there were no injuries to report. His teammates were shocked to see him play as well as he did – and, as usual, he made his mama proud.
***
Academically, he’s working on his master’s degree. Athletically, he’s earned his position at starting quarterback, but Spires is more proud of the man he has become than his physical accomplishments.
“He’s weathered the storm,” she said. “I told him, ‘Sometimes, you got to be in the dark to appreciate the light.’ Now, here we are.”
Jake’s humility is one for the books. His mother admires it. His personal quarterback coach Morris admires it. His former high school coach Mask admires it.
From a father’s perspective, Mask said Jake is “the kind of kid, if you had a daughter, you’d want her to marry him.” From a coach’s perspective, Jake is reliable and does what he is told.
“He was the first kid in the building and the last kid out of the building,” Mask said. “He was the kind of kid that would make sure all the chairs were folded up and the locker room was all swept up.”
On top of that, he was and continues to be a competitor. During his junior year, there was a faculty vs. student basketball game. Mask said Jake was going bonkers when his team was losing, reflecting the fire that ignites inside him during anything involving competition.
“I believe Jake would dunk over his mother if he had to,” he said.
But it’s not competitiveness in the negative sense. He’s not one to get up in someone else’s face and cause trouble, but he’s able to motivate his offense.
“Before, he was more a quiet, reserved guy, but now, he has a lot more fire on the field and that is something we rally around with him being out quarterback,” Drake said.
Now that’s he’s played two games from start to finish – Georgia and Arkansas – Jake is becoming more comfortable and in result, gaining more confidence, and it’s been noticed by his teammates and Saban.
But what’s most important to Spires is that her son is happy. He was always a happy baby, a happy kid and now, a happy adult – and a happy child means happy mom.
“Things are falling into place for him,” she said. “As his mama, I’m really happy about that.”
***
Despite all the moments under the Bryant-Denny stadium lights, the little country-singing boy Jake was at the age of 4 lives on.
A familiar song came on during Patrick’s wedding rehearsal in July. There was no need for the family to wonder who requested it – Jake never really moved on from his Tim McGraw phase.
“He wishes, I think, he was Tim McGraw still,” his mom said.
Music isn’t the only country aspect in Jake’s life – the others are just more easily seen than his singing and dancing.
Jake and his younger brother are heavily involved in raising the deer on their family’s farm – they’re deer breeders. It’s a complicated process, but they love it nonetheless. Especially for Jake, while at school at school, the farm is his getaway place from everything going on around him.
“If he’s not at school and he’s not studying film, and if he can get away from Tuscaloosa, he comes to the farm,” Spires said. “That’s really where he wants to be.”
The farm is a gathering place for Jake’s close-knit family. They all hunt and fish, but most importantly, they enjoy being in the country where everybody pitches in in order to get things done. Jake missed planting season this year – and it was a big one, Spires said – so the family back home missed him, But they know he’ll be back soon.
“They do have an off-weekend coming up and I think I know exactly which tree he is going to be in with his bow,” Spires said. “That’s what he enjoys doing.”
Coker even said it himself: “If I could hunt and fish, I’d do that anytime I could. Outside of football, that’s about it.”
If his mom is right – and mom’s usually are – Jake will be in his crimson and white No. 14 jersey this Saturday against Texas A&M, but come Alabama’s by-week after Tennessee, he’ll trade in his jersey, cleats and football for some camouflage, cowboy boots and his bow – and maybe a little Tim McGraw.
