SUPER 7: Cobb should feel at home in 3A championship game
Sophomore Jeremiah Cobb has been on Bryant-Denny Stadium’s field thanks to visits to Nick Saban’s football camps. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
Catholic has never made it to the Super 7 Championships before, but it doesn’t mean the Knights’ tailback isn’t familiar with Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Sophomore Jeremiah Cobb spent five consecutive summers at Alabama, participating in Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban’s summer football camps.
“I’ve played on the field,” he said. “It’s nice. I went to Nick Saban’s football camp for running backs and won a couple of awards. I was the best running back out of all the running backs there. I went for five years, the first one when I was 12. The last one I couldn’t go to because of COVID.”
Cobb and the Knights (12-2) will take on defending 2A state champion Fyffe (14-0) in the 3A finals at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Thursday at 10 a.m.
And while the Red Devils surprised no one in making their fifth trip to the finals in six years, the Knights would have been a longshot at best, replacing some key players such as quarterback Christian Ivey and tailback Darrell Gibson who led Catholic to the quarterfinals before a 21-0 shutout at UMS-Wright.
Cobb had filled in for the injured Gibson at times – rushing for 134 yards against Beauregard and 98 against Ashford the following week – but the quarterfinal matchup with UMS-Wright sent a clear message to Cobb and many of his teammates that they needed more work before taking the next step in the playoffs.
“I needed to get bigger and work more in the weight room to get stronger before I could actually play with the varsity,” he said.
Cobb had arrived at Catholic in 2018, ineligible to play after transferring from Baldwin Middle Magnet School. He was on track to attend LAMP but elected to attend Catholic instead.
“They didn’t have football, so I came to Catholic,” Cobb said. “I came to Catholic to play football.”
Because he wasn’t eligible to play, he worked with the varsity on the scout team, giving him invaluable preparation for the future.
“Actually, the first time we noticed him was when he was an eighth grader and he practiced with us,” Catholic coach Aubrey Blackwell said. “He was ineligible, but he practiced with the varsity group. He ran scout running back every single week and we got to see a little bit of what he could do then.”
After playing some as a backup to Gibson in 2019, he set his mind of taking over the starting role at tailback in 2020.
“I just wanted to go out and play the best I could,” said Cobb, when asked if he set any goals for this season.
“I’ll tell you what he told me,” Blackwell chimed in. “He wanted to break all (Gibson’s) records. He may not tell you that, but that’s what he told everybody in the locker room.”
And while he had the benefit of two extra games, Cobb’s performance last week at Montgomery Academy gave him 1,912 yards this season, breaking the single-season mark of 1,875 yards set by Gibson as a junior in 2018. Cobb won’t reach the other two marks – single-season attempts of 261 set by Gibson in 2018 or single-season rushing touchdowns on 23 set by Tyler Price in 2016 – but he still has two more seasons to go.
But in a season where Blackwell wasn’t really sure what to expect from his starting tailback, Cobb has averaged nine yards per carry (1,912 yards on 212 carries) and 18 touchdowns in spite of quarterback Caleb McCreary’s record-setting performance through the air and talented receivers DJ Carter and Myles Butler taking away some of Cobb’s offensive touches.
“I think the biggest thing is he’s learning the holes and creating the toughness that he takes to play football at a consistent level and carry it 20 times a game,” Blackwell said.
The fact that Cobb ended up at Catholic is not by accident. His grandfather, Bernie Fields, was a record-setting Catholic tailback in the late 1970s and a group of uncles – Billy Fields, Jay Fields, Joe Fields, Jack Fields and David Fields – were stars at Catholic as well in the 1960s and 1970s.
That’s why this trip to the finals means a little more to Cobb as this generation of Knights accomplished something no previous generation had.
“It means a lot,” Cobb said. “My grandfather always talks about all the yards he got and how little he was when he played. He always brings it up, ‘You finally got me on yards.’”
He accomplished something else as well. No Catholic team had ever reached the state championship game in football before this year’s squad.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Cobb said. “We just worked harder than everybody else because we really wanted it.”