re: Alabama in the NFL

Richard Sherman with some words on Julio being one of the toughest WRs he's ever covered:

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I’ll start with Julio Jones because he can basically do everything. He has great hands, great speed, he can leap up and snatch the ball out of the air — he has the all-around game you want in a wide receiver. There are no weaknesses in his game.

But the thing that really puts him over the top is the fact that he’s a blue-collar player. He doesn’t take plays off. He doesn’t jog on decoy routes. He runs every route at max effort, even when there’s a 100% chance he’s not getting the ball. He blocks on run plays as hard as he expects his teammates to block for him on pass plays. And because he’s always going 100 mph, he doesn’t give you any indicators that might help you decipher whether it’s a run or a pass, or if he’s getting the ball or they’re throwing to the other side of the field. Some guys, when the play is away from them, will fire off the line of scrimmage and then let up.

But not Julio. At the cornerback position, where you’re on the field for every play, he’s a guy who can wear you down over the course of a game.

I won’t go into all the physical tools he has, because we’d be here all day. If you want to see them on display, you don’t need to look any further than the 300-yard game he had against the Panthers earlier this year. Here’s one of his biggest plays from that game.

A guy who can do that, and who refuses to take a play off, presents a pretty unique challenge for any cornerback.

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