Jordan Davis | From All-District Safety to Scholarship Receiver

It is strange not to know about a player in the two-deep. Mainly because we track these players through their high school careers and then we all feel like we have a pretty good handle on them once they arrive on campus. I think that probably rings true for every player except inside receiver, Jordan Davis. He's the only relatively recent walk-on that has a spot on the two deep, behind Jace Amaro at an inside receiver spot.

Davis was a senior with two other more well-known recruits, Matt Joeckel and Luke Joeckel. Both Matt and Luke went on to Texas A&M, with Luke being the second overall pick in the NFL draft this past year. One other quick note is that Arlington played Odessa in 2009 in a playoff game. Playing on that Odessa team was Texas Tech's very own Bradley Marquez, who had to have been a sophomore at the time, and what I think was probably Bradley's older brother, Ronnie Marquez, who had 12 rushes for 170 yards.

Davis only had 1 catch for 16 yards in that game, a game where Arlington scored 72 points. Probably the reason why is because Davis was mainly a safety, I think. In fact, Davis earned 1st Team 5A-4 Defense honors at safety (Tony Morales earned 1st team offense as a junior). Davis then signed with Southwestern Oklahoma as part of their 2010 class, and is listed as a receiver there. There are two interesting things about that last article: it says it is from January 12, 1971 and it says that Davis is from Pantego, Texas. I didn't know that Pantego was even a place and it is a small town very close to Arlington with only about 2,400 people that stay there.

I can't really find anything about Davis' time at Southwestern Oklahoma except that he played in all 11 games, and he caught 20 passes for 225 yards and 3 toucdowns. This was actually good for 4th on his team for total catches and yards and the team lead in receiving touchdowns. The team as a whole passed for just a shade under 2,000 yards for the year.

In 2011, Davis transferred to Texas Tech. Perhaps he thought that he could do more. Davis made noise last summer, and then head coach Tommy Tuberville said it would be hard to keep Davis off the field:

"He said, ‘You’re going to have a tough time keeping Jordan off the field,’" Tommy Tuberville said, recalling the conversation with his son. "He catches it. He’s physical. He’s gained a lot of weight. The thing about it is, when you get out here and your quarterbacks know you’re going to catch it when they throw it, who are you going to throw it to?

"You’ve got to earn that reputation, especially as an inside receiver. It means in practice you catch the ball."

Davis didn't see the field really at all, or at least not what I was sorta I was expecting given that article. Of course, I don't really blame Davis or Tuberville or Neal Brown for Davis not seeing much time last year as Davis had Austin Zouzalik, Alex Torres and Tyson Williams as seniors last year and they were all in front of him. That was a lot of depth and by the end of the year last year, Davis only caught 7 passes for 58 yards.

This year, Davis finally earned that scholarship. Now head coach Kliff Kingsbury said some of the things about Davis that was said the last year:

"He impressed me the entire spring from day one," Kingsbury said Thursday. "He’s a great route runner. Real savvy. He has some of that (Danny) Amendola, (Wes) Welker, as far as at the top of his routes. So I’m excited about him."

It is probably pretty easy to dismiss a guy like Davis because the odds just aren't in your favor, but now we've got a situation where two coaching staffs have said similar things. That doesn't happen by mistake.