Even after Jaylen Mbakwe’s first season with Alabama football, Gabrielle Willis, his mother, can’t help but look back.
Willis harkens back the same story she told in Mbakwe’s commitment announcement video: how her son would always ask for action figures, football helmets and race cars growing up, how he would transform each into his personal football roster, running his own plays, forcing each car or action figure to execute whatever play he wanted.
It didn’t stop there. When Mbakwe was in preschool and Willis was helping him learn to count, she would use numbers on football jerseys to help her lessons stick.
“He eats, sleeps, breathes football,” Willis told the Tuscaloosa News.
Through Mbakwe’s tumultuous offseason, one centered around a 24-hour stint in the transfer portal and a position change from Alabama cornerback to wide receiver, Willis said Mbakwe’s relationship with football, and his relationship with those around him has not changed.
“I tell everybody all the time, I don’t say this because I’m his mom. It takes me out of the mom equation,” Willis said. “He’s really a good person. He has a good heart, and he’s going to help anybody that’s in need or is willing to teach anybody who doesn’t really understand what their position is on the field, or help someone get better.
“I don’t think that he has changed. He has been the same Jaylen all along.”
Jaylen Mbakwe ‘is going to be that deal’
Willis didn’t watch much football until her son began playing at age 5. But it didn’t take long for her to realize Mbakwe “is going to be that deal.”
Mbakwe was always eager to improve, she said, to fix mistakes, attributes that have carried over to Alabama.
Playing both wide receiver and defensive back at Clay-Chalkville High School, and with his move to quarterback as a senior,…
Source link : https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/sports/college/football/2025/04/07/how-jaylen-mbakwe-mother-viewed-son-freshman-alabama-football-season/82760921007/
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Publish date : 2025-04-07 09:03:00
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