A look at Anthony Averett's soft-spoken road to stardom at Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Anthony Averett doesn’t know where he got the soft, mellow voice that earned him the nickname of “Smooth” among Alabama coaches and teammates. One thing for sure, it didn’t come from his family.

“I’ve always talked to him about speaking up,” said Carmen Davis, Averett’s mother. “He’ll be on the phone and I’m always like ‘I can’t hear you.’ I still tell him that to this day. He definitely doesn’t get the soft voice from me.

“He’s always been like that. He’ll say, ‘Mom, I’m talking loud.’ But we are like ‘No, you’re not because we can’t hear you.’ That’s just who he is, it’s who he’s been for 22 years now.”

Averett smiles and throws back his head when asked about the phone calls home. He’s tried to explain it to mom a million times, but what’s one more.

“I always joke with her that my voice is just too deep,” Averett said in an exclusive interview with BamaInsider.com. “Every time I talk on the phone, it just sounds like a mumble.”

That quiet voice is a fitting narration to one of Alabama’s unheralded success stories. Over his five seasons with the Crimson Tide, Averett’s name has not always generated a lot of noise. However, when it comes to what he means for this season’s team, you’d be hard-pressed to find many players who have more say in Alabama’s success.

“There’s no better teammate than Anthony,” said fellow Alabama cornerback Levi Wallace. “He’s one of my best friends on the team. He’s a great corner, great competitor, great friend. It’s unreal to have someone like him who is always talking me up.”

Alabama’s an anomaly. The Crimson Tide has two starting defensive backs from New Jersey in its secondary, but that’s far from the norm among SEC schools.

Averett, a native of the southern New Jersey city of Woodbury, sometimes reminisces with fellow Garden State native Minkah Fitzpatrick about some of the lost amenities from back home. At the top of the list is Wawa, a convenience store out of New Jersey that, according to its website, serves a wide variety of coffees and hoagies.

Of course to a New Jersey native, it’s a bit more than that.

“It pretty much has everything that you need,” Averett said with a longing smile. “There’s a thing called Super Wawa, it has a gas station. I do like that they pump your gas for you up there. That’s definitely a Jersey thing.”

It’s true, Averett is still a Jersey boy at heart, but his dream was always to play in the SEC. Most kids from the northeast hope to play for Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State, but Averett had different aspirations.

“That was always his goal was to play in the SEC because he always wanted to play with the best and against the best,” Davis said. “The SEC was always the best in his eyes, and that was always the dream.”

Despite his desire to travel south for college, Averett never really envisioned playing for Alabama. By that time, head coach Nick Saban had already turned the Crimson Tide into a perennial contender, but for whatever reason, Alabama wasn't really on Averett’s radar.

That soon changed after Alabama’s famed “Game of the Century” against LSU in 2011. Primarily an offensive star in high school, Averett credits that game for sparking his interest in defense. After watching the Crimson Tide and Tigers battle back in forth in a 9-6 overtime win for LSU, the speedy playmaker started thinking maybe those types of games were more his style.

Following Alabama’s 21-0 victory over LSU in the national title game two months later, he was hooked for good.

“That’s the best defense I’ve seen with my eyes,” Averett said. “Just watching them twice what they did in the first and second game against LSU, that was just crazy.”

Still, Alabama always seemed like a long shot. Averett remembers turning to his mom after the national championship game and questioning why they’d need to recruit in New Jersey with all the talent down South. It also didn’t help that Woodbury High School wasn’t particularly known for pumping out SEC talent.

That too would change.

“It’s funny because like two weeks later I saw a guy in my school and he had a Bama A on his chest,” Averett said. “My school I was like the only one, so once you see that it’s like, ‘Woah this is different.”'

The word that best describes Averett is tattooed across his right forearm. In cursive lettering and in the center of a football it reads “Humble.” While that might match his personality, Averett’s numbers on the field have never been modest.

During his senior season of high school, Averett ran for 1,278 yards and 15 touchdowns while passing for 836 yards and 14 more scores through the air. On defense, he recorded a team-high 106 tackles, 12 pass breakups and five interceptions.

However, it was track that got him noticed by scouts early on.

During his junior year of high school, Averett won the state title in long jump, high jump and the 100-meter dash. Earlier that year, he posted a jump of 25-feet, 2 1/2 inches. That put him second to nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis in the state record books.

Those who know Averett swear he would have broken Lewis’ record if he would have stayed for the spring of his senior season instead of enrolling at Alabama. Either way, you’d be hard-pressed to hear any of the hype coming from the highly touted athlete himself.

Averett was offered by Alabama in March of his junior year and committed a month later after attending the Crimson Tide’s spring game.

“It’s always been like a family here, it’s very personable,” Averett said. “I visited a few other schools, but I didn’t get that same type of vibe. I got a great vibe here and it just felt like home.”

It might have felt that way, but Averett’s friends and family were quick to remind him that he would still be 14 hours away from New Jersey. It was also worth noting that despite his talents, the three-star athlete was joining an already stacked roster.

“I just made sure that my husband and I really talked to him about it,” Davis said. “There were some things he had to realize. Obviously, you're going far away from home, No. 1. No. 2 is ‘You’re going to compete against a whole lot of Anthony’s. This is something that you’re going to have to get your mind mentally prepared for because you may go and you may not play right away.’”

Averett took his mother’s advice and thought about the decision carefully. Although, after receiving a Skype call from Alabama head coach Nick Saban a few weeks later his mind was made up.

Anthony Averett undercut the route and dashed in front of his receiver to pick off a pass during practice his sophomore season at Alabama. It was the kind of play he was known for back home and the type of display of athleticism that had so often garnered praise from previous coaches.

“I thought I made a good play, this is when I was young, but I thought I made a good play,” Averett said looking back. “It was an interception, so just the outcome. That was all I was thinking about, the outcome.”

Saban thought otherwise.

“He still got on my butt,” Averett said. “Just ‘You had bad technique, that’s not how we do it around here.’ He’s just getting on me and I’m sitting back thinking, I made the interception, how is this bad?”

A veteran of the defense, Averett now sees what his head coach was going on about. Back then Averett was still learning how to play the position. Before coming to Alabama he had only played safety and wasn’t used to the intricacies of playing cornerback.

Averett followed his head coach’s perfectionist approach through a series of “little steps,” including countless hours of critique and film study. The process required several more encounters with Saban and, most of all, plenty of patience.

Embracing “The Process” as it’s called at Alabama isn’t easy. After redshirting his first year, Averett played in just one game his freshman season. Adversity struck again the following year when he suffered a partially torn bicep during one of the Crimson Tide’s preseason scrimmages and then hyperextended his elbow three weeks later, limiting him to just six games.

Averett’s patience finally paid off last season as he locked down the starting spot opposite of Marlon Humphrey on Alabama’s defense. After a slow start in the season opener against Southern California, he caught fire, finishing the season with a team-high eight pass breakups.

He has almost matched that total this year, tallying seven breakups through 10 games, including two in last week’s 31-24 victory over Mississippi State. More importantly, he’s become one of the most influential members of the Crimson Tide’s locker room.

“He's kind of a silent sort of leader, doesn’t say a lot, very quiet in his demeanor and how he goes about things, but I think well-respected by his teammates because of the job he does and the body of work he’s been able to create and the consistency he’s been able to play with,” Saban said. “So I know I have a lot of respect for him. I always have respect for guys who can focus on development and stick with it, and persevere through their career.”

When describing what it means to be a lockdown corner earlier this season, Wallace gave three examples. First was Darelle Revis, next was Richard Sherman and the third was Averett. While Averett might not yet be at the level of those other two NFL cornerbacks, there are several who feel he will be soon.

Averett is listed as the sixth best draft-eligible cornerback and is projected to be selected in either the second or third round of next year’s NFL Draft, according to WalterFootball.com. Last week, the website reported that one team source thought he might even end up in the first round. After all, during his sophomore season he was clocked with a 4.27 time in the 40-yard dash, the fastest time on Alabama’s roster.

Averett calls that praise a “blessing.” Ironically enough, the soft-spoken defensive back's favorite player growing up was boisterous NFL great Deion Sanders. The thought of himself being at that level brings on a humble smile before he quickly deflects back to the present.

There’s still work to be done.

No. 1 Alabama (10-0, 7-0 in the SEC) will take on FCS opponent Mercer (5-5) on Saturday at 11 a.m. CT on SEC Network. The game will also be “Senior Day” and Averett’s last game inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“Sometimes I still can’t believe it,” Davis said. “I called Anthony and I was like, ‘This is really crazy right?’”

Averett responded in his signature soft, modest tone.

“Yeah mom, it is.”

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