Eagles’ Jalen Carter proud of roots in Apopka and … on offense?

Jalen Carter proud of his high school roots … on offense? originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

Ask Jalen Carter what it was like to play on offense at Apopka High School and he’ll tell you it was a lot of fun.

“Running and pulling, going through little small DBs, just pushing them out of the way, opening the lane for those running backs,” Carter remembers. “It was a fun time.”

For him, that is.

Probably not for those little defensive backs he flattened along the way.

At the University of Georgia, Carter became one of the best players in the country as a defensive tackle. He constantly wrecked games for the back-to-back national champions on his way to being drafted by the Eagles as the No. 9 overall pick. But long before then, he began his high school career as an offensive player for the Blue Darters.

“Our program, year in and year out, we average about 10+ wins per year,” said Apopka head coach Jeff Rolson in a phone interview with NBC Sports Philadelphia late last week. “We’re a perennial power. Having said that, it’s not often that we get freshmen who contribute to the varsity. But he came in and he was 270+ pounds. He just looked different.”

When Carter got to Apopka High, Rolson was the defensive coordinator and then-head coach Rick Darlington ran a rare single-wing offense. So when Darlington had this super athletic freshman who forced his way onto the varsity team, he put Carter at H-back, where he could clear the way.

“He played blocking back, which is basically a glorified pulling guard for us,” Rolson said. “But he had hands, he could catch the ball. He started right out of the gate as a freshman and was really a devastating blocker in 2016.”

Carter mostly played in that H-back role for the Blue Darters for his first three seasons and mowed down the competition. While Rolson said Carter didn’t bully his own teammates in practice — they had pretty good players on their own team — it was clear he was in a different category athletically.

“He was a handful and he was special,” Rolson said. “There was no question.”

When Darlington left Apopka before Carter’s senior season, Rolson was promoted to head coach. And the former defensive coordinator finally switched Carter to the defensive line full-time.

What was it like when Carter switched to defense?

“Scary,” his college and now professional teammate Nolan Smith interjected last week at their joint press conference.

Smith wasn’t there, but he’s right.

Scary.

Rolson first got a sense of just how dynamic Carter was going to be as a defensive lineman in a spring jamboree game against William Raines Senior High School of Jacksonville.

“You could tell all the way through that he was a different animal,” Rolson said. “And then when he played that first spring game on defense, he was in the backfield all night. Against a really good football team. The way he could close on the passer, push the pocket, run people down. It was really impressive.

“When you take his numbers into account, a kid that’s benching 400 pounds, squatting 600 pounds and he could windmill dunk and he’d go out there in 7-on-7 on the weekend and really catch the football. You could tell he was a 1 percenter. It was easy to see.”

Carter’s athletic prowess became a thing of legend at Apopka. Students would find highlight catches in 7-on-7s, clips of Carter running over competitors and then there were his feats on the hardwood.

Carter was a really good basketball player too and could even throw down a windmill dunk, something Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni witnessed when the two played H-O-R-S-E during Carter’s pre-draft visit. The ultra-competitive Sirianni quietly took his “H” and the game continued.

Rolson saw the windmill dunk in high school too but didn’t have another favorite memory of Carter’s off-the-field athleticism.

“I was plenty impressed with what he did on the field,” Rolson said. “I didn’t chase that other stuff.”

Yeah, the on-the-field product was plenty impressive.

Carter was a five-star recruit out of high school and chose Georgia over Alabama and Clemson. He ended up becoming a star on a defense full of stars, plenty of them now Eagles. Plenty of analysts called Carter the best overall prospect in this year’s draft class.

The only reason Carter was available for the Eagles with a modest trade-up to No. 9 is likely because of maturity and character concerns, many of which stem from an incident in January. Carter was eventually given 12 months probation and fined $1,000 after pleading no contest to misdemeanor reckless driving and racing in a crash that killed a teammate Devin Willock and a recruiting staff member Chandler Lecroy.

The Eagles went through an exhaustive process to vet Carter and general manager Howie Roseman said their final evaluation was that Carter “was a good fit for us.”

The version of Carter that Rolson knows from Apopka is that of a quiet kid, introspective, intense on the field. Rolson has stayed in touch with Carter throughout the years and Carter was even back on the high school campus the week before the draft. He told Rolson he really wanted to land in Philadelphia.

Last summer, Carter sponsored a youth camp in his hometown — his mom Toni Brown helped run it — and plans on doing it again this summer.

Rolson doesn’t think the Eagles will have any off-field issues with Carter. While he may be a bit biased, he obviously has plenty of knowledge about his former player.

“I think that’s just a young man being a young man and having some maturing to do, basically, as we all do. We have to grow through life,” Rolson said. “I think he’s grown from that situation. I think you saw when he walked on stage and the emotion he had. Because that’s not him. I’ve never seen that emotion from him before. Just all the weight and pressure probably just fell off his shoulders and he probably breathed a sigh of relief for a new start.

“I think that’s going to be a learning process for him. It’s a sad thing that he had to go through it and it’s a sad thing that people in that event lost their lives. But I think he’s going to grow from it. I think he’s not a kid that I’m concerned about with going out and getting involved with doing the wrong things.”

The most famous football player to come out of Apopka is Warren Sapp, who was well into his Hall of Fame career when Carter was born in 2001. Because they play the same position, there have been plenty of comparisons made over the years.

Carter said he wants to set up a chat with Sapp, who apparently wants that too. Carter is proud of the tradition at his high school and Apopka is plenty proud of him too.

“I just think he’s got a big heart, he’s a good-natured young man,” Rolson said. “I think he’s extremely talented and I think his mother’s done a great job raising him and she’s going to continue to support him. I think he’s got a great family he’s going to head to in Philadelphia. He’s going to be an All-Pro player.”

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