Jeff Davis Sr. still beams with pride when he thinks about a Friday in late September of 2016 when his son, Jeffrey Jr., stepped onto a varsity football field for the first time. Davis Jr., then just an eighth grader, was returning kickoffs and playing safety for West Hartford-based prep school Kingswood Oxford in its season opener at Hamden Hall.
The younger Davis, a Bristol native, was a svelte 5 feet 8, and no more than 160 pounds. He was teammates with high schoolers one could have easily mistaken for grown men, including Koby Quansah, who would go on to be a captain at Duke, and Isaiah Wright, who now plays in the NFL for Washington.
And there was Davis Jr., not long removed from elementary school, a boy among giants.
“I’ll never forget this moment,” Davis Sr. said. “Well over 800 people, could be 1,000 people at the stadium. A 13-year-old kid returning kickoffs. … I was petrified. He thought there were 1,000 people instead of 11 coming at him. In that moment, everyone said, ‘This kid is going to be special.’”
His son remembers that day a bit differently.
“Literally the first play of the season, the ball came to me on the kick return and I fumbled the ball,” Davis Jr. said. “That was kind of like a — I got hit with adversity.”
It’s easy for Davis Jr. to look back at the past and laugh, given where he’s headed in the near future. Now at Bristol Eastern High, Davis committed to play football at Penn State back in April. A three-star cornerback recruit, the slender middle schooler grew into a 6-foot, 170-pound athletic freak, who went from fumbling kickoffs to fielding scholarship offers from some of the country’s top football programs.
Davis Jr. grew up in a sports-oriented household. His father played college football at Western Connecticut under Steve Addazio, who now coaches at Colorado State. Davis Sr. noted how special it was when Addazio, then the head coach of Boston College, offered a scholarship to his son. Davis Jr.’s older sister, Desiree, played college basketball at Southern Connecticut. When the Davis siblings were younger, Desiree and Jeff were incredibly competitive. Davis Sr. noted that Desiree was more “dominant” than his son; she was faster, and brought the best out of her younger brother. Both played for the Plainville Colts, a local youth football team.
But Davis Jr. learned a thing or two about speed from Desiree. Coached by his father, he played running back for the Bristol Bulldogs. He said he would score four to five touchdowns per game, often bolting to the outside and outrunning defenders. Highlight tapes, which still exist on YouTube, corroborate Davis Jr.’s story.
“I almost scored every time I got the ball,” Davis Jr. said. “At that age, I was faster than everybody else. I would just take it outside and score. That’s when I knew that I was clearly better than everybody.”
Davis was faster than everybody, and frankly, still is. His 40-yard-dash time hovers around 4.42 seconds, though his best mark is 4.39. He’s used that blistering speed on the football field and off of it. In addition to playing for Kingswood Oxford’s varsity football and basketball teams starting in eighth grade, he ran varsity track, too. He once outran Brunswick’s Cornelius Johnson, now a wide receiver at Michigan, on the track.
Word of Davis Jr.’s speed reached Michigan’s coaching staff, and they soon offered him a scholarship. He had already received scholarship offers from Syracuse and Boston College, though getting a call from the Wolverines — one of the nation’s top programs — opened his eyes.
“Freshman year, I kind of was thinking I was going to end up at a mid-major D1 school,” Davis Jr. said. “I had aspirations of going Ivy League, that was my main thing. [The Michigan offer] was when I realized I could go to more than just what I had envisioned.”
Stack Williams, a former UConn football player and mentor to Davis Jr., vividly remembers a conversation with Davis Jr. when he was a sophomore. Williams runs Supreme Athlete, a Connecticut-based program with high-profile football clientele. On one of many road trips to college camps, Williams brought Davis Jr. into his hotel room to discuss his goals and aspirations.
He asked Davis Jr. where he thought he’d wind up in college, and as Williams put it, Davis Jr. rattled off a couple of “nonsense schools.”
WIlliams scoffed.
“He didn’t realize how phenomenal he could have been,” Williams said. “I said, ‘You are an FBS, Power Five kid.’ Don’t ever talk to me again about those schools you just mentioned.”
Williams and Supreme Athlete were instrumental in Davis Jr.’s development. He began working with the group as a freshman. Much like his first season at Kingswood Oxford, Davis was once again the puppy to the big dogs of Supreme Athlete, which included Windsor’s Tre Williams, who now plays for Clemson, and Marquis Williams, another Windsor native who plays defensive back for Penn State.
Davis Jr. was not the loud, rah-rah type of player that Williams was used to working with. He was quiet, humble, inquisitive and ready to learn. He came in as a wide receiver, though Williams and Martin Manson, a former player at Southern Connecticut, worked with Davis Jr. on his lateral quickness, a necessary attribute to be a successful defensive back.
But with Davis Jr., it always came back to the speed.
Williams took Davis Jr. to a camp at Penn State in 2018. He ran a 4.50 second 40-yard-dash, which caught the eye of coach Sean Spencer, a Hartford native who now coaches for the New York Giants.
“[Spencer] was like, ‘Yo, who is the Davis kid?’” Williams said. “‘Who is this guy? He’s from where?’ So he circled his name. … And I was like, whoop, I guess we’ve got another one. I guess he’s next up.”
Penn State did not offer Davis Jr. a scholarship at that camp. Davis Jr. and his family took another trip to Penn State in 2019 to meet with coaches and watch the Nittany Lions play Indiana. Head coach James Franklin met with the family and expressed his interest in Davis Jr. Franklin said they’d continue to follow and recruit Davis Jr. through his senior year, though the family left the meeting without a scholarship offer.
Frustration boiled over for Davis Sr.
“I was beside myself,” Davis Sr. said with a laugh. “‘I am done with Penn State!’ How dare we come all the way down here and don’t get an offer? This is ridiculous. I’m making this big scene. My wife is saying, ‘Calm down. Calm down.’”
The Davis family waited for the game to begin when another Penn State coach pulled them aside. Franklin wanted to meet with them one more time, with kickoff nearing closer and closer. Sure enough, Franklin changed his mind and offered Davis Jr. a scholarship on the spot.
“It felt like a family there,” said Davis Jr. “The coaches, they were really into me. They believed in my skill set. They believe I’ll be able to make an impact there. They believe they can develop me into a high level player. It’s high level football. It’s championship level football. That’s what I wanted to be a part of.”
Davis Jr. officially committed to Penn State in April and decided he’ll enroll early in January. The Nittany Lions’ recruiting class for 2021 is ranked as the 32nd best in the country by 247, and Davis Jr. will join Marquis Wilson and Waterbury’s Tyler Rudolph in a Connecticut-heavy secondary.
Kingswood-Oxford, though, would not let him graduate early. So Davis Jr. transferred back to Bristol Eastern to play his final year of high school football in his hometown, alongside players with whom he had grown up.
With his college search complete, Davis Jr. looked forward to a stress-free senior season. That plan fell through in September when the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference canceled full-contact game play for football, deemed a high-risk sport by the state Department of Public Health. Davis Jr. was resigned to practices and 7-on-7 scrimmages.
Still, he’s relished the opportunity to spend a few months back home, not far from the fields where he once fell in love with football as a Bulldog.
“It’s a very nostalgic factor for me,” Davis Jr. said. “I started here, and now I can finish here.”
Davis Jr. has aspirations of one day playing in the NFL. He looks up to players like Jalen Ramsey and Denzel Ward, two professional cornerbacks. He knows Penn State has a well-established record of producing pros who play on Sundays.
Before he can truly think about any of that, he’ll be tasked with overcoming a familiar hurdle. Much like that 5-foot-8 eighth grader who lined up to return kicks against Hamden Hall in 2016, Davis Jr. will once again be a boy among men at Penn State.
He’s ready for the challenge.
“My work ethic, my character and my coachability separate me from a lot of guys,” Davis Jr. said. “I just work hard. I know I’ll be the first guy in, last guy out.”
Shawn McFarland can be reached at smcfarland@courant.com.
