Marques Jones knows one or two things about effort.
A few months after being awarded a scholarship by head coach Matt Rhule for his final two seasons as a Bear, the senior wide receiver was named the 2018-2019 Engineering Student of the Year at Baylor and graduated with 3.94 GPA.
Jones is set to enter his final season on the football field this fall and will continue his education at Baylor as a graduate student. Oh, and he recently received a two-year grant from the Navy to do research. You’ll have to Google that for more information.
The fifth-year senior arrived at Baylor in 2015 as a walk-on receiver and redshirted his first season on campus. He’s one of many seniors that played through a season with an interim head coach in 2016 without waver.
In all that he has seen from his teammates over that course of time, one trait that might be as strong as he has seen this fall is their effort. He might not admit it, but if it’s because they are following his lead that shouldn’t be a surprise.
“Sometimes coach doesn’t really want to end practice because we’re playing so hard,” Jones said of the early practices in fall camp. “We’re really physical with the pads on; running hard, the defense running to the ball. Offense is giving full effort every play. I think practice is really going well.”
Effort is one of the few areas that individual players can control on their own. With the ups and downs of the last several years, expecting full effort would almost be laughable for lack of a better term. That’s why the stability brought by a new head coach was important.
That’s why winning a bowl game in 2018 was important.
“Definitely you see a lot more effort now at practice,” Jones said. “I mean, in the previous years defense and even offense we’d just be like OK, loafing around not running to the ball and stuff like that. But now, it’s really coming from the players to run to the ball and give full effort every play so that’s definitely a big step in the right direction.”
It’s easy to give effort when things are going easy. It’s easty to give effort when you’re having success. But what about giving effort through adversity and challenge?
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That epitomizes Marques Jones, a player that joked about taking a nap or doing homework after practice and meeting with the media last week. With a 3.94 GPA as a college graduate entering grad school, everyone knew what he was going to do.
“It’s like Coach Rhule talks about, we want to be elite in everything we do,” Jones said.
