5 things to know about Jedrick Wills Jr., the No. 10 overall pick in 2020 NFL Draft
A lot of those experts cranking out 2020 NFL mock drafts didn’t seem to agree on where Jedrick Wills Jr., an Alabama Crimson Tide offensive tackle, would land on Thursday night.
Some had him going to the New York Giants at No. 4, others had him falling to the New York Jets at No. 11.
He went to Cleveland Browns with the No. 10 pick on Thursday night.
Here are five things to know about Wills:
1. He was highly coveted while in high school. Wills was a 5-star recruit during his junior year at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. Sixteen schools, including LSU, Notre Dame, Auburn, Kentucky, Florida, Florida State, and Georgia, went after him with vigor, according to Rivals.com. Coming out of high school, the offensive tackle was ranked nationally as the No. 25 overall recruit.
2. In high school, Wills was coached by a former NFL linebacker, Eric Shaw, who played for three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals in the early 1990s. The Bengals selected Shaw in the 12th round of the 1992 NFL Draft and he appeared in 28 games. “My job is to try to give him as much knowledge as I can and support him in whatever decision he makes,” the former linebacker said of his pupil to the Montgomery Advertiser in 2016.
3. Wills comes from a family of athletes and top-notch coaches. His father, Jedrick Wills Sr., is an assistant women’s basketball coach at Lafayette High. His mother, Sivi Wills, was a former basketball player at Eastern Kentucky.
4. It was Wills’ mother who aimed her son in the direction of football. “I was bigger than everybody else, so my mom kind of threw me in there,” Willis said at the NFL combine, as reported by the Los Angles Times. “She was like, ‘You’re playing football no matter what.’ ”
5. While his massive size (6 feet, 5 inches, 320 pounds) made him stand out and struck fear in his opponents, it was his quickness that made him dangerous. Thanks to a combination of both, he was able to double as a shooting guard on Lafayette’s basketball team. “I would put my head down and go to the basket, and everybody would just move out of the way,” he said at the combine, via the L.A. Times. “It would just open up for me.”