With Julio Jones, there's always been the phenomenon and the person. They aren't the same | Estes

You’ve got to start with the name. While technically a nickname, it has become so ingrained, so indelible, so singularly unique.

He’s known by one word only, like an American pop superstar or Brazilian soccer player.

Juuuuuuuuuuuuuulio!

For more than a decade, to hear that in a stadium has often meant witnessing something most human beings can’t do. It’ll happen at Nissan Stadium soon, and when it does, this will be as obvious in Nashville as it once was in Mobile or Tuscaloosa or Atlanta: Julio Jones is special.

The Tennessee Titans didn’t just trade for a great receiver. They added a celebrity, one who has instantly upgraded their offense, their aspirations for 2021, their cool points as a budding "It" organization in the NFL. The folks behind the iconic Madden video game franchise recently tweeted that the Titans are among the most popular teams preferred by those playing this year’s edition.

That’s the Julio phenomenon. 

It has been relocated, but it's not new.

“Julio was like a mythical creature when he was out there in Atlanta,” said Titans linebacker Rashaan Evans, who played at the University of Alabama after Jones did. “We knew exactly who he was and what he did, but we never had a chance to really see him.”

For pretty much everyone, it's like that. You marvel over Julio’s highlights. You hear about Julio. You figure you know Julio.

But you probably don’t.

'People don't know me'

Jones once told me a story about going shopping and talking to a young lady working in a sporting goods store. She began telling him how much she disliked Julio, about how he was full of himself — without realizing that she was talking to him. He playfully introduced himself as he exited.

Jones laughed while recounting that. As if that sort of exchange was routine.

He was a 20-year-old college sophomore at the time.

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“People don’t know me,” he said back then. “People assume I’m supposed to be one way, I guess because of how I play. … I guess they have their mind made up about what I’m supposed to be like or how I’m supposed to act.

“They’ve just got to get to know me.”

A dozen years later, I’m working with Jones again. And I’m astounded by how little that has changed.

He remains one of the most misunderstood star athletes I’ve ever encountered. This popular perception of Julio the famous football player isn't any closer now to the reality expressed by those closest to the man born as Quintorris Lopez Jones.

To be fair, Jones doesn’t go out of his way for understanding's sake. He's never really courted the fame that surrounds him. He's relatively reclusive. He doesn’t like the public eye, going back to when he’d dodge recruiting questions in high school.

"He was always just a humble guy," said Todd Watson, who was Jones' football coach at Foley High School. "He probably knew – and knows – how gifted he is. But you wouldn't hear him say that."

He can be quiet or shy. He's difficult to get to know, disarmingly perceptive and very, very funny if you do get him going. More than that, he has long been deeply competitive and driven to have reached future Hall of Famer status in the NFL.

And yet … I still feel a need to argue that Julio is a hard worker.

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, while complimentary of his former star receiver for “10 great years,” told Jeff Schultz of The Athletic recently that Jones' “ability or willingness to practice the way he did early in his career was different.”

Such a statement has understandably resonated in Titans media and fans circles during a preseason in which Jones was absent for weeks, presumably for health reasons, prompting legitimate concerns about the offense heading into Sunday's season opener against the Cardinals.

I get all that.

But please understand that this situation for the Titans isn’t anything like, let’s say, Jadeveon Clowney and Vic Beasley last season.

Around the team, you still hear reviews of Jones like this one from Titans tight end Geoff Swaim: “He’s an incredible guy, works really hard. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been able to be around him a little bit and watch him work, the way he prepares. He’s the professional you’d expect him to be.”

Nick Saban: Never had a better leader

And yet ... you might suspect that Julio has the me-first attitude. Just because he’s a superstar NFL wide receiver. And superstar wide receivers are supposed to have super-sized egos, right?

Jones doesn’t. He never has, really. Ask his new Titans teammates. Better yet, ask perhaps the greatest college football coach of all time. That’s what Mike Vrabel did.

Alabama’s Nick Saban — who hadn't coached Jones in more than a decade — strongly recommended his former player to Vrabel prior to the Titans' trade.

"There's nobody that we've had that was a better leader or did more to sort of enhance the culture of toughness — giving effort, finishing plays, being a great competitor — than Julio Jones did,” Saban told me this week. “He used to run down there on kickoff and wouldn't come off kickoff team during the game — and he's one of the best receivers in the country.

“From a culture standpoint, from an impact standpoint, in the early years there was a lot of guys that made a great impact, but Julio was one that probably led the way as much as anyone."

That’s a bold statement anywhere. It's even bolder at Alabama.

The Titans may have the best running back in the NFL, and Derrick Henry went to Alabama and won a Heisman Trophy there, too.

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“Coming from Bama, we both know each other’s mindset and what we want to do,” Henry said of Jones. “He’s a great guy to have around. He’s a humble guy, loves to work hard. A great teammate, and he’ll be a great asset for this team for everybody to learn from.”

And yet ... you’ll hear that Julio is soft. That he's injury-prone. He picked up that label despite missing only four regular-season starts in six seasons from 2014 to 2019.

Ask former teammates like Greg McElroy, Jones' quarterback at Alabama. He'll tell you what Jones played through during that national title season in 2009.

“He was hurt all of ’09,” said McElroy, now a radio host and commentator for ESPN and SEC Network. “He was not himself until ’10, and that’s when the productivity really took off. He’s a guy that will play hurt. He’s a guy that will do whatever it takes to be successful.”

During that 2009 season, Julio was not the Crimson Tide’s featured offensive player. That was running back Mark Ingram. Julio did the dirty work. He helped block Ingram to the program’s first-ever Heisman Trophy and then had multiple surgeries later. During that season, there was hardly a peep that Jones was hurt.

“It’s rare at that position to find a guy that is so selfless for as good as he is,” McElroy said. “That’s what makes him so unique. He is not a diva at all. At that position, most of the guys that are at the top of the game do have some of those diva qualities, and he’s not that way at all.”

Always in the spotlight

Much of Jones' story still can be explained by his time before and at Alabama. If you think he's a celebrity now, you should have seen Julio Mania back then.

"I remember him signing autographs for the opposing team at the end of games," said Watson, who is now a part of Saban's staff at Alabama. 

"I'd been around some heavily recruited athletes, but when you're the No. 1 recruit in the country, that's a little different. It could get a little overwhelming if you let it, but I thought he did a good job. ... He handled it like a pro. A very mature guy."

Jones' emergence coincided with Saban’s celebrated arrival in 2007. The prestigious Crimson Tide had fallen on hard times, which had created an insatiable hunger in the state for a return to prominence.

This was a perfect storm.  That combo of Jones as the nation's top prospect and his location near Mobile made him the personification of the onslaught Saban sought to unleash in recruiting. To turn the Crimson Tide, Saban first had to target and turn talent-rich Mobile, which had been sending its brightest to schools like Auburn, LSU and Florida State.

Which meant he had to land Jones.

“(His) being from Alabama, it was probably one of the most important things that ever happened in the program,” said Saban.

Few Alabama players — if any — arrived with the level of fanfare that Jones did in Tuscaloosa.

Jones is 32 years old now. He is different. He may not like the media any more now than he always has, but he is more seasoned in interviews. More patient, perhaps.

In interviews at the Titans' facility Friday, he didn't offer much info on his health other than to stress repeatedly and good-naturedly that he was "ready to go" and "I don't have anything going on with me right now."

"Yeah, I'm good to go," he answered at one point before breaking into a sheepish grin, unsure what else to say about it.

So much of what has been true all along with Jones, it still seems to be true now.

That should be good news for the Titans.

Note: Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes covered Julio Jones and the University of Alabama football program as a beat writer for AL.com from 2007-10. You can reach him at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.