Coming from Brundidge, Alabama – population 2,076 as of the 2010 U.S. Census, making it smaller than Apison, Tennessee – Jerrell Lawson knew he was going to have to find a way to stand out when he got to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in fall 2016.
Now a 6-foot-2, 204-pound sixth-year senior, Lawson has done so on the football field, becoming a dependable option at safety with 32 starts in 34 career games with the Mocs. But he has been equally solid off the field, having earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business, with hopes of becoming a business owner someday.
“One of my favorite TV shows is ‘Power,'” Lawson said of the Starz network hit. “I like how he talks about how he can just run businesses, and I find a lot of success and a lot of passion and get a lot of joy wanting to run a business one day, but that comes with hard work and dedication.”
Head coach Rusty Wright simply calls Lawson “a grown man.”
When Wright returned to his alma mater to take charge of the football program in December 2018, having already twice worked as an assistant for the Mocs, it was a full circle moment for him and Lawson. He was the linebackers coach for the Mocs when Lawson committed to UTC back in 2015, which makes Wright his third head coach since his arrival a year later.
“He handles his business like a grown person,” Wright said. “You’ve watched the guy mature and elevate and elevate his game, and he’s probably one of the best ones in the league back there playing his spot because he’s smart, he’s athletic, he can run. He knows how to line these guys up in front of him. He knows what we’re trying to do now, even after this being his third system he’s been in.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to have that guy.”
Another person equally as pleased is new defensive backs coach Jordan Tippit, a UTC alum who had nine interceptions during his career and was an All-Southern Conference first-team selection as a safety in 2009.
“He’s a leader,” Tippit said. “Just his ability to be that mentor, that leader for these guys and showing them what they need to be doing day in and day out, those other guys look up to him.”
Staff file photo by Troy Stolt / UTC safety Jerrell Lawson is back for a sixth year with the Mocs. Lawson has already earned two business degrees but is back for a fifth football season, having redshirted as a freshman in 2016.Lawson’s high school alma mater, Pike County, has five Alabama state championships (with an enrollment of only some 300 students), and that team success is something he’s itching for at UTC in his final year. The small-school mentality is something that drew Lawson, a former three-star prospect who had offers from Arkansas State, Georgia Southern, Memphis, Middle Tennessee State and Southern Miss among others, to UTC.
But his college alma mater is 27-25 since he arrived, a record that dips to 18-21 in the four seasons he’s been on the field. The most recent year the Mocs won a conference championship was 2015, when he committed. The last time they qualified for the playoffs was 2016, when he redshirted.
In 2017, there was a quarterback carousel in which four players spent time behind center, which led to a putrid offense that overshadowed a defense ranked among the top 25 in the Football Championship Subdivision. In 2018, of the team’s four league losses, three were by a touchdown or less. In 2019, an injury kept Lawson out the final four games as the Mocs made a push for the conference championship.
He called this past season – when the Mocs played just five games, losing by three points at Western Kentucky last fall before going 3-1 against SoCon foes in the spring, with regular starters held out in the lone league loss – “just us working and trying to get better.” There’s no further acknowledgement of a difficult year in which FCS teams were put in a tough situation amid the coronavirus outbreak and with a fall season just around the corner.
Now he’s ready for the type of success he experienced in high school – Pike won 23 games his final three seasons, advancing to the second round of the playoffs each time – to be duplicated at his college alma mater.
“Being able to study and get things going while learning the game, it’s paid off in the long run,” he said. “Just staying here with the guys, I’m just ready to see it pay off this fall with all this hard work we’ve been putting in.
“We’re just ready for this season, ready for this fall. We’re ready to give everybody what they’ve been waiting on.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.