From the gridiron to center stage, how Georgia’s Jalon Walker was destined for greatness at an early age
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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
ATHENS, Ga. — When Jalon Walker was a boy, he told his mother he was going to become famous and arrive in Hollywood in a limousine.
As a potential first-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft, there’s a good chance the Georgia linebacker might soon become a household name.
And if professional football doesn’t work out for some reason, the aspiring sports commentator and voice-over actor might still work in Hollywood one day.
You might have already heard Walker’s deep and resonant voice in one of the SEC’s “It Just Means More” TV commercials.
That’s not the only way Walker is using his commanding pipes. He’s one of the leaders of a unit that is starting to play like dominant Georgia defenses of the recent past going into Saturday’s game against Florida at EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville (3:30 p.m. ET/ABC/ESPN+).
“I don’t take that lightly,” Walker said. “I feel that our standard at the University of Georgia is incredibly long and historic, and I want to keep that torch and flame going. I want to set an example for the younger guys to see what it takes and what you need to do to be a leader.”
In the Bulldogs’ 30-15 victory at Texas on Oct. 19, Walker had seven tackles, three sacks and a fumble recovery — all in the first half. Going against offensive tackles Kelvin Banks Jr. and Cameron Williams, who are considered potential high NFL draft picks, Walker was the first player in at least the past 20 seasons to have three sacks and seven tackles against a No. 1-ranked team in the AP poll.
After Georgia’s defense surrendered 39 points in a 41-34 loss at Alabama on Sept. 28 and 21 in the second half of a 41-31 victory against Mississippi State two weeks later, coach Kirby Smart called on Walker and others to take ownership of the unit.
The Bulldogs responded with seven sacks and 11 tackles for loss and shut out the Longhorns in the first half.
“He gets everybody pumped up,” Bulldogs cornerback Daylen Everette said of Walker. “He’s doing his job, and then even off the field, his leadership, he motivates people to be good. He’s a great leader, great guy.”
Walker has been around football his entire life. His father, Curtis Walker, was a Division II All-American linebacker at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina. He still holds the school’s single-game record with 25 tackles against Wofford in 1991 and was a team captain and MVP.
In 1995, Curtis joined Catawba’s coaching staff as linebackers coach and was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2001.
Two years later, Curtis was hired as Coastal Carolina‘s first defensive coordinator under coach David Bennett. He spent 10 seasons with the Chanticleers.
After one season as Western Carolina’s defensive coordinator, Curtis was hired as Catawba’s head coach in December 2012. He was the first Black head football coach at his alma mater and at any school in the South Atlantic Conference.
Jalon and his brother Deuce, who is 2½ years younger, attended practices of their father’s teams nearly every day when they were old enough.
“I got the opportunity to be around football a lot,” Jalon said. “Being on the sideline, being at his games, being in the locker room, being at his practice. It was a great opportunity for me to learn football in a different way, from a different point of view.”
Jalon didn’t start playing football until the seventh grade. His small Christian-based middle school didn’t have a team, so he played basketball, soccer and track and field growing up. His father was pleased when Jalon joined the Salisbury 49ers, a recreational league team.
“It was a little strange being the head coach in this community, and my son’s not even playing football,” Curtis joked. “We were excited that he finally decided that he wanted to play.”
“I appreciate my dad, because he let me fall in love with football myself,” Jalon said. “He didn’t press me to play football. He just let football come to me.”
At Salisbury High School, Jalon helped the Hornets reach the Class 2A state championship game as a sophomore. The next season, they defeated St. Pauls High School 42-14 to win a state title. Jalon had 12 tackles in the final contest. During an 11-game season, which was played in the spring of 2021 because of COVID-19 restrictions, he had 97 tackles, 19 for loss and eight sacks.
Jalon was ranked the No. 3 outside linebacker in the country and No. 1 prospect in the state in the Class of 2022 by ESPN Recruiting. He committed to Georgia in March 2021, choosing the Bulldogs over Clemson, North Carolina and Ohio State.
“He’s just such a high-character kid with high moral values and a great family,” Smart said. “You think back to all those wins you get in recruiting and how you really don’t know how important they are. I think back to when he called and told us he was coming, what that changed his life towards and what it changed for us.”
Curtis and his wife, LaSheka, who works as a development officer at Catawba College, raised their sons to be well-rounded students and not just athletes. Deuce is a freshman defensive back at Georgia State.
LaSheka encouraged her sons to write their goals on Post-it notes, which littered the inside of their closet and dresser. She recited Habakkuk 2:2 from the Bible: “Write the vision and make it plain.”
During a Sunday sermon at Southern City AME Zion Church in Salisbury, the pastor announced that he was searching for a child to compete in a singing contest. The winner would be awarded a trophy.
“Jalon’s eyes lit up,” LaSheka said. “And so, of course, in true Jalon style, he went and won the trophy. He won it a few years back-to-back. [His musical talent] comes from just being around it and hearing it.”
Back then, Jalon’s voice didn’t sound like the late James Earl Jones’ — his high-pitched tone was more like Cyndi Lauper’s. Before long, Jalon was singing with the church choir and performing with 100 Men in Black, a community male choir in Salisbury.
After Curtis became Catawba’s head coach, Jalon sang the national anthem at the Indians’ home openers. He also performed at Catawba basketball and minor-league baseball games. Curtis remembered a woman crying in the stands during one of Jalon’s performances.
Jalon also took up acting; he was the Tin Man in the “Wizard of Oz” and Scott Kunkle in “Dear Edwina” musicals at school.
“For all those who know Jalon Walker, you know his work ethic,” Curtis said. “You know that guy grinds. When he did the musicals in middle school, he was there every day, as long as it took for him to learn his lines and perfect his songs.
“When he was running for the student government president in high school, he did everything in his power to make sure that he was going to be the one selected. It’s the same work ethic we see now.”
Curtis resigned as Catawba College’s coach in November 2022. He works as an analyst at Livingstone College in Salisbury, which gives him more flexibility to attend his sons’ games.
Jalon’s opportunities at Georgia didn’t come quickly. He played behind veterans like Nolan Smith Jr., Smael Mondon Jr. and Jamon Dumas-Johnson the previous two seasons. Still, he led the Bulldogs with five sacks to go with 20 tackles in 14 games in 2023.
“I feel that there was development that I’ve always needed,” Jalon said. “I feel like that time I took learning and being able to be developed by the coaches here has helped a lot. We have great players here. But when an opportunity was presented to me, I definitely had to capitalize on every opportunity that I got.”
Despite not starting a game at Georgia until this season, Jalon has opened the eyes of NFL scouts. ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. ranks him as the No. 10 prospect eligible for the 2025 NFL draft; Matt Miller has him at 14th.
Jalon’s proclamation to his mother many years ago might just be coming true.
Before the Bulldogs played TCU in the CFP National Championship in Los Angeles in January 2023, Jalon visited with his parents and brother in a hotel lobby. LaSheka reminded Jalon of what he’d told her as a child.
“Well son, you made it,” LaSheka told him. “You may not have made it in the limo, but you made it to Hollywood.”
“Looking back, you hear a child say that and you think they’re just talking and dreaming,” LaSheka said. “It melts my heart. It really makes me happy. I smile from ear to ear because ever since he was a little boy, he always knew that he wanted to do something great.”
Sports
How a baseball behemoth plans to get … better? 3 offseason questions as Dodgers eye three-peat
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Alden Gonzalez
The Los Angeles Dodgers greeted their fans at the tail end of their championship parade on Nov. 3, and virtually every player who grabbed the microphone atop a makeshift stage at Dodger Stadium expressed the same goal:
Three-peat.
Only two franchises, the Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s and the New York Yankees of the late 1990s, have won three consecutive World Series titles since Major League Baseball introduced divisional play in 1969. And yet the current Dodgers are unabashed in their desire to do the same.
“It’s not whether or not [or] how we’re going to do it,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, “it’s just that we’re going to be extremely driven and do everything we can to put ourselves in the best position to do it again.”
What that looks like, exactly, is a source of intrigue throughout the sport.
The Dodgers have spent the past two offseasons throwing around money at jaw-dropping levels. In signings and extensions, they added five nine-figure contracts to their payroll, which, for competitive-balance-tax purposes, stood at roughly $415 million in 2025. The industry seemed to bend to their will because of it. Now the Dodgers operate as a sort of boogeyman. Agents attach them to their clients in an attempt to drive up prices, rival executives worry they’ll swoop in on trade targets they’re eyeing.
The Dodgers, though, continue to fight an internal battle, one voiced by general manager Brandon Gomes at last week’s general managers meetings in Las Vegas.
“How do you win this year,” he asked rhetorically, “without falling off that cliff?”
Friedman, Gomes and the rest of the Dodgers’ decision-makers are constantly trying to balance winning now with winning later, an inexact science that periodically strays them from the middle. Over these past two winters, the Dodgers leaned heavily into the present. Now they hope to find more of a balance, said multiple sources familiar with their thinking, though to what degree remains to be seen.
On one side, the Dodgers are cognizant of how much depth they have coming back and how much older their roster has become. On the other, they’re determined to maximize what Friedman has deemed this franchise’s “golden era,” mindful of how a third straight title can cement that legacy.
“I think definitionally, it’s a dynasty,” Friedman said after watching his team claim a third championship in six years. “But that to me, in a lot of ways, kind of caps it if you say, ‘OK, this is what it is.’ For me, it’s still evolving and growing, and we want to add to it and we want to continue it and do everything we can to put it at a level where people after us have a hard time reaching.”
How they do that will depend on how they answer three key questions.
How do they fix their bullpen?
With everything on the line in Game 7 of the World Series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts deployed six starting pitchers, including his entire postseason rotation (Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto) and two young starters who had become relievers out of necessity (Emmet Sheehan and Justin Wrobleski).
It said everything about how hard the Dodgers’ bullpen fell in 2025, and yet it runs in stark contrast to the front office’s staunch belief at this moment, according to sources — that their bullpen depth should inspire confidence in 2026.
There’s some truth to that. If everyone is healthy, seven of the Dodgers’ eight bullpen spots are already accounted for: Tanner Scott, Blake Treinen, Alex Vesia, Evan Phillips, Brock Stewart, Brusdar Graterol and Anthony Banda. Then there are as many as eight optionable relievers on the 40-man roster, all of whom are promising in their own right: Edgardo Henriquez, Ben Casparius, Will Klein, Jack Dreyer, Paul Gervase, Bobby Miller, Kyle Hurt and Wrobleski, assuming the latter three remain in the bullpen.
This certainly does not mean the Dodgers are set here. Their bullpen is coming off a season in which it posted a 4.27 ERA, 21st in the majors. And there are a litany of questions surrounding their returning arms, whether it’s coming back from injury (Graterol and Phillips), advanced age (Treinen and Stewart), control issues (Henriquez, Klein, Hurt and Gervase) or stark memories of a disastrous 2025 (Scott). But if there is one thing to take away from all that, it’s this:
The Dodgers will carry a high bar when it comes to their pursuit of bullpen help.
A solidified closer, or at least one leverage arm capable of handling the ninth inning on a championship team, will be what they spend the most time on in the coming weeks. And though the trade option remains their ideal path, free agency is primed with standout closers. The headliner is Edwin Diaz, though the thought of a long-term deal and the presence of a qualifying offer might scare away the Dodgers. More likely is someone such as Devin Williams, who they’ve already expressed interest in, according to sources. And a tier below are a host of others who, like Williams, can be had for the type of short-term deal the Dodgers prefer, including Brad Keller, Pete Fairbanks, Emilio Pagan, Kyle Finnegan, Luke Weaver, Raisel Iglesias and Robert Suarez.
How badly do they need another bat?
You know what else the Dodgers didn’t do all that well this past season? Hit. For a decent chunk of it, at least. Over a 33-game stretch from early July to mid-August, they batted .235 and averaged the sixth-fewest runs in the majors. Over their past three playoff rounds, they slashed a combined .213/.303/.364. If this sounds a bit harsh, well, it might be: 33 games represents only about 20% of the regular season, and hitting in the playoffs has proved to be quite difficult for any team. Keep this group intact, and on paper, it would represent arguably the best lineup in the sport.
But last season’s lulls help to underscore another important point about the Dodgers’ offseason: They can stand to add another bat, and chances are they will.
The easiest path is to add an outfielder, and this year’s free agent options just so happen to be headlined by two of them in Kyle Tucker and Cody Bellinger. The Dodgers aren’t expected to be one of the more aggressive suitors for Tucker, sources have indicated, but they’ll remain on the periphery if his market collapses and a short-term, high-dollar deal becomes appealing to his representatives at Excel. They’ve also expressed interest in a reunion with Bellinger, according to sources, though it remains to be seen whether they’d be motivated enough to win a potential bidding war with the Yankees.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel projects an 11-year, $418 million contract for Tucker, who turns 29 in January, and a much more modest six-year, $165 million contract for Bellinger, who will be 31 in July.
The cost for a Bellinger deal makes more sense, but so does his ability to play center field. The Dodgers are a far better defensive team if they can slide Andy Pages to right and shift Teoscar Hernández to left. Doing so would require an everyday center fielder, and perhaps it would be unfair to ask Tommy Edman to take that on in the wake of offseason ankle surgery. Bellinger — a fourth-round pick by the Dodgers in 2013, a Rookie of the Year in 2017, an MVP in 2019 and a champion in 2020 before being non-tendered only two years later — would fit the bill, and perhaps even slide to first base after Freddie Freeman‘s contract expires.
But the Dodgers can also sign someone such as Harrison Bader, whom they targeted at midseason, for less money, or, given the dearth of free agent outfielders beyond him, pivot to a trade option. Two players who might fit are Cleveland Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan and St. Louis Cardinals utility man Brendan Donovan, both of whom have a knack for putting together good at-bats and making contact. Some high-ranking members of the organization believe there is a need for more of that in their lineup, given the swing and miss of guys like Pages and Hernández. Addressing that could help limit the lulls.
Do they need to get younger?
Mookie Betts gathered his teammates for a post-parade podcast recently, and at one point the 18-inning World Series game came up. Betts argued that the second half of it was boring, to which Clayton Kershaw playfully responded that, for everyone’s sake, the offense should have ended it early.
“Our team’s so old,” Kershaw said. “We were tired the next two [games].”
What Kershaw said off the cuff was something felt by many who watched the Dodgers, both inside and outside the organization. Playing the equivalent of two full games in Game 3 of the World Series seemed to drain them more than it did their opponents, as evidenced by lethargic performances in Games 4 and 5, during which the Dodgers totaled three runs and suffered back-to-back losses.
The average age of the Dodgers’ position players was 30.7 this past season, making them the oldest group in the majors (slightly ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies at 30.3). Seven of their starting position players are now heading into their age-31 season or older, and all but one of them — Max Muncy, whose 2026 option was picked up earlier this month — are signed for multiple years.
Friedman’s longtime quest to balance the present with the future faces a difficult test with this current construction. Freeman, Betts, Ohtani and Will Smith will continue to be cornerstone players for years, but the Dodgers will spend some time this offseason wondering how they can plug in more youth around them.
They can do it the more conventional way, by slowly transitioning some of their upper-level prospects into everyday players (infielder Alex Freeland, outfielder Ryan Ward and catcher Dalton Rushing, who will return as Smith’s backup but could get time at first base and in left field in 2026). Or they can make impact moves via trade.
The Dodgers have a glut of highly regarded outfield prospects at the moment, namely Josue De Paula, Eduardo Quintero, Zhyir Hope and Mike Sirota. The Dodgers’ preference is to pluck from that group to address needs through a trade, according to sources. And though they can use them to access the closer they desire, they can also add young, controllable position players, ideally at second base, shortstop or center field. And if they need to dip into their starting pitching, River Ryan and Gavin Stone are returning from injury and don’t have a spot in a six-man rotation given the presence of Yamamoto, Snell, Glasnow, Ohtani, Sheehan and Roki Sasaki.
Ryan and Stone, though, have options. The Dodgers, coming off setting franchise records by deploying 40 pitchers in back-to-back seasons, can simply stash them in the minors and wait until they’re inevitably needed.
Once again, they can do everything and nothing.
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