Temple walk-on Reggie Jones nearly quit football before taking the long road to his first tackle

Reggie Jones played college football for three seasons.

But he didn’t actually play.

He was on Temple’s scout team, where his role was to help the guys who did play prepare each week for Saturday. He practiced all week and then watched the games last season from his apartment near campus.

Finally, he had enough.

Jones told his parents and girlfriend following last season that he was quitting. He let some teammates know. That was it.

“I would come home so sad because I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself,” Jones said. “Then one day, I was scrolling on TikTok, and I came across this walk-on basketball player named Brandon Dwyer from Florida Gulf Coast.”

Dwyer had gone viral on social media for documenting his life as a walk-on as he created a series of videos titled “The Road to One Point.” He made his first basket last November, just as Jones was deciding he was through being a walk-on. And the video inspired Jones to keep going.

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“For a month straight, I would go to his page every day and just watch his videos,” Jones said. His story was exactly like mine. He was always a bench rider. He was about to quit, too. Watching these, I got the love back for football.”

Jones stayed with the football team and started to document his “Road to One Tackle.” His first video in January picked up thousands of views, and his followers grew. He was on to something. But Jones knew he couldn’t make a tackle from the scout team. He had to get on the field.

“I told myself, ‘Reggie, this is your season. I don’t care what you do, but get off the scout team because you can’t be in the same boat for four years,’” said Jones, who has 174,000 followers on Instagram. “Every year, I was tired of it, but this year I was like, ‘This is my senior year. I can’t go out like this.’ That first padded practice, I was just trying to go through everyone because I had to show these coaches that I deserved to play.”

Jones quickly worked his way off the scout team this summer and then found his name on the team’s depth chart. He was a special teamer. Nine months after nearly quitting, Jones earned a spot on the team.

“You know when you have a lot on your chest, and it feels like something was taken off,” Jones said. “Like, I can finally breathe.”

Jones attended Maryland’s DeMatha Catholic High and hoped to play college basketball. But he stopped growing as a high school junior.

“I wasn’t about to be a point guard,” said Jones, who is 6-foot-1.

Jones played football at DeMatha but didn’t take it seriously until his senior year. By then, it was too late to earn a college scholarship. Temple offered him a chance to walk on, which meant he would be on the hook for his tuition and had slim chances of seeing the field. Jones took it.

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He came to Temple with 20,000 social media followers, building a following making silly videos during high school. A friend told Jones he should start making football videos. Soon, he started making some money and signed with an agent, who helped him connect with more sponsors. He wasn’t playing on the football team, but his videos were finding an audience.

“Of course I’m a walk-on on the team, but there’s a lot of walk-ons in life,” said Jones, who is on track to graduate in May with a degree in sports and entertainment management. “You know what I mean? Everyone is an underdog. I’ve been an underdog my entire life. For some reason, I always got put in the position where people looked down on me and I always made them eat their words. You have people who are looking for ways to get out of that funk and I think that’s why my story has resonated with so many people.”

His “Road to One Tackle” videos showed him practicing, lifting weights, and hitting the tackling sled. But Jones is a content creator so there was a video this summer of him dancing after practice, struggling to take his pads off, and purchasing a seltzer water that sponsors him. His videos – some of which have more than 100,000 views – are more than just football.

“I can’t even look at Instagram and TikTok anymore like a normal person,” said Jones, who simply shoots his videos with his iPhone. “I’m constantly looking for ideas. Most of the time, I get my ideas from non-football-related ideas. I then connect them to football. I’ve learned from making content that you can’t go straight to football, football, football because they won’t resonate with everyone. Then I put a football twist on it.”

Jones called his girlfriend Gabby Linden last month after he learned he was going to play in Temple’s season opener. She started crying and told Jones to call his parents. They started screaming.

“My parents paid for school,” Jones said. “They saw me grind day in and day out to play college football and they were so excited.”

The Owls were well ahead on Saturday against Rhode Island when the team’s linebackers coach told Jones that he was going in. Jones said he was flooded with emotions. He almost quit football a season earlier and now he had a chance to make a tackle in an NCAA game. His girlfriend, who he met his first semester at Temple, was in the crowd. So were his parents.

“My heart dropped to my ankles,” Jones said. “This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for.”

The first play was a handoff, Jones rushed to the line of scrimmage, and found the ball carrier. He did it. Jones pointed a finger to the sky and cried as his teammates roared from the sidelines. But there wasn’t much more time to celebrate. Rhode Island was in a hurry-up offense and Jones had to get ready for another play.

“I had to lock back in,” Jones said.

But that was OK. There was plenty of time afterwards for Jones to create content. He filmed the scene in the locker room as he danced with his teammates and had someone take a picture of him holding a piece of paper with “1” on it as a nod to Wilt Chamberlain after his 100-point game. It was a great moment. And it was also great content.

“As soon as I took the picture, everyone jumped me at once,” Jones said. “It was so cool. I’m glad I was able to do that with my teammates. You know when someone in your family does something good and the whole family celebrates? It was just like that. A big family celebration because they knew how much work I put in and they were so proud that I actually did it.”

And Jones already has his next project.

“The road to one sack,” he said.

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