Former South Alabama head coach Joey Jones didn’t necessarily expect to be coaching football again this fall.

Then Thompson High head coach Mark Freeman started calling him.

“I had no idea,” he said. “I really thought I was done. When I came back (to the Birmingham area), Mark started calling me. I just felt like it was the right thing to do.”

Jones is coaching inside wide receivers for Thompson and said Friday he is loving it. He spent last season as director of player personnel at Mississippi State.

“Joey has been a longtime friend,” Freeman said. “He obviously has a lot of experience with young people and football. We were looking for someone, and he fit everything we were looking for. I think it’s going to be good for us and for Joey to be here.”

Jones, a star wide receiver at Murphy High in Mobile and at the University of Alabama, started his coaching career on the high school level. After spending two years as an assistant coach at Briarwood Christian, he spent three years as head coach at Dora High and a decade at Mountain Brook where he led the Spartans to 100 wins.

After one year as head coach at Birmingham-Southern College, Jones was hired to start the program at South Alabama. He spent nine years as head coach of the Jaguars before stepping down after the 2017 season. He was inducted into the South Alabama Athletic Hall of Fame last fall.

He’s already had an impact at Thompson as the Warriors begin spring practice.

“I think it’s really a home run hire kind of thing,” star quarterback Trent Seaborn said. “To get a guy with college experience like that who played wide receiver at Alabama and coached at Power 5 schools is a huge addition. I’ve seen it already. He’s really helping develop our receivers.”

Jones said part of the motivation to return to the sidelines in high school football was working with Freeman.

“He doesn’t confine himself to a playbook,” he said. “He always wants to expand. If you take one route combination, he may run it 30 different ways. I think he’s brilliant. He’s been around this offense long enough where he knows it inside and out so when you do anything on defense he has an answer for it. The second thing is he demands a lot of the players, and they play in a tough manner – mentally tough and physically tough.”

Jones also said he’s enjoyed stepping back from the head coaching role.

“As a head coach you have a good relationship with players but probably not as deep as assistant coaches,” he said. “I’m getting to know these young men and who they are, and I really enjoy that. The head coach position has its good sides as well because you control what practice looks like and a lot of things. It’s a totally different animal being an assistant coach. I like what I’m doing right now.”

Would he ever want to be a head coach on the high school or college level again?

“I don’t really know,” he said. “I’m just going to take it year to year. Right now, I would say probably not. I enjoy what I’m doing, and it’s a lot of fun.”

Ironically, Jones’ return to the sideline in an actual game will take place in a familiar setting – Hancock Whitney Stadium at South Alabama. Thompson is scheduled to play Daphne at USA in a spring game at 5:30 p.m. on May 17.