On a warm September afternoon in Jordan-Hare Stadium, it felt like everything was going wrong for Auburn again.

Its Southeastern Conference opener against Arkansas was tied 7-7, but the offense already had four turnovers just over halfway through the fourth quarter and every chance it had to pull away was thwarted by mistake after mistake.

The defense was playing well, but against Arkansas and many of Auburn’s games during the 2024 season it had to be perfect. The secondary stood out most early in the game, starting with Champ Anthony putting one of the hits of the season on Arkansas’ Andrew Armstrong. But in a twisted turn of fate, Anthony went down in devastating fashion just a few plays later with a gruesome leg injury.

Auburn’s secondary was already going through an early-season shuffle, with Anthony, Antonio Kite and Keionte Scott all playing significant snaps at corner opposite Kayin Lee. After Anthony went down, though, Auburn was forced to turn to its freshmen, a group that was talented, but still unproven against SEC competition.

On a second-and-10 at the Arkansas 40-yard line, one of those freshmen emerged.

As Arkansas receiver CJ Williams made his break across the middle of the field on a slant route, Jay Crawford matched him stride-for-stride. When Taylen Green tried to connect with Williams, Crawford got there first to break up the pass, eliciting celebrations from three nearby teammates who greeted him after the play.

It wasn’t Crawford’s first action of the season, but it was his way of announcing himself to a broader audience in a conference matchup. He played just eight snaps in that Arkansas game, according to Pro Football Focus, but became a mainstay in the secondary by the next week and hasn’t looked back since.

It’s not common for a freshman corner to become an every-game starter in the SEC, but it all seemed to click for Crawford. If you ask Hugh Freeze, it’s Crawford’s ability to pick things up quickly and learn on the fly. If you ask team captain and fifth-year safety Jerrin Thompson, it’s Crawford’s confidence and technique.

But where do those traits come from for an 18-year-old playing against some of the best athletes in college football every week? Growing up in the ultra-talented and competitive metro Atlanta youth football scene, Crawford had no other choice but to pick them up.

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Charles Lewis had a passion for coaching and developing young athletes. A father of athletes himself, he always wanted to be involved.

That passion led to him starting a 3,500-square foot, all-turf gym, giving the youth football players he coached and other athletes a place to train year-round.

Crawford was 5 years old when he and Lewis first crossed paths. It came while Crawford and Lewis’ son, Charles, were teammates on a youth basketball team, something Lewis said he was using to recruit players to his youth football team.

Lewis successfully recruited Crawford to his Gwinnett Chargers youth flag football team, playing in a league that was run by now Auburn Director of Recruiting Research and Strategy Kenyatta Watson. To say Crawford found early success would be an understatement.

“He was my quarterback that year, and I’m telling you – Jay never played football. He never touched a football. But one thing I always knew he was gonna make it, because every time he touched the ball, he was gone down the sideline,” Lewis said in an interview with AL.com.

It was the start of a high-profile youth football career for Crawford who later played for well-known local youth teams such as the Tucker Lions and Atlanta Bulldogs.

According to many people close to Crawford, those two teams were where he picked up many of the traits evident in his game today.

The stint with the Tucker Lions came first, a famous program in the area known for physicality – earning the nickname of the “hit squad” – and producing top talent. Crawford joined at age 7, quickly adapting to a uniquely intense level of football at that age.

“I think it set him up very well to be successful,” Crawford’s head coach at Tucker Lions Tony Maddox said. “We know, when they get older, their bodies probably can’t take it, so just teaching the way to hit and how to hit and hit every day, it helped them blossom.”

Not only was the physicality on a different level, but so was the training. It was an experience that Maddox said, “taught [Crawford] how to work.” From tackling drills to intense workouts and conditioning, it was the type of training few kids that age went through.

Tucker was where Crawford played corner for the first time, but there were still other parts of his game to be developed at a young age, leading him to the Atlanta Bulldogs, a team coached by speed and agility trainer and former NFL wide receiver Hilton Alexander.

“Coach Hilton had a lot of fun out there,” Crawford’s father, Jason Crawford said. “So I think he put, when you see the smiling Jay, the fun, like the lively Jay, that’s what he did.”

Being a speed and agility trainer holding the “route king” nickname, Jay Crawford’s ball skills, conditioning, footwork and other technical aspects of his game developed under Alexander’s tutelage. Despite still not even being a teenager, Jay Crawford’s football schooling took another huge step while playing for Alexander.

“We were using high school terminology in youth ball. We practiced on a high school schedule in youth ball. Like, we had a script, he came up in that environment,” Alexander said. “When Jay get to high school and some of these other kids I coach, the high school coach will reach out and say, ‘Hey, man, I don’t know what y’all were doing with these kids, but thank you, because they’re so ahead of the game.’

“Now he’s comfortable. He’s not caught off guard when you speak a certain terminology, certain defense, stuff like, ‘Oh, I’m used to that already, man.’ We watched film. We break film down about our opponent. We would break film of our games, correct certain things and really teach these kids up the right way. We did it on both sides of the ball as well as special teams. So now, when you say that he’s able to come in quickly and adapt, I’m not surprised.”

When asked about Crawford’s quick development prior to the Vanderbilt game, Freeze mentioned how all the moving parts within the scheme and applying correct technique is a process for freshmen corners.

“He’s getting better and better each week with, ‘All right, man, I’ve got to play outside tip right here or I need to play inside top right here or I’ve got to play off here or I need to play press-bail here,’” Freeze said.

It has hardly looked like Crawford has missed a beat on Saturdays, having only allowed 10 catches for 79 yards this season, according to Pro Football Focus. His 82.1 coverage grade is also the highest on the team.

What makes those numbers even more impressive is the fact that almost all of Crawford’s playing time has come in SEC play. But given the level of competition Crawford grew up playing, his youth coaches aren’t surprised by that aspect of his adaptability either.

Georgia has long been known as a talent-rich state, with the Atlanta metro area being the epicenter. Thirty-four players from Georgia made the top 300 of the 247Sports composite rankings in the 2024 recruiting class, with 16 coming from in and around Atlanta.

To give perspective on what that meant for the youth football scene that Crawford played in, Maddox estimated that the top three teams in the league Tucker Lions played in while Crawford was playing produced 30-40 Division I players.

“You really just got to know how to fight 11- on-11. It’s the biggest king of the hill,” Lewis said. “To me, it’s not all the way football. It’s more survival because you know them dads, man, they don’t play. Man, and them coaches, you know hood ball coaches, they don’t play. So, man, you gotta be willing. You gotta be ready to fight.”

One could argue the same could be said about the SEC. Ten games into his freshman season, Crawford has survived and then some.

When asked about the early opportunity, Crawford described it as a “dream come true.” For his father and youth coaches that helped push him through his football upbringing, Crawford’s early success is a source of pride.

For Auburn, Crawford and many of his freshman teammates’ success is an early return on investment from a top 10 recruiting class in 2024. While the overall team success hasn’t caught up yet, Auburn has a potential top five class for 2025 in the works.

Crawford hopes his quick success and early opportunities can be a pitch for current recruits that could follow him at Auburn. And to those players, his message is simple.

“Just hang on,” Crawford said. “We’re going to flip the switch. It’s coming.”

Peter Rauterkus covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on X at @peter_rauterkus or email him at [email protected]m