Jennings receives advice on being a leader
As Bradley Jennings Jr. competed for the Hurricanes’ starting middle linebacker job, he reached out to Shaq Quarterman for advice on leadership and more.
Not long after Shaquille Quarterman had finished his career with the Miami Hurricanes and graduated from the university, his phone rang with a question he felt an obligation — a “responsibility” — to answer.
While Quarterman was preparing for the 2020 NFL Draft, Bradley Jennings Jr. was getting ready for his redshirt junior year and the latter needed help from the former.
Miami — and even Jennings himself — couldn’t truly know what the linebacker’s role would be like for them in the fall. He was less than a year removed from a devastating hip injury, which sidelined him for the entire 2019 season, and a group of young linebackers had filled the roster in case Jennings could never recapture his old form.
Still, Jennings planned to be the Hurricanes’ starting middle linebacker this year, so he reached out to the former player who played more games there than anyone else in program history.
What does it take to be the starting middle linebacker at
Miami? Jennings wanted to know.
“He called me with that question,” Quarterman told the Miami Herald on Wednesday. “He asked me how did I go about it and I just told him what I did. People will always respect work. Even if they don’t say it out their mouths, they can’t unsee it. They can’t unsee you being the hardest worker in the weight room, the field, doing everything right. They can’t unsee it. They may not like it, but they’re going to respect it.”
“It was almost like my responsibility. ... I felt it would be wrong if I didn’t feed all the knowledge that I can, so I’ve been on him since before I left.”
On Sept. 10, Jennings completed the long journey back from injury, suiting up as the starting middle linebacker for the Hurricanes in their 31-14 win against the UAB Blazers in Miami Gardens. Playing in
his first game since 2018 and just his fifth since 2017, Jennings led Miami (1-0) with six tackles, including two tackles for loss.
The next day, he was back on the phone with Quarterman, picking the brain of the player who set a Hurricanes record by starting 52 straight games from 2016-2019.
“Shaq just showed me how to lead,” Jennings said Tuesday, “how to keep going hard in practice, make sure you bring everybody along, how to watch film, details — just certain stuff that a coach couldn’t tell you unless they’ve been in there and played in it.”
Quarterman and Jennings have known each other since they were both in high school, a pair of budding stars in the Jacksonville metroplitan area, and they still talk or text a couple times each week.
Quarterman is a year older and was a star at Orange Park Oakleaf, signing with Miami as its second highest-ranked player in the Class of 2016. A year later, Jennings was a star at Jacksonville Sandalwood and followed Quarterman to the Hurricanes as a relatively unheralded part of their Class of 2017.
Jennings played in 12 games as a freshman, though, backing up Quarterman and contributing on special teams. Miami wanted to groom him to be Quarterman’s replacement one day, so the Hurricanes held him to just four games in 2018 to preserve a redshirt and then his 2019 season ended before it began when he suffered a serious hip injury in Miami’s spring game. He didn’t return to the practice field in July, when the Hurricanes began training camp ahead of the 2020 season.
Jennings, once pegged as the future for Miami at middle linebacker, now had a fierce competition to win after fellow linebacker Sam Brooks Jr. impressed coaches in 2019, capping freshman season with a 12-tackle performance in the Independence Bowl. He thought of the advice Quarterman gave him.
“I told him that, for one, he had to live everything that he preaches as the middle linebacker at Miami. There’s no such thing as you telling somebody what to do and you’re not the hardest worker in the building because being a linebacker at Miami you already have a responsibility,” said Quarterman, now a rookie linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars. “You can’t lollygag on a day that you just don’t have it, you woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It doesn’t exist anymore once you’ve taken the spot of a starting linebacker and middle linebacker at the University of Miami.”
Behind the scenes, this is who Jennings always was and Quarterman, fellow former linebacker Michael Pinckney and redshirt senior Zach McCloud — the three players Jennings sat behind for so many years — already knew it, especially as they watched him work his way back after hip surgery. Jennings still had to prove it to the rest of the linebackers, which includes three freshmen and two sophomores, most of whom only knew him as the injured veteran.
It was impossible not to respect the work he put in to get healthy and coach Manny Diaz always said he was one of the team’s biggest hitters, along with Quarterman.
In his first year as a starter, Jennings is doing his best Quarterman impression, both on the field and using all the advice Quarterman gave him about how to lead off it.
“He’s like a battery for this defense,” McCloud said Wednesday. “He’s one of those guys who goes around and keeps everybody up. You’re not going to catch BJ being down on himself about anything.”