Jon Davis
Tight End
6′-3″, 240 lbs.
Sophomore (on scholarship, 4 years to play 3)
Middleton Eastern HS / Louisville, Kentucky

ALE Ranking last year: #60

What I Know About Him:

I know there’s a Jon Davis who is head of the department of accountancy and the R.C. Evans Endowed Chair in Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And I know that THAT Jon Davis has to be super mad every time he tells someone “just Google ‘Jon Davis Illinois’ and you’ll find me”. All that work to climb to the RC Cola Chair or whatever, and he’s trumped by a 6′-4″ superbeast from Kentucky who can run like a receiver and deliver a blow like a tailback. Life isn’t fair sometimes.

But life was fair to us on Signing Day 2011 when Jon Davis picked Illinois over Kentucky, Oregon, and Louisville. Go search through the videos on fightingillini.com from Signing Day 2011 and you’ll find Zook giving his patented “YEAH BABY” when they found out that Davis picked the Illini hat at his signing day presser. The best gifts Zook left under the tree when he left Champaign last December were probably 4 years of Darrius Caldwell and 3 years of Jon Davis. His last two recruits from the 2011 class will play huge dividends down the road. Wait, did I say “down the road”? Check that – this year.

What I Expect From Him:

There’s a tiny part of me that wants to go all “leads the team in receptions”, but I’m counting on Darius Millines to be 100% healthy and take that category. So I’ll just go “top offensive weapon” for Davis. I expect lots of yards on basic tight end curl routes. I expect more yards when he motions into the backfield and takes handoffs. And I expect more yards on tight end option shovel passes. And maybe some more split out as a wide receiver going up for the jump ball fade to the corner of the endzone. If his conditioning holds up, I think we’ll use Davis for a little bit of everything this fall.

And in the following two years, who knows? Davis is a special athlete who can run like a guy 50 pounds lighter. If we can expand his role this year like I described above, I think we’ll go to him for anything and everything in 2013 and 2014. Translation: there’s a chance Davis could find himself #1 on this list in 2014. The sky’s the limit.