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about all that. On the shore he spots the owner of the
farm, who wants to say hello before heading to work. They
banter like old friends, and then the man asks, “How long
are y’all staying?”
“I don’t know,” Fromm says, grinning. “Whenever we
get done catching them all.”F
ROMM GREW UP in Warner Robins, Ga., a
small town just outside of Macon, and that’s
where he learned to fish and hunt and love
football, specifically Bulldogs football. Jake’s
father, Emerson, had attended Georgia, and the family
often built their weekends around watching games. When
Jake was about 10, he begged his grandfather to buy him
a Herschel Walker autographed helmet, and that became
the centerpiece of the family’s game room. Frommdreamed of wearing a g helmet himself someday.
When he was a junior at Houston County High, he was
a four-star recruit, but Mark Richt, then the Bulldogs’
coach, didn’t offer him a scholarship. Richt already had a
signed letter of intent from five-star QB Jacob Eason from
Lake Stevens, Wash., who was a year older than Fromm.
Richt, it seemed, wanted to give Eason room to develop.
Instead Fromm verbally committed to Alabama.
Through the recruiting process, the Fromms dealt a lot
with Nick Saban, of course, but they became close with
one assistant in particular, Kirby Smart, the defensive
coordinator. Smart had grown up in Georgia, too. He’d
played for the Bulldogs and was responsible for recruiting
most of the state for Alabama. “It was just easier to relate
to Kirby, because he understood who we were,” Emerson
Fromm says. “He grew up hunting quail, stuff like that.”
Then, in November 2015, Georgia fired Richt and re-
placed him with Smart. As one of his first orders of busi-
ness, Smart flew to Washington to make sure Eason was
planning to honor his commitment. Not long after that,
though, Smart offered Fromm a scholarship, too. He wasn’t
bothered by the idea of having two top-flight quarterbacks,
only a year apart, even
if inevitably it would
leave one of them
unhappy.
Ha v i n g s p e n t
1 1 y e a r s w o r k i n g
under Saban, Smart
subscribes to the no-
tion that competition
brings out the best
in everyone. He told
Fromm that he could
compete with Eason
for the job when he
arrived, a year later.
Fromm started campaigning well before that. As a high
schooler, he’d drive to Athens and sit in on quarterbacks
meetings. Even then, “Jake understood what was going
on,” Smart says. “There were questions being posed to
the quarterbacks in the room that he could answer. He
understood. His [mind-set] was, I’m as smart as those
guys, I’m going to outwork them, and I’ll end up beating
somebody out. He was very confident.”
Fromm enrolled early, in January 2017, and immedi-
ately immersed himself in the playbook. But no amount
of studying could make up for a lack of experience, and
Eason had that: He had started all but one game the year
before, in an 8–5 season. The spring he took most of the
first-team practice reps, and Smart named him the starter
in July, ending the competition before it ever picked up.
JEFFREY VEST/ICO Not knowing how much he’d play that fall, Fromm began