Exactly one month before its 2026 season opener, South Alabama took the practice field for the first time in preseason camp on Wednesday, working out for roughly two hours in warm, humid conditions at the Jaguars’ outdoor facility in Mobile. It was the first of four consecutive practice days for South Alabama, which is coming off a 4-8 finish in 2025.
South Alabama’s program is young by Football Bowl Subdivision standards — the Jaguars played their first season in 2009 and joined the Sun Belt Conference early in the following decade — but the expectations that come with a new season arrive on the same schedule as everywhere else. A 4-8 finish in 2025 left the staff with obvious questions about both lines, the linebacker corps and the consistency of an offense that showed flashes without sustained production, and camp is where those answers either start to form or fail to.
Early-August camp in Mobile is an endurance test before anything else — temperatures in the low 90s with humidity to match — and the schedule ahead is deliberately dense, with four straight days of work intended to build conditioning and install the base of the offense and defense before pads go on and the calendar turns toward September.
Here are three takeaways from the Jaguars’ opening day of camp.
Quarterbacks pushing each other
Senior Bishop Davenport returns after starting every game at quarterback for South Alabama last season, but head coach Major Applewhite made clear the position will be a competition just like the other 21 spots on offense and defense.
For Applewhite, the camp is also a checkpoint on a roster he has continued to reshape. His own path — star quarterback at Texas, coordinator jobs in the Southeastern Conference, a head-coaching stint at Houston — has made him blunt about quarterback play, and he has been equally blunt about wanting the entire roster built on competition rather than entitlement.
Davenport completed 68 percent of his passes with 12 touchdowns a year ago, while also rushing for 507 yards and eight scores, and he now has 14 starts over the past two seasons. His dual-threat production made him one of the Sun Belt’s more dangerous returning quarterbacks, even in a season that ended with more losses than wins.
Sophomore Jared Hollins, who played in four games last season before getting extensive reps in the spring, is pushing for time as well, along with true freshmen Taylor Jacobs and Aaden Shamburger. The staff kept all four involved on day one, rotating reps in individual drills and team periods.
“At the end of the day, just having played that position, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the SEC or the Sun Belt, you better have two ready,” said Applewhite, a former star quarterback at Texas. “We’re going to compete with two. We’ll see how those guys go through fall camp and then we’ll make our decision off of that.”
Davenport said he welcomes the competition. “I love it,” he said. “We push each other every day on and off the field. We have a great bond on and off the field as well. They’re gonna always keep me sharp and I’m always gonna keep them sharp.”
The numbers argue that Davenport has earned the benefit of the doubt. A quarterback who completes better than two-thirds of his passes while adding eight rushing touchdowns gives an offense a dimension that is hard to scheme against, and his 14 starts over two seasons make him the most experienced player at the most important position on the field.
Applewhite knows the position from every angle — as a record-setting college quarterback, a longtime offensive coordinator and a former head coach — and his insistence on carrying a battle through fall camp reflects a lesson most staffs learn the hard way: a season rarely survives on one healthy, effective quarterback alone.
One key player back healthy, two still out
Running back PJ Martin returned to practice after sitting out most of the spring and missing time late in the 2025 season with back issues. Martin, who rushed for 330 yards and four touchdowns in eight games last season, is a full participant entering camp and figures to pair with returning back Keenan Phillips, who rushed for 623 yards and three touchdowns in 2025.
A healthy Martin and Phillips together give the Jaguars the kind of one-two rotation that has become standard across the Sun Belt — a heavier between-the-tackles option and a complement who can turn the corner — and the backs figure to be busy as the staff works through a rebuilt offensive line.
Camp will also be about building timing that the spring could not provide. Martin missed most of the offseason work, which means the next four weeks are his first extended opportunity to run behind the rebuilt line and to establish the rhythm of handoffs, pass protection and route responsibility that a season depends on.
The injury picture is less encouraging at linebacker, where projected starters Caleb Dozier (foot) and Tirrell Johnson (knee) are continuing to recover from injuries that limited their 2025 seasons. Applewhite said there is no set timetable for either player’s return.
“I don’t have any real hard report for those guys,” Applewhite said. “They’re continuing to rehab and getting better every day. When they come back is obviously up to doctors and them, doing the rehab.”
Along the offensive line, South Alabama was able to field two full groups for 11-on-11 drills after finishing spring practice with just nine healthy linemen — a shortage that had forced the spring game into a controlled format. The first unit featured Reese Osei-Wusu at left tackle, Jamal Siler at left guard, Kenton Jerido at center, Shalik Hubbard at right guard and returning starter Ethan Hubbard at right tackle.
Getting 10 linemen into full-speed team drills on day one was quietly one of the most significant developments of the afternoon. Depth in the trenches is the difference between absorbing a long season and being broken by one, and the training staff’s work since April gave the coaches their first real look at a settled first five.
Defense focused on stopping the run
This season marks the debut at South Alabama for defensive coordinator Todd Orlando, a veteran assistant who has previously worked at programs including USC, Texas, Houston, South Florida and Florida Atlantic. Orlando and Applewhite are longtime friends who served together as coordinators under Tom Herman at Houston a decade ago, and their reunion gives the staff a shared defensive vocabulary from day one.
Orlando’s itinerary is one of the deeper in the profession, with stops that have included some of college football’s biggest programs and coordinator posts at three different Football Bowl Subdivision schools. His early emphasis in Mobile has been deliberately unglamorous: alignment, assignment, tackling.
The assignment Orlando inherits is specific. South Alabama finished fifth in the Sun Belt in total defense last season but just 10th in scoring defense. The Jaguars were solid against the pass, ranking fourth in the league, though that may have owed partly to opponents’ success on the ground: South Alabama allowed 177 rushing yards per game, 103rd nationally out of 136 FBS teams, along with 25 rushing touchdowns (105th) and 4.7 yards per carry allowed (112th).
Fixing that will require more than scheme. Last season’s rushing numbers reflected breakdowns at every level — missed fits at the second level, tackles not made in space, and an offense that could not stay on the field long enough to rest the defense. Orlando has said publicly that the fix starts with fundamentals, and the camp schedule gives the defense daily tackling periods to prove it.
“I think the first thing we’ve got to get changed is the run game from last year,” Orlando said. “For people to be able to take the ball and just run it on us, you’re not going to win a lot of ball games that way. So establish the fundamentals and technical part of it, toughen up. That’s the big part. And then play explosive on defense… it’s a work-in-progress during fall camp.”
The day-one install reflected those priorities, with defensive periods emphasizing gap integrity and tackling angles before any exotic pressure packages get layered on.
The Sun Belt race offers no soft landing once conference play arrives, and the league has grown only more competitive as its members have invested in football. Every point conceded on the ground in September will be expensive in November, which is why the first week of camp is being spent on the least glamorous details in the game.
South Alabama returns to practice Thursday and opens the 2026 season at home on Sept. 5 against Southeastern Louisiana. The opener at the on-campus stadium gives the Jaguars a manageable measuring stick before Sun Belt play arrives — and a month of camp, starting with Wednesday’s two hours in the Mobile heat, to answer the questions their first day laid out: who wins the quarterback competition, whether the linebackers get healthy, and how fast a new coordinator can fix what went wrong against the run.
