Tide’s Walker excited about senior season

TUSCALOOSA — Nick Walker can’t believe it. The tight end from Brundidge is preparing for his senior season at Alabama.

“It just flew by,” Walker said last week. “Seems like I just came in as a freshman. Now, it’s fixin’ to be over with.”

Alabama has just nine seniors on the roster, even fewer fifth-year seniors. But two of those are tight ends, Walker and Travis McCall of Prattville.
“We room together. He’s one of my best friends,” Walker said of McCall. “He’s a cool guy to be around. I’ve learned a lot from him.”

The two are linked by experience, age and position. And yet, their personalities are almost polar opposites. McCall is painfully reserved in interviews. Quiet. Quick answers. By contrast, Walker loves to talk. To anybody.

He admits, “I never met a stranger.”

Which is why, together, they are nearly the perfect leader. McCall, at 6-foot-3, 260, is a technician and a tremendous worker.

“Travis never says a word,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said. “What he does is, every day he brings his lunch pail, works hard, sets a good example.”

Walker, who is 6-foot-5, 250, is more likely to pick up a teammate who’s had a tough practice. He’s a better friend than boss.

“I’ve never ... I could be a leader,” he said, sounding like he’s convincing himself. “But as far as just talking to younger players, get on to ’em, I’ve never really done that.”

Sophomore tight end Preston Dial is glad they’re both there.

“Nick Walker and Travis McCall are like big brothers,” Dial said. “It’s always good to have a couple guys to look up to and help you. ...
“Nick really took to me when I first got here. He’s a real friendly guy, always joking around. He keeps the atmosphere around here real light, which is always good. Travis is more of the get-to-work-and-do-it type guy. But don’t let him fool you. He cuts up, too.”

Asked about his friend, McCall said of Walker, “He’s a very athletic guy, a hard worker. He’s also fun to be around. He makes practice go by quickly.”

McCall’s work ethic probably got him on the field more often than Walker. He started 12 games in 2006, but the tight ends weren’t utilized much in Mike Shula’s offense. Saban’s arrival in 2007 changed that. McCall and Walker went to work. Walker shed more than 50 pounds.

“My blocking improved a lot last year,” Walker said. “The year before, I really wasn’t getting it done like I was supposed to. I had a lot of help working on it. I got pretty good.”

Good enough that the offense often used two tight ends. McCall often lined up as the “H” back, filling the role of fullback on running plays.
“Tight end is a great ’mismatch’ position,” Saban said. “Those kinds of guys really can give you problems defensively, because you don’t usually have the best guys covering them.”

New offensive coordinator Jim McElwain’s system creates more opportunities for the tight end, Walker said.

“I guess we’ve gained coach Mac’s confidence. We use a lot of tight ends and we use them in a lot of different spots,” he said. “We’ll be all over the place this year. It’s gonna be hard for teams to pick up on what we’re doing.”

Saban said both his tight ends are proven playmakers.

“That’s what you need to know, is who your playmakers are so you can get them in position to where they can make plays,” Saban said after Saturday’s scrimmage. “Travis and Nick are real consistent performers and they enable us to do that in more ways than just being run blockers.”

It’s easier to look ahead at the blank slate of his senior season than to look back at some disappointing results in his career. Walker said six close losses last season are fueling his urgency for a big turnaround. Of course, he couldn’t ignore that if he tried.

“They’ve got these posters posted up form a couple games we had lost last year that we should have won,” Walker said. “Got ’em all posted up in everybody’s locker. Just to make you think about it.

“Every time you feel like you’re in the tank, don’t feel like doing something, don’t feel like practicing, working out, whatever, just look at that sign and think about what happened last year and the feeling you had after that game. Don’t want that to happen again.”

After the physical change of last season, Walker has a new appreciation for Saban’s fourth-quarter program. It’s physical, sure, but he said it’s mental, too.

“Last year we didn’t know what to expect,” Walker said. “Coach came in there, last year we didn’t really, really buy in to what coach was selling. This year more people, basically the whole team, is buying in to what he’s selling.

“Now we really know the true meaning of the fourth-quarter program. When it gets to the fourth quarter, the other team gets tired, we’ll take it to em. That’s why we’ll put those four fingers up there when the fourth quarter starts, let them know we’ve come to play 60 minutes — don’t matter what the situation is.”

There’s more reason to look ahead, too.

“I’m trying to play on Sundays, so I gotta do what it takes,” Walker said. “I got a lot of good coaches who can get me there, can show me the road, tell me what I’ve got to do. It’s up to me to listen and do what they want done.”

What do they want from him this year?

“Basically, I need to get better on my mental toughness and my leadership,” he said. “That was the big thing. Everything else was easy to fix. And ball security. I’ve got a tendency sometimes to swing the ball when I was running with it. I worked on that all summer.”