When Jonah Williams was about 12, he began building a weight room in his parents' basement in suburban Atlanta.
The tall preteen was all elbows and kneecaps back then. He thought he was too skinny, and rather than wait for nature to run its course, he decided to escalate the process.
Katherine, his mother, said he would "eat and eat and eat." And before long, her quiet, introspective son had morphed into someone different. He was born big -- just shy of 11 pounds and 22 inches long -- but suddenly he was growing in leaps and bounds into the 6-foot-5, 290-pound behemoth he'd become.
He'd always had an intensity about him, but Katherine started to sense an aggression in him when he played sports. Seeing him defend the net as a fullback in soccer, guard the rim as a center in basketball or shield the quarterback at offensive tackle in football, she began to put two and two together.
"Put him on [the] athletic field and it comes out: the protection," she said.
Alabama fans have seen it during every one of the Crimson Tide's 13 games this season: Williams protecting fellow freshman Jalen Hurts. Hurts has gotten all the acclaim as a true freshman QB starting on the No. 1-ranked team in college football, but Williams has been arguably the more consistent player. It feels as if every week the right tackle has been part of the staff's players of the week. He's already a member of the SEC All-Freshman Team and is a mortal lock to become a consensus freshman All-American.
But neither Williams, his mother nor his former high school coach are shocked that he has been able to have this much success so soon. When asked whether they were even a little bit surprised, their response inevitably began with, "No, but ..."
"If Jonah sets a goal," Katherine said, "it's hard to deter him from that."
Said Williams: "I've always wanted to compete and just work to earn everything."
That competitiveness, Katherine said, is innate. But it was also nurtured by a mother who played tennis and a father who swam and played offensive line in high school. She went to school at Auburn and he at Georgia, so college football has always been a part of the family's life.
A job opportunity led the family to move from Atlanta to California after Williams' freshman year of high school, and he settled in at Folsom High after a semester at another local high school.
When Folsom football coach Kris Richardson first laid eyes on Williams, he was stunned.
"You could see right away he had the physical tools: quick feet, an explosive lower body, a freak in the weight room," Richardson said. "But he was really raw and didn't have a lot of technique. ... His idea of football was to grab and kick and throw people to the ground. I'm like, 'Jonah, for one, these are your own teammates. Let's not throw our own guys to the ground all the time. And two, when you throw kids that's not really blocking.'"
Even if he didn't want to become a technician, Richardson said Williams would have been fine living off his natural ability. In fact, before his first game on varsity, Cal was so impressed that it offered him a scholarship on the spot.
But Williams did want to learn the finer points of playing the position. By Saturday morning, he'd already be done watching the game tape from the night before and Richardson would wake to a dozen or so text messages from his star left tackle.
"On play 22, I took my step wrong," Williams would write, according to Richardson. "On play 25, my hands weren't inside."
Richardson would reply, and Williams would inevitably be in the weight room working out. Richardson held him back as best he could, but he still benched more than 500 pounds and squatted more than 600.
"Very serious. Very mature," Richardson said of Williams. "His work ethic is off the charts. That's just who he is as a person."
During Williams' junior season, he would protect the blindside of future Washington quarterback Jake Browning. Folsom won the state title that year and Williams wound up with scholarship offers from every school that saw him play, Richardson said.
"If you want to entertain yourself, pull up his high school highlight tape," Richardson said. "He was killing kids. It was not fair."
He even played defensive line on occasion and dominated there, too.
"He's going to go down as one of Sacramento's all-time greatest," said Richardson, who has been head coach at Folsom for 12 years and was an assistant there for nearly a decade before that.
But the best thing about Williams, Richardson said, was how he handled the recruiting process. He had one tweet about it, and it was the one where he announced his commitment to Alabama. And before he sent that out, he called every head coach who offered him a scholarship to personally relay his decision.
Williams graduated early and enrolled at Alabama in January.
"I came in and found a place that suits me and my personality, my work ethic," Williams said.
In a bit of foreshadowing, he said that, "I wouldn't recommend someone come here if they're not willing to work hard."
If there was one thing players noticed about Williams right away, it was his attitude in the weight room. He didn't chafe at the shrill whistle of strength coach Scott Cochran at 6:30 a.m. Instead, he seemed to love it.
"He lives in there," said veteran guard Ross Pierschbacher, "and it shows."
Williams and Pierschabacher would become workout buddies as well as friends off the field.
Pierschabacher said that he'll try to watch other college football games as a fan and inevitably Williams will spoil it, yapping in his ear about, "Oh, they ran this blitz and that stunt and they should have done this."
"It's like watching film next to [offensive line coach Brent Key]," Pierschabacher said. "I just want to relax a little bit."
He added: "I just think that's how he's built and that's what's making him so successful; he's just got that great football mind."
Senior defensive tackle Jonathan Allen marvels at Williams' technique and said that he "plays beyond his age."
Junior defensive end Da'Shawn Hand said there are times when he forgets that he's a freshman, too.
"That dude is going to be a monster," Hand said. "Just wait. You'll see."
According to Pro Football Focus, Williams graded higher than Alabama's junior left tackle Cam Robinson, a player many expect to be taken in the first round of next year's draft
The future finance major isn't done yet. On Dec. 31, Williams will introduce himself to an even larger audience when No. 1-ranked Alabama plays in the College Football Playoff semifinal game at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta (3 p.m. ET, ESPN).
The opponent: No. 4 Washington and Williams' former teammate, Browning.
"They're good friends," Katherine said. "He's excited about it. He's proud of Jake and his accomplishments, but at the same time this is going to be fun. This is the Pac-12 versus the SEC."
Katherine said she was thankful that since Williams and Browning both play offense, there won't be any physical altercation between the friends. Not that Williams wouldn't be ready.
When Katherine spoke for this story, Alabama had just ended its fall semester and players were able to go home before practice started back up. And where was Williams on his day off? At the local recreation center lifting weights.
When he got home, Katherine said that her son, an avid reader, would start his next book: "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius.
It's heady stuff for a freshman in college, but Williams isn't your typical freshman.
"He's like a 28-year-old man and not an 18-year-old kid," Richardson said.