ExtremeRavens Posted August 5 Posted August 5 LaJohntay Wester is used to being the smallest and thus usually doubted. Long before the rookie was a sixth-round draft pick of the Ravens selected to be their answer to last season’s punt return woes, he spent his childhood in southwest Florida sandwiched between his bigger, taller football playing brothers John Jr. and Jaylen, both of whom played defense and often had their way with the diminutive middle child of John and Laquita Wester. “I didn’t really like contact growing up,” LaJohntay told The Baltimore Sun. “I wanted to score and dance, so I stayed on the offensive side.” It wasn’t always easy to do so in the Wester household, where the boys’ father wouldn’t return home from his day jobs as a personal trainer and massage therapist until around 11 p.m., walk in the door and immediately challenge his sons to race him out in the street. “The house was super competitive,” John Jr., a former 6-foot-2, 180-pound defensive back at Fayetteville State and Florida Atlantic told The Baltimore Sun. “LaJohntay probably had it the worst being the only offensive player.” Indeed. His other brother, Jaylen, who also played with the siblings at FAU, is currently a linebacker at Western Kentucky. “LaJohntay’s always been small,” John Jr. continued. “But having that extra oomph in his personality is what made him able to make crazy plays.” Still, when LaJohntay was a senior at Palmetto (Fla.) High School in 2019, a college recruiter in attendance for the Tigers’ game against nearby Largo told Wester’s coach, Dave Marino, that he wasn’t interested in talking to the undersized, unranked senior. So Marino promptly delivered the message to Wester before the game and Wester responded by returning a punt and kickoff each for a touchdown and added another score on a bubble screen in the 44-6 rout. “He was just electric,” Marino told The Sun, adding that Wester’s ability as a point guard in basketball through high school added to his spatial awareness. “Every time he had the ball in his hands, you were just waiting for something special to happen, even at that young age. But because he was undersized, he always had a chip on his shoulder like, ‘I’ll show you.’” Yet even then it took a bit of serendipity. With Bowling Green and Kansas among the few schools offering a scholarship to the 5-foot-9, 170-pound speedster who was even smaller back then, Marino, a onetime grad assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles who went on to a long and successful high school coaching career called his old friend Willie Taggart, who was from the same area and then in his first year as FAU’s coach. Marino pestered him to offer a scholarship to the receiver who in his senior season had returned seven kick and punt returns for touchdowns and tallied 758 receiving yards and eight more scores. Taggart obliged. In four seasons for the Owls, Wester racked up 2,703 receiving yards and 21 touchdowns on 252 catches. He also returned a punt for a touchdown, was named American Athletic Conference Special Teams Player of the Year and was an AAC first-team selection at both receiver and special teams as a junior in 2023. Then came Colorado’s Big 12 opener against Baylor last season. Two seconds on the clock. Third-and-10 from the Baylor 44-yard line. Trailing by 7. As quarterback Shedeur Sanders scrambled left, he spotted Wester, who’d transferred to Boulder to play for coach Deion Sanders and increase his NFL exposure, and heaved the ball into the front left corner of the end zone. Wester broke free from his man and made a sliding grab between two defenders for the touchdown. ARE YOU SERIOUS?! COLORADO WITH A TOUCHDOWN IN THE FINAL SECONDS @CUBuffsFootball pic.twitter.com/8niJ6NPK8t — FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 22, 2024 Colorado won in overtime and Wester was on his way. “Deion knows Florida football,” Marino said. “He had no hesitation bringing an undersized guy into the Power 5 level of football coming from a mid-major.” Wester ended the season with 74 catches for 931 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also averaged 12.2 yards per punt return, which included a 76-yard return for a touchdown against Utah. Along the way, he was finally able to switch jersey numbers, too, going from No. 10 to No. 1. “He wanted the No. 1 when he came here,” Sanders told reporters following the Buffaloes’ win over Cincinnati. “No. 1 ain’t something you acquire, it’s given to you. … He earned it.” Now, he hopes to earn something else: The starting job as Baltimore’s punt returner. Ravens wide receiver LaJohntay Wester, while undersized, has the speed and elusiveness needed to make an NFL roster as a rookie. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff) Finding a dependable option was among coach John Harbaugh’s draft wishes after the Ravens last season ranked 26th in total punt return yards, 16th in yards per return and struggled to find someone who could consistently catch the ball as they uneasily bounced between Tylan Wallace, Deonte Harty and Steven Sims. So general manager Eric DeCosta used the 203rd overall pick on Wester, a player who of course Taggart, now the Ravens’ running backs coach, was intimately familiar with. “What stands out about him is really his returnability,” DeCosta said following the draft. “If you watch him, we think he’s a twitchy, explosive punt returner.” Through the first two-plus weeks of training camp, Wester has gotten only scant chances to show his stuff. He’s caught most but not every ball during kick and punt return drills but at least has looked comfortable fielding them. “What I’m seeing from LaJohntay every day is the consistency in the ball catching,” special teams coordinator Chris Horton said. “He has great technique. He has great fundamentals in really how we want to field the ball.” This week, he’ll finally get more opportunities to do so at full speed in a joint practice against the Indianapolis Colts on Tuesday followed by the Ravens’ first preseason game on Thursday night against the Colts at M&T Bank Stadium. When he does, he hopes to channel one of his idols, Devin Hester, who he used to watch highlights of on YouTube and ESPN and then try to imitate. The only player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a returner, Hester starred at the University of Miami before going on to set an NFL record with 19 career returns for touchdowns (14 punt, five kickoff) over 11 seasons with the Chicago Bears, Atlanta Falcons, Ravens and Seattle Seahawks. For now, though, Wester has a simple but effective philosophy he’ll lean on first when it comes to the return game. “Catch the ball,” he said. “Before you do anything, before you think about anything, catch the ball. If we make explosive plays off it, that’s a big plus. But the main objective is to just catch the ball.” Once he does, the rest should take care of itself. Have a news tip? Contact Brian Wacker at bwacker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/brianwacker1. View the full article Quote
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