The making of Keelon Russell: From his nickname to his 'old school' approach, Alabama's star QB is built a bit different for a 19-year-old

· Yahoo Sports

Keelon Russell does not look old school.

At 19, he’s not old at all.

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He eats a bag of skittles before each game, washes down the sugary snacks with Gatorade, listens to beats of Atlanta rap artist Lil Baby and can often be found playing the NBA 2K video game.

Old school? Surely not.

But you don’t know the half of it. There’s another side of Keelon Russell, the starting quarterback for the Alabama Crimson Tide. In fact, you probably don’t know much about the kid they call El Presidente, the one who left a Texas high school as the second highest-ranked recruit in the country, the athletic “freak” with a rocket of an arm who’s vaulted up Heisman Trophy odds.

Russell is, in fact, old school. Better yet, he’s an “old soul,” says his former high school offensive coordinator, Todd Peterman. He’s mature well beyond his years, something Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer learned last summer after the tragic death of Keelon’s twin sister, Kiersten.

Those at the funeral gathered not around an older brother or father figure, but around Keelon.

“He’s been through some stuff,” DeBoer told Yahoo Sports this week during an interview. “I saw a side of him that blew me away.”

Keelon’s maturity, his humbleness, is a product of his mom and dad, as well as one of the nation’s premier quarterback trainers, Brad Frazier, a 66-year-old white-haired, bespeckled man and retired tech CEO who cruises around Frisco, Texas, in a white Hummer wrapped in an advertisement for his business.

You’ll never guess the name.

Old School Quarterbacks.

Frazier recalls the first time he witnessed Russell throw a football as a freshman in high school. During one windy, cold day at a Dallas-area football field, Peterman arrived with two quarterbacks — one a rising sophomore Frazer had never heard of and the other a rising senior poised to be the starter that coming season for the Duncanville High Panthers, a powerhouse program in suburban south Dallas.

After only getting garbage-time work as a freshman last season, Alabama QB Keelon Russell has surged onto the national scene early this year. (Jason Clark/Getty Images)Jason Clark via Getty Images

From the field, Peterman nudged Frazier, “I want you to really watch this freshman. He’s got it.”

“He threw against a 25 mile-an-hour wind,” Frazier recalls. “When you see it, you just kind of know.”

Eventually, after an injury to that senior in the 2022 season opener, everyone in Duncanville saw it. It manifested into consecutive state championships, a career high school record of 42-2, more than 10,000 yards passing and 127 touchdowns. They got to see the old soul, a wiry beanpoll of a quarterback cut through some of the nation’s best prep defenses — even his own (he played and practiced on a team with now-Texas defensive end Colin Simmons and threw passes to Dakorien Moore, now at Oregon, and against defensive back Javion Holiday, now at SMU).

Russell’s on-field theatrics have now gone mainstream, which has produced their share of mispronunciations. April Moore, Keelon’s mother, often reminds people that her son’s name isn’t pronounced KEE-Lawn. It’s KEE-Lin.

Speaking of mainstream, as No. 6 Alabama (5-0) prepares to host No. 2 Georgia (5-0) in a showdown in Tuscaloosa, Russell’s big-play ability has burst onto the national scene. He leads the SEC in yards-per-attempt (10.71) and has a whopping 48 completions of at least 10 yards. After a bumpy start — two touchdowns and three turnovers in the first two games — he’s had 13 scores and zero turnovers in the last three. In fact, he became the first Alabama player in the last 30 years to account for at least 300 yards of offense, three passing touchdowns and one rushing in three consecutives games.

In a world where coaches are moving aside floundering young, highly paid quarterbacks — see Colorado, Tennessee and maybe Michigan — Russell finds himself fielding questions about the Heisman.

As you’d expect, he brushes off such talk.

“Not really worried about the Heisman right now,” he told reporters after Alabama’s 56-23 win at Mississippi State.

This week is different. After all, it is Georgia — Russell’s toughest test yet.

In a sign of the week’s magnitude, people are acting differently. For instance, Keelon’s father and mother are politely declining interview requests. That goes too for one of Keelon’s other quarterback trainers, Brad Stanfield, who sent to Yahoo Sports a statement noting that he did not want to “take the light off what they are building.”

Keelon himself has mostly only been made available to the media for a short period after games. To tell his story, interviews from various outlets must be patched together, including his cover piece last year in the national magazine Men’s Health and a 15-minute video produced by the university’s internal media team, where Keelon acknowledged his obsession with the sport.

He says he emerged once from concussion protocol in high school to throw five touchdowns in a game because, he said to himself, “Screw that! I’d sacrifice everything to help my team win.”

“I will die for this game,” he said. “Going through rough times in my life, being able to be on the field, it brings peace to me.”

Russell models his mental game off of Tom Brady. He’s a film junkie, prides himself in analyzing defenses pre-snap, reading his progressions and, despite an athleticism that well surpasses Brady, standing tall in the pocket. He avoids the temptation to run.

It’s an old-school mentality — all of it.

There’s more.

He reads scripture nightly, got re-baptized upon his arrival in Tuscaloosa last year and “is not a money person,” his mom says. In fact, during the interview with Men’s Health, Keelon says he intentionally “keeps it simple.”

“I’m not a flashy person. I ain’t even got no jewelry on,” he said. “Just clothes and shoes.”

Simple but serious. Don’t call Russell a dual-threat quarterback. He’s a quarterback who can run, too. In fact, he can run really fast. Russell joined the Duncanville track team ahead of his senior season on Peterman’s insistence.

The track coach called Peterman after one of Russell’s first days.

“He’s a freak!” the coach yelped on the phone.

Russell ran a 48-second, 400-meter dash, and if you’re not familiar with that, the average Olympic medalist time is around 45 seconds.

“There used to be this stigmatism with black quarterbacks,” Peterman said. “Me and Key had a conversation about that when I got [to Duncanville] and I said, ‘Who gives a s***? Don’t worry about how you are labeled. Do what you do.’”

Ryan Grubb, Alabama’s offensive coordinator, delivered a message to Russell about that before this season.

“If that’s all they ever say about you — that you have athletic ability — that would be an insult,” Grubb said he told the quarterback. “He takes that very seriously.”

Holiday, the SMU defensive back who chased down Russell at Duncanville High practices, watches him on television evade defenders with some of the same moves. He’s just as lethal with his feet as he is with his arm.

“As you can see, he’s getting away with tackles now. He’s doing stuff,” Holiday said.

In high school, recruiting sites compared Russell to former Heisman Trophy winner Jayden Daniels. For DeBoer, Russell most reminds him of a cross between two quarterbacks he’s coached: Michael Penix and his starter last year, Ty Simpson.

During a call on Tuesday, DeBoer moves through his quarterback’s abilities one by one: deep ball, quick release, escape speed, good instincts and feel.

Keelon Russell celebrates after Alabama's win over Mississippi State on Oct. 3. (Justin Ford/Getty Images)Justin Ford via Getty Images

In a comment not to be under-appreciated, the coach says, “With him, you expect the throw that you probably didn’t think can be made. But he makes it.”

It’s why Peterman and Frazier nearly blew a fuse when Russell’s college recruitment started so slowly.

What are they not seeing here?

So under-recruited as a junior, Keelon began attending summer camps with his father, Brian, a high school football coach himself. He started to create videos and post on social media. The recognition finally came.

Nick Sheridan, then the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, and JaMarcus Shephard, a former Alabama assistant now coaching at Oregon State, first visited Duncanville to watch Russell throw his junior season. They reported back something that DeBoer still remembers.

“This kid,” they said, “is the real deal.”

Russell committed to SMU before DeBoer called him one day to ask if he could slip out of class.

The coach wanted to wish him a happy birthday — and offer him a scholarship to Alabama. He visited, flipped his commitment and the Tide never recruited another quarterback that cycle.

“When you get a call from Alabama, you have to take the call,” Russell said.

But there’s an alternate path where none of this actually happens.

Russell is humble enough that he actually wanted to transfer away from the glamorous quarterback position. He told his high school head coach, Reginald Samples, that he should move to receiver.

No, Samples told him, you shouldn’t.

Everyone’s quite excited about Keelon back home in the Dallas area.

During a call this week, Tabatha Johnson, his second-grade teacher, excitedly offers a reminder to a reporter that, “I’ve never been on a phone interview!” Johnson remembers Keelon leading the other second-graders outside for recess where he proceeded to take over as quarterback in a playground football game.

In fact, Russell returned this past May for the school’s field day. Johnson still has videos on her phone of him helping teach the kids how to succeed at tug-o-war.

“It’s not bulls*** or fake,” says Peterman. “He cares about other people.”

He’s close to his family. In fact, his mother lives in Tuscaloosa, moving there with her son last year. Keelon describes this as a “headache,” perhaps only half joking.

“My mom is my best friend,” he acknowledges.

Kiersten, his twin sister, moved to the city as well.

On June 6, 2025, Tuscaloosa police confirmed the death of Kiersten. Little to no other information was released, except a request that privacy for the family be respected.

In a message posted on social media, Keelon wrote, “Losing a twin sister and daughter is a pain no one could ever imagine.”

The two were close, as many twins are. In fact, Peterman says, they often rode to and from school together.

“You pick Keelon up, you had to get her,” he said with a chuckle.

She played basketball at Duncanville High and won a state title the same year that her brother did in football. In a previous interview, April glowed about that season. Those at the school called her “the mother of champions.”

In June, Keelon held a camp in Frisco that brought together 100 kids as part of the Forever24 Foundation created in Kiersten’s honor. In his video with the university’s media staff, Keelon didn’t discuss Kiersten, but he mentioned the toughness and fortitude necessary to battle adversity as a major college athlete.

“Who are you as a person? What’s your breaking point?” he asked aloud. “You got to be the same person every day.”

Keelon’s parents separated when he was young, something he openly discusses. He’s thankful to have had them both in his life, as well as his five other siblings, including a 10-year-old brother Harlem who trains with Frazier at Old School Quarterbacks.

Harlem will, perhaps, be the next Keelon Russell — an unexpected old soul in a world of vanity, money and fame.

“He doesn’t have to try to be cool,” says Peterman. “He is just cool. He’s El Presidente.”

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