So it might come as a surprise to many people that on a Mary Hardin-Baylor defense annually stocked with superstars, Jones and Jefferson are the season's top two tacklers.
In fact, it even came as a shock to both players.
"I'm out there just playing, loving the sport," Jones said. "To be honest, I really didn't even know that we were the leading tacklers."
Despite their obscure beginnings last year as freshmen, the speedy Jones and the brawny Jefferson are making names for themselves.
Jones - a 6-foot, 180-pound sophomore out of Katy Morton Ranch - is a hybrid linebacker/safety in UMHB's 4-2-5 scheme.
He has started all four games in his first varsity season and has a team-high 24 tackles - 2½ for losses - and a 61-yard interception return for a touchdown for the third-ranked Crusaders (4-0 overall, 3-0 American Southwest Conference), who will aim for their 33rd straight ASC victory when they host Louisiana College (2-2, 1-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday.
"With Javicz's work ethic, there's nobody that outworks Javicz on the practice field," UMHB linebackers coach David Branscom said. "He's always in-tune, always listening and always trying to get better."
Jefferson, who is 6-0 and listed modestly at 225 pounds, is a backup middle linebacker out of Waller who breaks the mold of recent, more-slender Crusader linebackers.
He has used his hefty frame, however, to record 21 tackles - 5½ for losses, including one sack - and force a fumble.
"I am the biggest linebacker on this team right now, and I get reminded about that every day," the jovial Jefferson said while laughing. "My nickname's actually 'The Waddler.'
"But it takes the same thing for me to be successful as it does everybody else. It takes preparation and hard work. I put in a lot of work during the offseason to stay at linebacker, and it's helped me a lot."
UMHB has consistently churned out top-level linebackers, from All-American Preston Meyer, who played during the program's infancy, to recent All-Americans Jerrell Freeman and Eric Henri.
According to Jefferson, the Crusaders' legacy of linebackers is no accident.
"It takes a certain amount of natural instinct but more than that, our coaches get us in a great gameplan," he said. "We practice it all week so that by Saturday, we have a good idea of what the offense is going to come out in.
"So if you just work hard and have a little bit of natural instinct, you can be a good linebacker here."
Jefferson seems to have those qualities.
"Jerrad is a very intelligent, hard-working, great-character guy, and he's only going to get better," Branscom said. "The great thing about him is that he has some instinct and he's so smart.
"One of the biggest things with our defense is being able to defend formations and line up, and he can do those things. With his size, he's a really physical player. And he still has a burst. He can run."
Thrust into action not long after the careers of Henri and Freeman - who plays for the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders - Jones and Jefferson are given constant reminders of the tradition they must help uphold.
"I've seen film and watched how the other linebackers here have played," Jones said. "And the coaches stress how hard those guys worked to be All-Americans and be successful. We hear about them every day, and that's motivation for us."
And that type of tradition is one of the things that drew both players to UMHB in the first place.
"This is still a young program," Jefferson began, "but there's already so much tradition and pride that come with being a Crusader.
"Everybody on a team has to be working toward the same goal. When they're not, that's when you see the team start to divide. But the fact that everybody here is working for a common, single goal is what keeps everybody together."
And keeping together everybody from All-Americans to guys near the bottom of the depth chart pays off in the long run. Because as Jones and Jefferson have shown, it can be difficult to discern just who the next star might be.
