It was early in the morning on Nov. 30, 1994 when Anthony Averett's father got the call. He was told to leave work immediately and head home.



Only 28 weeks into being pregnant with Anthony, Carmen Davis was experiencing a serious complication. She had a placental abruption. Essentially, her placenta broke and she was bleeding a lot. She needed to get to the hospital.



Anthony Averett Sr. rushed home from work, picked up Davis and made the four-mile drive to the hospital.



After a quick evaluation, the doctor told Anthony's parents: The baby has to come out now. They took Averett's mother into a different room, and Anthony's father remembers someone from the hospital telling him two minutes later, "It's a boy."



"We were very lucky," Anthony Averett Sr., said. "If we had waited for the ambulance or if I had gotten her there later, the bleeding could have killed him. They said if it was an hour or a couple hours later, the blood would have drowned him. If it was another couple hours, he wouldn't be here."

'Little peanut'

Averett is now a starting cornerback for Alabama, a redshirt junior who has become a valuable part of arguably the nation's top defense after not playing a single meaningful snap on defense his first three years in Tuscaloosa.



Getting here required patience, persistence and overcoming adversity.



Averett is more than just a fast guy who is good at covering wide receivers. He's naturally a fighter, his family says. That's something he's essentially shown since birth.



Placental abruptions are rare. Severe ones like the one Averett's mother had are even more uncommon. Only one out of around 800 to 1,600 pregnant women will have a severe placental abruption, according to WhatToExpect.com.



After mother and baby survived that situation, the concern for Averett's parents shifted.



Pregnancies typically last 40 weeks. Averett was born at 28 weeks.

While this is big for a baby born at 28 weeks, Averett was just four pounds and 11 ounces. His lungs were underdeveloped. A feeding tube had to be placed down his throat because he didn't have the reflexes to drink out of a bottle. And his Apgar score, something that measures the physical condition of a newborn, was below average. The highest possible score is a 10. Averett's was a 2 or 3, his mother said.

This is a four pound, 11 ounce Anthony Averett shortly after being born prematurely.

Long before he was a 6-foot, 185-pound cornerback for Alabama, Averett was so small that his mother called him her "little peanut."

Naturally, both parents were concerned early on about potential long-term issues stemming from the premature birth.

Averett was in the hospital for three weeks before he was big and healthy enough to go home.

"We had a lot of questions that doctors really couldn't answer about his future," Davis said. "I was really concerned about his organs. The question I asked was if we would have any long-term issues as he grew, but doctors couldn't really give us that guaranteed answer, so we were always wary about his long-term health."

There was a scare as early as that first night home. It was courtesy of a heart monitor that Averett had to wear for a short period of time even after leaving the hospital.

This shows Anthony Averett as a baby after he started to gain weight.

The machine would start beeping loudly every time his heart skipped a beat or stopped beating, so you can imagine what his parents were thinking when they awoke to that loud beeping Anthony's first night home from the hospital.

"We were thinking the worst," Davis said. "I panicked. I didn't know what to do. My heart was gone. I made sure he was up and made sure he was breathing."

Fortunately, it was only beeping because a patch that Averett was wearing had slipped off.

"The doctors didn't warn us about that," Davis said. "That would have been nice to know. So, of course, we called that night, and that's when they tell us that it will go off if the patches come off or if the thing unclicks from the patch, and that's just from the baby moving. And I'm like, 'OK. Well that would have been nice to know before we got him.'"

From there, Averett's weight progressively grew. So did his parents' optimism that there weren't going to be any long-term issues.

At seven-months old, Averett was already up to 27 pounds, growing to the point that his mom remembers a family member saying he looked like a baby version of the old plus-sized wrestler Yokozuna.

Growing into 'Smooth'

Averett has never had any issues stemming from the premature birth.

A standout in both football and track, Averett -- as a high school junior -- posted the best long jump in New Jersey state history since famous Olympian Carl Lewis in 1979.

On an Alabama team full of fast people, Averett is arguably the fastest.

Averett posted the top 40-yard dash on the team during the spring of 2015, a 4.30. His 40 time this past spring was tied for the fastest on the team, a 4.34.

If not for bad luck last year, Averett may have been playing at least some on defense before this season.

He was among the players competing for the starting cornerback job opposite Cyrus Jones early in last year's preseason camp and was even getting some reps with the first-team defense. Then came the first of three injuries he dealt with last season.

While making a tackle during one of the Tide's preseason scrimmages, Averett felt a pop and immediate pain around one of his biceps. It turned out to be a partial tear.

That was setback No. 1.

Setback No. 2 was a hyperextended elbow he suffered around two weeks later. He then broke a finger leading up to Alabama's College Football Playoff semifinal game against Michigan State.

Averett ended up playing in just six games and didn't play a single meaningful snap on defense. It was frustrating.

"That was the point in time that I knew I was going to be in the rotation playing, and that set me back," Averett said, "so I think that was most challenging to me."

A lot of former four- or five-star recruits would have transferred after three years of not playing.

Not Averett.

He stayed patient and positive despite the regular questions and comments from people back home in New Jersey saying "Why aren't you playing yet?" and "You should have gone to Rutgers."

"He's always been determined," Davis said. "But last year, because he was so close to being out there and then got hurt, it really just added even more fire to him, like this year's got to be the year, and here he is."

The season got off to a rocky start. Averett got beat for a 36-yard completion the second play of Alabama's season-opening game against USC. Since then, he's quietly established himself as one of the top cornerbacks in the SEC.

Teammates and coach Nick Saban say he has gotten progressively better and more confident since that game versus USC.

According to CFB Film Room, opposing quarterbacks have only completed 10 of 23 passes thrown with Averett in coverage.

"I think he's played well for us all year long and haven't given up a lot of plays," Saban said. "Plays smart. Keeps people cut off. Kind of silently goes about his business and does a really good job for us. We've been pleased with him all year long."

Last week may have been his true breakout game.

Mississippi State quarterback Nick Fitzgerald threw 10 passes to receivers Averett was covering. Seven of the 10 fell incomplete. Two were deep passes that were batted away by Averett.

Averett was matched up a lot against Mississippi State's Fred Ross, one of the top wide receivers in the SEC. Fitzgerald threw five passes to Ross with Averett in coverage. Averett won four of those five matchups.

Twenty-two years ago, he was "Little Peanut." Now, he has a different nickname.

"We call him 'Smooth,'" fellow cornerback Marlon Humphrey said. "He's just a smooth, silent guy that doesn't say much. He's just been holding it down out there."