He can rattle off the details defining each one of his teammates.

Ron’Dell Carter knows their stories, what makes them who they are and how the complexion of those personalities can alter the trajectory of a football season.

On a chilly afternoon in November with the FCS playoffs around the corner for Carter and James Madison, he sits inside the Athletic Performance Center overlooking the Bridgeforth Stadium end zone. He said he’s impressed with how safety Adam Smith can juggle studying engineering while thriving in football so effectively. He marvels at the massive jump offensive guard Truvell Wilson made from Division II University of Virginia’s College at Wise to start for the Dukes and all the adversity safety Wayne Davis has overcome in his life after both his parents died when he was young.

“The game is going to stop at some point but these friendships won’t,” said Carter, the JMU senior defensive end and two-time team captain. “My last game playing football, and hopefully not, could be when we win or lose in the playoffs. That could be it, but what I don’t want to end is my relationships with these guys.”

To slab the leadership label on Carter wouldn’t be wrong. It’d just be cliché.

According to those who know him well, beyond the simple designation, Carter distinguishes himself from others with the way he approaches the role and maintains it. He uses those valued bonds created with the 100-plus players that share the same locker room to earn trust across the team. It’s how he solidified his captaincy twice in only three years spanning two coaching staffs with the Dukes.

“It really just comes down to his personality,” former JMU linebacker Brandon Hereford said.

Hereford, Carter and Carter’s brother, Robert Carter Jr., were roommates in 2017 during the Dukes’ run back to the national championship game for the second straight season and after Carter arrived in Harrisonburg upon transferring from Rutgers.

“He’s one of those guys that anyone can relate to,” Hereford said. “He can get on top of people, but knows how to do it the correct way. He might do it in a playful way to some people and some others he might be more direct to. He just knows who he’s talking to and he knows how to appeal to them.”

For those reasons, Carter’s conscious choices to care for and comprehend his teammates beyond what they can do on the field throughout his three-year run at JMU have mattered.

He said that’s the individual legacy most meaningful to him, even ahead of whatever accolades he’ll garner over the next few weeks since his 46 tackles, 19.5 tackles for loss and 7.5 sacks have Carter on the Buck Buchanan Award Watch List and in line for All-American and All-Colonial Athletic Association honors.

“And he’s a guy I’ll go to a little bit,” first-year Dukes coach Curt Cignetti said. “He’s my go-to guy on a couple of things every so often and we’ve got a lot of good leaders on this team, we really do, but he’s played good football and he’s a good voice in the locker room.

“He’s got a huge personality and following, and he’s articulate.”

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The traits necessary to gain the respect Carter has from the rest of the Dukes were always there, his older brother said.

Robert Carter Jr. graduated after last season and was a key special-teamer for JMU throughout his own career.

“His verbal leadership goes back to when we were children,” Robert Carter Jr. said. “He’s able to show so much passion in what he does based on that it’s not just something that he does. It’s something he feels. It’s something he puts his all into and so everything that’s going on right now, it’s a cause and effect.”

Jamie Willis, the coach at Long Reach High School in Baltimore where Ron’Dell Carter developed into a three-star recruit, said when he took the job there, Carter was a junior and had no hesitation helping the new coach forge larger goals for a squad desiring more.

“He just took over the leadership and ownership of the program,” Willis said. “He just wanted to make sure it was going to be better than what it was the past year. He just took it over and the kids followed him.”

But even those natural skills needed refining.

Just like he lifts weights to get stronger or enhances his pass rush by watching film, he learned from an experience that didn’t go his way to become a more impactful teammate.

When Carter departed Long Reach High School for Rutgers, he had more than enough scholarship offers and unique opportunities to choose from. Rutgers, Boston College and Toledo wanted him to play defensive end. Wake Forest had offered him as a tight end. Old Dominion was fine with letting him select the position he wanted to play.

But Jim Panagos, the former defensive line coach at Rutgers who recruited Carter, and Carter got along well. The only problem was Panagos and coach Kyle Flood’s staff were on their way out leaving Carter to play for coaches that didn’t recruit him.

“I was in the doghouse at one point with my coaches,” Carter said. “And things were just not going well for me at the time. Me and my new D-Line coach, we didn’t get along whatsoever.

“He wasn’t the guy that recruited me and that happens all time in college football when coaches change. But me and him did not get along from a coach-to-player standpoint. Off the field, he was a cool dude, but as a coach I didn’t like him, period. It got to a point where in the spring [before transferring to JMU] that they had me fourth string and splitting reps with an early enrollee. So that’s where I was at.”

Buried on the depth chart, Carter didn’t quit or leave right away.

He said he was determined to change the opinion of the staff and show himself that he belonged with the Big Ten program. From sharing fourth-team reps with one of the youngest players on the roster at the beginning of spring practice, Carter concluded those drills with having taken first-team reps and the majority of second-team snaps at defensive end in Rutgers’ Scarlet-White Spring Game.

In the scrimmage, he tallied five tackles, two tackles for loss and a sack.

“And the next day I told the coach [former Rutgers coach Chris Ash] I was transferring,” Carter said. “They were pissed. He prolonged my process by two or three weeks and I almost missed my opportunity to come here because he was like, ‘I’m not letting you leave.’

“I never spoke about it, and always just said I didn’t like Rutgers, but I was in the doghouse for whatever reasons with the defensive line coach and so I put my head down and was thinking, ‘I’m going to prove to you that at some point you’ll wish you never did that.’ That was it for me, and once I transferred out, the process took forever.”

Carter said Rutgers coaches sent all the team’s defensive linemen, close friends of Carter still to today, to his apartment to try to convince him to stay in New Jersey. But Carter explained to them why he was leaving and those former teammates understood.

There was only one destination Carter had in mind and it was to join his brother at JMU, though Baylor, Wake Forest and Morgan State had all offered him a scholarship after coaching staffs at those schools heard he was leaving Rutgers.

***

“It is sometimes hard for transfers to come in and mesh, but he seemed to do that immediately,” JMU senior center and fellow team captain Mac Patrick said about Carter.

Carter was eager to make the new start become a permanent home for the rest of his college career as soon as he got to JMU.

He had been on campus for a game the fall before when Rutgers had a bye week to watch his brother play as the Dukes wrecked Rhode Island 84-7 during a homecoming weekend at Bridgeforth Stadium.

“My dad says all the time, ‘That’s the day I knew you were leaving Rutgers,’” Carter said. “My dad said he knew that day, but I didn’t make that decision until after the next spring coming up.”

The Carter brothers both had aspirations to play together in college, and because former JMU assistant John Bowers recruited Robert Carter Jr., he had familiarity with Ron’Dell Carter, too. Ron’Dell Carter said Bowers turned the recruitment over to former cornerbacks coach Tripp Weaver and that former coach Mike Houston’s staff was eager for Carter to join the team.

“He worked hard,” said former JMU strength coach John Williams, better known as “Big John” and now in the same role at East Carolina under Houston. “And when I say worked hard, what I define it as, he strained. And because he does have a gift and is a Power Five caliber guy, sometimes they don’t strain. We had a couple of them there and that was a difference between him and a couple of the other guys who are no longer in the program at JMU.

“And when you can identify a talented guy who is willing to strain and show weakness amongst his peers, that gives a connotation to his peers like, ‘OK, this guy doesn’t look down on us. He really wants to be part of us.’”

Robert Carter Jr. said that was crucial for his brother to gel with a nucleus that had already captured the national championship the January before Ron’Dell Carter’s arrival.

“The one thing Ron’Dell didn’t want to do when he came in was try to be this prima donna,” Robert Carter Jr. said. “He didn’t want people to think that just because he was coming from an FBS school that he deserved anything. He wanted to earn everything that he got.”

Big John said: “One of the biggest things I noticed about Ron’Dell was that he was the bigger brother, but he was still the little brother. He didn’t have a problem with that and when you have self-awareness like that, it’s special and I think it got him in that guiding role of being captain.”

Big John said with Robert Carter Jr.’s help, Ron’Dell Carter created friendships across the roster and had an organic path toward becoming the undeniable voice of reason for the Dukes.

Ron’Dell Carter said it was easy to talk with teammates and discuss whatever was going in their lives since he had already probably been through similar scenarios at Rutgers. And that was whether his younger teammates at JMU were worried about coaching changes, falling behind on the depth chart, dealing with injuries or being away from home.

“I appreciate it now because when I look back I can give my opinion of how I dealt with certain things,” Carter said, “because I handled it pretty well. I never got too down.

“Now, here, I can be the example of if you keep working, keep grinding and stay the course, everything eventually will work out. I was able to experience those things and at Rutgers it was more of a city area. I was with a lot Jersey kids, so talking to those guys and being around those guys, I was able to be friends with guys that were Italian, black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, city guys, country guys and I’m friends with guys from all different aspects on this team. So I can relate to guys because I’ve seen certain things and have had certain experiences.”

Carter said that responsibility is something he’s enjoyed with the Dukes.

“I’m far from perfect,” he said. “But I think a lot of coaches recognize that I’m a guy they’ll be able to speak to because I can be an extension of them. And that’s all captains are, an extension of the coaching staff. We don’t tell guys what to do. We just show how it’s done and then you can be a voice for the players in the locker room to express it to the coaches.

“But honestly, Big John was one of the guys who told me like, ‘Man, guys watch you.’ And this was more so at the end of my redshirt sophomore year. I don’t know if he was prepping me to take on that leadership role, but he was like ‘Guys, watch you.’ He called me in his office and he’s like, ‘I see it.’ And Coach Houston said the same thing.”

Carter guesses Houston or someone on the previous staff mentioned it to Cignetti during the transition this offseason and it’s why Cignetti has kept his 6-foot-3, 269-pound standout in the leadership role.

***

Cignetti said Carter has credibility, too, because he’s a great player.

Carter has improved on the field in each of the three years he’s been at the school and turned into an NFL prospect.

In 2017, Carter’s role was to be the first defensive lineman off the bench and fill the defensive tackle spot or defensive end spot depending on which of his veteran teammates needed a breather. He also played on the punt team and field-goal unit that season. Last year, he started at defensive end for the first time and was an All-CAA first-team choice. This season, he’s only built off that.

“You could kind of tell from the first couple of practices after Ron’Dell got here that his talent was very evident,” Hereford said. “You could tell he was one of the most talented people on the team. He was already larger than a lot of people on the team, so we all knew the goals and achievements he’d end up reaching by the end of his career. And we all knew he’d have a chance of going to the NFL and playing on Sundays.”

Big John has worked with numerous athletes that have earned NFL opportunities including JMU products Raven Greene, Jimmy Moreland and Aaron Stinnie.

“We get the same regional [scouts] that JMU gets and they’re like ‘Big John, what do you think about Ron’Dell?’” Big John said. “And I’m like, ‘You know I’m at ECU?’ And they’re like, ‘What about Ron’Dell?’

“So I think he has tremendous potential to make a team, to maybe be a low draft pick and there’s going to be some debate about what he’ll play. Some will try to push him inside a little bit to take advantage of his quickness and power. Some people will keep him outside if they run a 3-4 deal to assault the edge, but most of those four-down guys are a little taller than him for that edge. But it’s pretty consistent that he’s got a good shot.”

NFL Draft Bible’s Ric Serritella, who also does scouting for the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, said Carter is a legitimate prospect.

“When you’re coming out of the FCS ranks, you’ve got to check off the boxes, right?” Serritella said. “You’ve got to have the size and you’ve got to be able to dominate, and Ron’Dell Carter is doing that.”

He was named CAA Defensive Player of the Week for his performance against William & Mary last month when he racked up 10 tackles, six tackles for loss and a sack.

Carter said he’s hoping his combination of talent and intangibles will translate for the NFL shot he seeks.

“I think that’s going to help me and I think that will help an NFL team, too,” Carter said.

But for now, his top priority is to complete the mission he’s set out for since getting to JMU and what’s fueled his motivation since losing the national title game to North Dakota State at the end of the 2017 campaign.

Carter wants to lead JMU and those teammates he cares so deeply about to a championship.

“That would be like the last of the roller coaster,” Carter said. “Get to the national championship and lose, then the next year you don’t deliver and we lose to Colgate in the second round, but then to this year when you finally cap it off with the big W in Frisco. That would mean everything. That would be the biggest thing I’d remember in my career.”