photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas cornerback Jalen Todd participates in a drill during fall camp on Monday, August 5, 2024, in Lawrence.

When he was the cornerbacks backs coach at Indiana, Brandon Shelby attempted to recruit Jalen Todd, a four-star prospect out of Southfield, Michigan.

“Thank God I didn’t get him,” Shelby said on Thursday, “and now, I can coach him now.”

In the two years since Shelby and IU offered Todd a scholarship, Shelby joined Kansas as a defensive analyst and then received a promotion to defensive backs coach; meanwhile, Todd picked KU over a list of prestigious suitors, played quite a bit as a true freshman and is now poised for an even bigger role in his sophomore season.

“It was just a crazy coincidence,” Todd said, “and I was also happy to see him here, because I liked the way he recruited me.”

For Shelby, it has been encouraging to see the impression he got of Todd during that IU recruitment so closely align with what the young cornerback is really like: “Great person, does things the right way, the administration at his school said nothing but great things about him, he always was very respectful when he responded, he was on time.”

“In the recruiting process, it really makes you feel good because you evaluated him in a way that was a take for you then,” he said. “You go to another institution, he’s in the room, and those same notes that you wrote down a couple years ago are still true.”

It’s not just Todd’s manners or personality, either: “He has the tangibles that it takes to be a really really good football player in this league and in the country,” Shelby added.

One primary challenge now for Todd, a naturally quiet player, is to become more vocal.

“He’s been teaching me how to become a man on the field,” Todd said, “and also, on the field, he’s given me a lot of confidence to go out there.”

Communication is an aspect of the game to which Shelby is particularly attuned. He said he’s seen, both in his own work and in his wife’s as a lecturer in communications at KU, that the pandemic created “a generation who had to stop speaking, looking people in the eyes.”

In an attempt to remedy that, Shelby now has his charges train their public speaking by reading, in front of their peers, from what he describes as a list of 14 “things that if you guys were my son, these are the 14 things that I would want you to be,” featuring axioms like “Return everything you borrow, be on time, don’t make excuses.”

“We as coaches who are really teachers have to make sure that as we’re teaching the game of football we get these guys prepared for the real world,” Shelby said.

Todd said that dealing with the “script that he makes us read” has helped spark a change in him and provided more confidence.

Granted, Todd looked fairly confident to begin with when he was thrust into action as a true freshman. He had not played since the opener against Lindenwood when he came in outside corner in place of an injured Cobee Bryant several weeks later on the road at Arizona State, and he didn’t look out of place late in that game. His most extensive playing time came primarily at slot corner in the final two weeks of the year, with 88 combined snaps on defense, including 41 with a 76.4 Pro Football Focus grade in a win over Colorado for which he was a starter.

Shelby said it was helpful for Todd to be able to ease himself into his role under veterans like Bryant and Mello Dotson. He’s now facing a greater workload in his second year, accompanied at cornerback by players like sixth-year senior transfer D.J. Graham II and redshirt freshman Austin Alexander.

“I think he’s really stepped into his role really, really well,” Shelby said. “I think he’s a guy that (when) I look back at spring is probably one of the guys that’s really a highlight of that secondary room. I’m very very excited about him, his future, and he just needs to keep growing, keep learning the game. He’s still young, but the sky’s the limit for him — as well as many others — but I’m really, really excited about where he’s at right now.”

KU also features at cornerback the young Alabama transfer Jahlil Hurley and a host of returnees looking to take steps forward, such as redshirt sophomores Jameel Croft Jr. and Jacoby Davis, as well as redshirt freshman Aundre Gibson.