Defensive back isn’t always the position of choice for promising young football players. After all, at the college level, a starter will play hundreds of snaps per season, and top-notch players will record maybe five interceptions and 10 pass breakups. That means that they’ll make a highlight play on a very small percentage of snaps.
An elite defensive back will see even less action than that, as they’ll lock down receivers and force quarterbacks to throw elsewhere.
Getting outstanding play in the secondary is obviously extremely crucial to winning, but that lack of a spotlight has likely chased away some really good athletes from the position over the years. Life can be extremely lonely out there on an island.
Everybody grows up wanting to be the quarterback that throws the game-winning pass in the Super Bowl or maybe the receiver who catches it, right?
Well, that was never the case with new UF cornerback Jalen Kimber. After playing both football and basketball until he was 12, his passion for playing defense led him to pursue a football career full time.
“He’s extremely good in basketball, but the thing I noticed is when he played basketball, everybody wanted him to score the ball,” his dad, Art Kimber, said. “He didn’t care about scoring the ball. All he really wanted to do was defend, so Jalen would pick you up full court and defend you 94 feet. He would just terrorize kids on the basketball court defensively. He would rebound, and he would always distribute the ball to the big men who were running the floor. Everybody loved to play with him because he was so unselfish, and he wanted to do the dirty work.
“He’s a defensive-minded person, and I think he chose football because he wanted to play defense, and that’s all he was required to do was what he loved to do.”
While it took Jalen until he was 12 to tell his dad that he didn’t want to play basketball anymore, Art came to the realization that Jalen was born to be a football player about five years before then when Jalen was 7 or 8 and was still playing multiple positions on both sides of the ball.
There was one sequence of plays with Jalen lined up at running back that Art said he will never forget.
“He bounced the ball outside and went through the C-gap, and it was him and the corner or the outside linebacker one-on-one,” he said. “He hit him with a spin move. When he came out of the spin move, the safety was coming uninterrupted and just knocked him out. All I saw were Nike checks on the bottom of his shoes. He was sitting on the ground, and I stood on the sideline, and I didn’t go anywhere. I told the coaches ‘Just leave him alone.’ You could tell he had the wind knocked out of him.
“I looked at the offensive coordinator, I said, ‘Run the same play again. Run him again.’ He said, ‘You don’t want to give him a break?’ I said, ‘No, run him again.’ We ran the exact same play. He met that dude head-up on the end zone, and he ran him over for a touchdown. That’s when I knew he was a football player.”
Jalen specialized in cornerback when he was 11 and received training from several private coaches thereafter.
His biggest jump, however, came between his sophomore and junior years at Mansfield Timberview High School in Arlington, Texas.
During his sophomore year, he broke his collarbone and had to miss five or six weeks, which caused his recruitment to grind to a halt. He didn’t have a single scholarship offer as the summer drew near, and that kept him from being able to participate in a Nike camp.
Jalen used that rejection as inspiration, and he vowed to make the camp the following summer.
“The determination that he had that summer, that entire year until the Nike camp came back around going into his senior year, I’ve never seen a kid work like that in my life,” his father said. “He was constantly in the gym, working on his craft. He was playing seven-on-seven. He was working just tirelessly to get better. And then, when he went to the Nike camp, the regional camp here in Dallas, he ran a 4.44 in the 40, he jumped a 40-inch vertical and ran 4-flat in the shuttle, and he won the fastest man [in] Dallas, that’s when I knew [he was special].”
Kimber’s recruitment blew up from that point on. By the time signing day came around, he was ranked as a high four-star prospect, and he had offers from more than 30 FBS programs, including Florida.
“When he got here from Chicago, he was just a real small, scrawny little kid,” said James Brown, his head coach at Mansfield Timberview. “He was really thin and long and lanky and kind of just this baby giraffe. The four years that we had him and the progression he made was unbelievable. He physically matured, but, more than anything, he mentally was a guy who was so strong and so capable that he had this unique ability to have guys follow him and do things the right way.
“I think, as the years went on, he just got better and better. His physicality got better, his understanding of the game got better, his ability to jump in from man to zone coverage was undeniable. The strengthening of his football IQ was, I think, the one thing that kind of stands out to us most as coaches.”
Of course, Kimber didn’t choose the Gators the first time around. In fact, his recruitment ended about as poorly as possible for the Orange and Blue faithful, as he chose to play for Kirby Smart and Georgia.
“He, at that time, believed in what Kirby was building,” Art Kimber said. “He wanted to go someplace where they were building the opportunity to win a national championship. When he went down there, he liked Athens.”
His Bulldogs career never really left the starting gate. As a freshman in 2020, he played in just three games and redshirted.
He appeared primed for a breakthrough 2021 campaign, as he exited the spring as a projected starter on what turned out to be one of the best defenses in recent college football history.
Then, Kimber injured the labrum in one of his shoulders during the early stages of the fall. He gutted it out to practice as much as possible, but, after the second game of the season against UAB, he made the decision to shut things down and have surgery to avoid further damage.
Shortly after the Bulldogs’ victory over Alabama in the national championship game, Kimber entered the transfer portal.
Art didn’t want to disclose the reason for his son’s transfer, but he wanted to make it clear that it had nothing to do with playing time.
Jalen was a hot commodity in the portal, as his family was contacted by 41 coaches, according to Art.
He considered several schools, including Oregon (where former Georgia defensive coordinator Dan Lanning is now the head coach), Michigan and Louisville.
However, Florida offered one thing that none of the other schools could – Corey Raymond. Raymond forged a reputation as perhaps the best recruiter and developer of defensive backs in the country during his time at LSU, and that made UF the choice for Kimber.
“Corey Raymond is who he wanted to play for in the beginning when he was at LSU,” Art said. “So, once Corey Raymond came over to Florida and that opportunity opened up, we wanted to take advantage of that opportunity.”
Jalen also believed in the vision that Billy Napier outlined for the program. He transferred out of one national championship program, and he’s confident that he’s just joined another. Through nearly two months on campus, that optimism has been validated.
“He loves what Coach Napier is building,” Art said. “The word that he used to me is that he’s got the blueprint. Jalen leaving Georgia and understanding what it takes to win a national championship, he sees the same ingredients in what Billy Napier is instilling at Florida. He sees it. He told me, ‘He’s got the blueprint because we’re doing it the right way. We’re definitely doing it the right way.’
“No. 1, establishing that identity. Establishing that tough identity, that commitment to discipline, the commitment to working hard, the commitment to holding yourself accountable, looking yourself in the mirror and just being honest with yourself.
“You know if you’re giving it your all every day or not. You know because the language, the expectation, it’s all there. You can’t run from it. It’s right in front of your face. Every single time you look in that mirror, you know if you’re committing to it or not. Period. You can’t lie to yourself.”
With spring practice only a week away, the first matter of business for Kimber is to get healthy. Art said that the medical personnel at UF have told him that they’re pleased with the progress that he’s made, and he should be fully cleared sometime this month. He’s also done a good job of tacking on some weight, which was very important since he’s listed at just 170 pounds on the roster that was released in January.
Once he gets his injury rehab and weight management issues behind him, Kimber is expected to compete for a starting job this season. Jason Marshall likely has one of the starting spots locked up, but the other outside spot should be a battle between Kimber, incumbent starter Avery Helm and Jaydon Hill, assuming the latter returns to form in a timely fashion following a torn ACL.
“Jalen’s an unbelievable cover guy,” Brown said. “He’s got good length, very explosive. He’s got great instincts. He’s a kid who truly understands the game. He’s got a huge football IQ. When you look at him play, I think he’s an upper-level talent for sure. He’s got the great length that you’re always looking for in a corner. He’s got great ball skills. Everything that he does on the field is phenomenal.”
He should also prove to be a strong veteran presence as one of the oldest cornerbacks on the roster. Brown said that he’s going to go about his business in a professional way and demand that his teammates do the same.
“He just has high character,” Brown said. “He understands family values. He really buys into the process of getting better, not only for himself but for the guys who surround him as his teammates. In high school, he was just a great leader, a leader by example. A guy who could take everything that we were giving him, a unique ability to not only process it but to take it and put it into actions.
“He gets the team concept. He understands that it takes more than one guy to win a football game, but, at the same time, he really understands what it takes to become great himself. His work ethic, the things that he does, the ability to do things the right way and walk basically the right line, he’s really unbelievable at doing stuff like that.”
The Gators have a lot of work to do to rebuild the defense, but he should prove to be a solid addition to work with in the secondary.
Jalen Kimber was born to defend.