Purdue safety Jallow providing physical presence early in spring

T.J. Jallow heard Coach Jeff Brohm’s instructions: No taking teammates to the ground on tackles.

Jallow just hasn’t seemed to be able to obey the command early in Purdue’s spring practices.

On Day 2, before the team was even in shoulder pads, Jallow came up from his safety spot and popped tight end Cole Herdman over the middle and sent him flying to the turf inside Mollenkopf. When full pads actually went on Friday, on Day 3, running back Tario Fuller came up the middle, and Jallow promptly picked him up and slammed him down. (“I let him down easy,” Jallow said Monday. “It wasn’t my first time.”)

On Monday, the fourth day of the spring, Jallow came off his coverage responsibility to lower his shoulder to drill Brycen Hopkins; he raced to shove a receiver after a screen, prompting a high five from co-defensive coordinator Nick Holt; he come up in help to chip Anthony Mahoungou hard after a catch; and, again, took Fuller to the ground.

“When you’re in the heat of the moment and you’ve got a guy running at you full speed, it’s really just instinct from there,” Jallow said after Monday’s practice.

Not too bad for a guy who played offense as a kid because he was scared to hit people.

But Jallow got over that, transitioning to defense and even playing outside linebacker and defensive end — to go with safety and cornerback — as a senior in high school. He said those spots helped him develop that toughness, both in the sense of delivering blows but also in mentality and understanding what comes with that position.

“You see that change, right? I kind of developed my tackling. I really started tackling by, like, diving at legs. It’s just really the mindset and what kind of heart you’ve got. You don’t want to be known as the guy on the defense who can’t tackle. Other personal reasons why I play the game, not just me, definitely have to step up and get better in that aspect of my game and I did that.

“I’ve worked on it and worked on it, and it’s just coming second nature to me.”

Brohm smirked when asked about Jallow’s inability to lay off because, though Brohm gave the directive, he also likes a bit of scrappiness and physicality. So does secondary coach Anthony Poindexter, who played that same way as a two-time All-American safety at Virginia.

“I love the kid’s aggression and I love what he brings to our team in that aspect,” Poindexter said. “We’ve just got to be smart and safe in practice, we don’t want to lose nobody by him tackling somebody. So slow him down a little bit.”

Though the physical traits seem to be there already, Jallow still has quite a learning curve.

He played cornerback the last two seasons in junior college, not safety, so he’s transitioning back into the required physicality at that free safety spot. He could find himself inside the box in run support or in lining up against receivers in the slot, but he’ll also be counted on to become a playmaker in the back half of the defense, depending on the scheme.

Right now, much of practices are spent with Poindexter essentially shadowing Jallow, sometimes literally grabbing hold of the jersey to move Jallow into the right position. That’s part of the process, not only of playing safety again, but playing in Nick Holt’s defense and learning the assignments. He’s also trying to make plays in the air, too, in pass coverage because Poindexter is stressing being a playmaker. Jallow had one pass breakup Monday, but he quickly said it should have been an interception.

“I’ll get there,” he said, shaking his head when talking about the missed opportunity. “It’s a process because I’ve been playing corner the last two years, so I just need to get my eyes in the right places and get more comfortable in the playbook, and I think I’ll be all right.”

• Purdue will have its first scrimmage of the spring on Wednesday. Brohm said it’ll likely be during the second half of practice, and he doesn’t expect the first-team units to get too many reps because he wants to keep them healthy. But he also knows the importance of the team dialing it up with the pads.

“It’s time to get a little bit of live tackling going on and see what these guys can do in the real heat of the battle. I think it’ll be good,” Brohm said. “I think our guys have worked hard. We’ve been in a lot of team situations without taking guys to the ground, thudding guys up, so we’ve made progress. Now we’re going to have to get some live bullets going around to see how our guys react.”

• Chazmyn Turner and C.J. Parker were new additions to the injury list Monday. Turner had a boot on his left foot, and Parker was working with injured players after being carted off the field with an apparent left ankle injury Friday.

Running back D.J. Knox, receiver Terrance Landers and linebacker Sawyer Dawson left practice with apparent injuries, the severity of which is not yet known.

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