Some men play safety the way a night watchman walks a warehouse, slowly, with a flashlight, expecting trouble. Jordan Castell plays it like he already knows where the trouble is hiding and has simply come to collect.
On Tuesday, the Jim ThorpeAssociation and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame named the Kentucky football safety one of 15 semifinalists for the Paycom Jim Thorpe Award, given to the best defensive back in the country. It is a fine honor. It is also, by the evidence of eight Saturdays, a little late.
The ledger is hard to argue with. Castell has 65 tackles, a career high with games still to play, and he has done it from the deepest spot on the field, where a missed tackle usually turns into a touchdown. His 8.3 stops a game lead every
defensive back in the SEC and rank fifth among DBs nationally. He has four interceptions, tied for the team lead, tops in the conference and third in the country. He is 6-foot-2 and 211 pounds, built like a linebacker who took up the violin and learned to read music.
The Wildcats are 7-1 and sit atop the SEC at 5-1. The number that explains why is plus-13. That is Kentucky’s turnover margin, best in the conference and third in the nation. Football’s oldest arithmetic says the team that takes the ball away wins, and Castell has been doing the taking.
Consider Norman. Oklahoma was at home, in the game and loud about it. Then Castell stepped in front of a pass and carried it 41 yards to the end zone, the first touchdown of his college career. Kentucky led 21-13, and the cushion held to the final whistle. He had two interceptions that day, nine tackles and a pass breakup, and the national award committees seemed to agree that was a full afternoon’s work. Four of them named him their national defensive player of the week: Walter Camp, Bronko Nagurski, Thorpe, and the Panini Senior Bowl. The SEC added its own, which made five.
That was the loudest game. It wasn’t the only one that mattered.
Back in College Station, with Texas A&M ranked in the top 10 and a fourth quarter still to be settled, Castell caught a pass in the shadow of Kentucky’s own goalpost. Plays like that don’t make the highlight reels, which prefer touchdowns and long returns. But they win games, and this one pretty much did. The Wildcats left with a 31-21 upset, and Castell left with a career-high 13 tackles and a Lott Trophy national defensive player of the week award to go with the Senior Bowl’s.
The rest of his season reads like a steady drumbeat. Seven tackles, two for losses, in the opener against Youngstown State. Nine stops and his first Kentucky interception againstAlabama. Eight more last week against Vanderbilt, one of them for a loss of a yard. A yard is nothing. In a close game it is the whole argument.
Jim Thorpe, whose name hangs on this trophy, was a back, a passer, and a kicker who also played defense and then went off to win Olympic gold in the decathlon and the pentathlon and play pro baseball on the side. Nobody has ever matched him, and nobody should be asked to. But the award that carries his name is meant to honor the player who does the unglamorous half of the game better than anyone and who does it with some of the old man’s appetite for everything the sport demands. Castell tackles like a linebacker, covers like a corner, and finishes like a receiver. That is a lot of jobs for one man, and he has not turned one down.
The cut to three finalists comes Nov. 24, and the Thorpe selection committee will pick the winner from those three. That gives Castell a little time. Kentucky is off this week, which means a few quiet days for a man who has not had many. Then the Wildcats go to Knoxville on Nov. 7 to face Tennessee at 6:15 p.m. ET on ESPN. It will be loud, orange, and hostile—a good place for a quarterback to make a mistake.
Castell will be waiting there, back deep, reading the quarterback’s eyes. If a throw sails or a receiver gets careless, he knows where the ball will end up.
This article originally appeared on UK Wildcats Wire: Jordan Castell earns Jim Thorpe Award semifinalist nod.
