Davis thinks safety Budda Baker is the only Cardinal player or coach left from his time there. You have to go back to Zac Taylor’s first year as head coach of the Bengals, and Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase’s last year at LSU. Cardinals head coach Jonathan Gannon was the cornerbacks coach for the Colts.
2019 and that’s how the league turns over and where long shots like Davis become safe bets.
“That’s just crazy,” says Davis of the schedule after Friday’s practice, about to lunch at his locker. “Both of them back-to-back. Crazy how it works out.”
Davis isn’t giving the Cards a good going over this week, just to see who he thinks he could beat out on his old roster.
“I could do that with every team,” Davis says.
The year 2019 is also the season a young Division II cornerbacks coach named Charles Burks with his own longshot story hooked on with the Dolphins as an assistant cornerbacks coach. Davis didn’t make it to Opening Day. Burks did, but they resonated with each other.
A generous 5-10, 186 pounds, the computer spit Davis out.
“Sometimes in the NFL, people are afraid to give people opportunities because this guy may not have the second-round tag or the first-round tag,” says Burks, finishing his seventh year in the league. “You can talk about an undrafted player and say all the things he can’t do, but you won’t see all the things he can do.
“Jalen’s on a beautiful journey,” Burks says. “It’s not finished.”
Like Davis, Burks came up hard. He broke into coaching at East Central, living on top of the concession stands in Ada, Okla.
“The Popcorn Shack,” they called it.
Hard, like current practice squad rookie cornerback Bralyn Lux. Undrafted out of Texas Tech, he’s been here all year on the practice squad and done everything but play in a game.
“I told Bralyn Lux that he’s in the unfortunate position that he has to prove everyone wrong,” Burks says. “The luxury of being a high draft pick is you just have to prove everyone right.”
Hard, like that hard day’s night in Davis’ La Mesa, Calif., home on the outskirts of San Diego. It was doubling as a graduation party from Utah State and a draft day party, but the call that was supposed to come never came.
After all, he was a consensus second-team All-American.
“He just went into his room before the draft was over,” Verdis Davis told Bengals.com in 2021. “That killed us.”
Verdis, a 20-year retired Navy first class petty officer who coached Jalen in youth ball, told him then what he always had been telling him. Forget the size. They called him “Little Train,” because he ran over the bigger kids.
“Keep pushing,” Verdis Davis urged his son.
That’s why last year Davis gave his signed jersey to his position coach at Utah State. Coach Juice. Julius Brown, now at Texas Christian. When TCU played at the University of Cincinnati last year, Davis showed up at their hotel with his No. 35.
Brown won’t ever forget what Davis said when Brown’s sister-in-law asked why Davis offered such a gesture so long after they were together.