Near the end of Ohio State's 2011 spring football game, the Buckeyes were running a goal-line play. Fullback Zack Boren, a bruising 245-pounder, was handed the ball and set steam for the end zone. Awaiting him on defense was a 190-pound freshman safety, an early enrollee from Miami just a few months out of high school.
“That was probably the one time I ever got run over in college,” recalls Jeremy Cash, now a senior All-America at Duke widely known for his hard-hitting style. “I thought we were just going to say, 'Hey, we're teammates and we're just going to make this happen.' But, no, he lowered the boom on me. That's when I realized you have to make practice like a game.”
The acquired propensity for approaching football at full speed, for not just playing hard but playing with relentless purpose, is what sets Cash apart on the field. It also solidifies his exemplary leadership, keying a Duke secondary that's among the deepest and most experienced in the nation, and the strength of a team seeking its fourth consecutive bowl appearance.
“He only has one speed now. In practice he goes faster than everybody else,” says Duke defensive coordinator Jim Knowles. “Your best players, they're either great because they have great talent, or they're great because they understand that creating that game-like atmosphere during practice makes you so much better when the game occurs. And then obviously your (very) best are the ones who can put both together, that are talented and also know how to practice at game speed. That's the level Jeremy's reached now.”
Cash didn't quite arrive at Duke accustomed to performing at peak intensity. That is, once he decided to come to Durham at all, a choice more fortuitous than intentional.
Coach David Cutcliffe hadn't recruited the 6-2 safety, a four-star prospect with a 4.0 GPA who was pursued out of Plantation High School by the likes of Florida, Florida State, Miami, Nebraska, Ohio State and South Carolina. Cash played five games for the 2011 Buckeyes, but by then Jim Tressel, the head coach with whom he'd bonded, had resigned amid a scandal over his failure to report NCAA violations.
Cash reassessed his commitment and was counseled by Tressel to call Cutcliffe. Cash found the Duke coach another “nurturing and loving and caring person” like the one he'd signed with at Ohio State. “He's a relationship kid,” explains Cutcliffe, admitting he knew little of the young man who phoned. Tressel put his friend and colleague's mind somewhat at ease with “a great scouting report.” Taking the transfer “was, as it ended up,” Cutcliffe says, “a match made in heaven.”
Cash fought being forced to sit out the 2012 season as a transfer, but the NCAA didn't budge. The sidelined player was able to do everything but travel with the team and appear in games. While he relished working with the scout team, the enforced hiatus only increased his hunger for game competition. “It was hard, it was hard,” he recalls, to the extent he consulted the team's sports psychologist to help put matters in perspective. “It was a difficult time in my life.”
When Cash finally became eligible, his impact was as pronounced as one of his characteristically fearsome hits, illustrative of his personal dictum that “it's better to be a hammer than to be a nail.” He started all 14 games for Duke in 2013, notching 121 tackles, 4 interceptions, 2 fumble recoveries and 2 forced fumbles. Last season Cash repeated as an All-ACC selection. Again he started every game. Again he reached triple figures in tackles (111), adding 5.5 quarterback sacks, 4 fumbles, and 2 interceptions. “The only stat I'm really missing in my career is a pick-six, so one of those wouldn't hurt,” Cash says.
Aligned at strike safety, a cross between a defensive back and a linebacker, Cash enjoys the flexibility to fill multiple roles. He often haunts the line of scrimmage, and is an adept blitzer. The preseason All-ACC choice — again — also has the capability, and judgment, to go for a big hit when he thinks his teammates or the home crowd need a boost.
“He can rush the passer or make plays in the passing game,” Knowles says appreciatively. “He can stop the run inside or he can stop the run outside. He's got a complete game. And he can cover one-on-one, he can cover a lot of guys one-on-one.”
With injury prematurely ending linebacker Kelby Brown's career, Cash becomes even more crucial, particularly as Duke confronts the contemporary game's fast-paced attacks and spread offensive formations.
Cash, 23, returns for his final season of eligibility as a nominee for most every national defensive award (Thorpe, Bednarik, Nagurski, Lott IMPACT) and for the Maxwell Award as the nation's best player. He is the ACC's top returning career leader in tackles — 58 shy of reaching 300 for his Blue Devil career — and one of five FBS performers with multiple 100-tackle seasons. (He took part in three tackles at Ohio State.)
“Jeremy is, as he calls himself, a leopard among the cheetahs,” Cutcliffe says, referring to his defensive backfield. “Jeremy is a hammer, he is.”
Duke coaches pronounce themselves pleased with Cash's leadership off the field as well. “He sets the tone in practice, he sets the tone in meetings,” Knowles says. “He now teaches the younger kids. That's the way you build a sustainable winner.”
In that, Knowles agrees, Blue Devil football emulates a formula that worked well for Mike Krzyzewski's program. For long stretches, particularly from the mid-80s to the mid-90s when it first reached the sport's pinnacle, Duke basketball thrived in part by having norms passed along from one cluster of players to their successors. Winning, and a certain attitude toward achieving that success, became ingrained.
“He's doing everything you want a leader to do,” Cutcliffe says of Cash, Duke's sole returning captain on either side of the ball. “Jeremy sets a standard for how your team manages themselves from the locker room to the equipment room. Sounds like an unimportant thing — that's huge. Same thing's true in the training room. Those are all learned behaviors.”
Nor is Cash so consumed by football that he fails to see the bigger picture. He enters the season only three courses shy of a master's degree in liberal studies. He even looks like a serious student with a Lincolnesque beard and glasses. A fan of TV shows such as Criminal Minds, Cash aspires to become an agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation following a pro football career. He already practices at a gun range with a variety of weapons, and fantasizes about being involved with precision FBI takedowns of suspects.
A broader perspective, and the opportunity to further his education at Duke's expense, ultimately convinced Cash to return to school this season rather than go pro.
He had all but decided to leave, family members buying him luggage for his December 9 birthday and for Christmas so he could pack to embark on the next phase of his football journey. But when Cash made a list of the pros and cons of staying in Durham, one factor ultimately took precedence. As he explains it, using hand gestures to illustrate his point: “Your life is this long and football is this much of it.” The football portion is significantly shorter. “At one point football is going to stop.” So, as he puts it, “With education, I made an investment in myself.”
Sadly, this essential balance eludes many players. Consider that on the same day Cash revealed his guiding view of life's geography, USA Today profiled an injured SEC player who declared, “A lot of people say, 'God has bigger plans for you.' But I've never seen a bigger plan than football.”
Cash sees a bigger plan, one he's happy to share with younger teammates. “Coach Cut always talks about leaving a place better than you found it, so my mission now as I'm leaving is being more of a servant-leader,” he says. So far, so good.