BSN Exclusive: Where Josey Jewell comes from, tackling running backs is nothin'

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — “Ran a painfully slow forty at the Combine that will send him tumbling down the draft boards.”

“Does not possess desired NFL speed.”

“His 40 time was a disaster scenario.”

“Lack of speed could hurt him at next level.”

Every single scouting report about Josey Jewell says the same thing. Speed, speed, speed. He doesn’t have NFL speed.

There’s a saying in NFL circles, though, “It doesn’t matter if the numbers say he’s slow when he’s always tackling the fast guys.”

And that’s why Josey Jewell is a Denver Bronco.

Fire up the tape of Iowa and Penn state this last season, and you’ll find Jewell holding his own against a guy named Saquon Barkley, he of a 4.40 40 time and the second-overall pick. While amassing 16 tackles in the game, including three for a loss to go along with an interception and two pass breakups, Jewell showed that he could hang with Barkley on multiple occasions. The Iowa captain made a couple of big stops in the run game and even tackled the athletic freak in space, while in coverage, for a third-down stop.

You’ve heard of country strong, but have you heard of country fast?

Josey Jewell grew up in the Northeastern Iowa town of Decorah where life was pretty simple.

“Football, farm and fishing,” he tells BSN Denver, making sure to throw in hunting before expressing a sigh of relief that he ended up in a place like Colorado.

The heavy emphasis, of course, was on the farm. Growing up on 1,200 acres, home to more than 100 cattle and more turkeys than you can believe, Josey learned lessons of hard work, toughness and time management. For a family that he describes as “land rich and money poor,” he fed the cows, shoveled the turkey you-know-what and learned a version of “no days off” that would make an Instagram meathead squeal like a pig.

“A lot of the experiences that I got out of that have been very beneficial to my life,” he says.

From a football standpoint, at the very least, a day on the farm is one helluva workout. Thousands of those workouts—one after another—built a country-strong linebacker so perfect for Iowa Black & Yellow that a screenwriter would worry it was too obvious.

But what about that country speed? The “speed” that allowed him to amass 437 tackles at Iowa. The “speed” that allowed him to overcome what he calls “Not the fastest [40] time ever–not even close.”

You ever tagged a cow?

“Everybody’s gonna think I’m real country now,” he says with a laugh and a farmer’s twang.

Essential to tracking the animal’s age, gender, weight and more, the tag goes on the ear and holds a number that is assigned to each calf. Sounds easy enough, right?

“These calves got a little too old to try to tag with a tractor,” he explained. “So we had to catch them by hand.”

Oh, maybe not so easy. How do you catch them?

“We had to try to tackle them,” he says, shaking his head just thinking about it.

“These things are getting up there in weight. They are faster than you and stronger than you. It’s interesting to try to tackle them.”

It’s all about instincts and angles. And what’s the opposite of an arm tackle? A farm tackle. You gotta get that sucker on the ground and hold ’em still to apply the tag. All in a day’s work.

The lessons learned on the farm prepared Josey Jewell for life, they prepared him for school, and they prepared him for the grind that is NFL football.

After all, once you’ve handled a real cow, a bell cow doesn’t exactly scare you.