After making the move from cornerback to safety, Julian Blackmon has not looked back, wowing the media with great play after great play during spring ball. One of the more appealing aspects of moving Blackmon inside was having him closer to lockdown corner Jaylon Johnson and letting them feed off of each other in the secondary.

“It’s going to be fun because sometimes opposing quarterbacks are going to be like ‘wait a minute now, they are both kind of on the same side’,” Blackmon said. “It’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be fun being able to do different things because I’m in the back now. I can also come up and guard our receivers because I came from corner so there are a lot of different things we can do and we’re excited for those things to happen.”

Now the Utes are tasked with filling Blackmon’s spot at corner opposite Johnson, but Blackmon thinks they have some good options in Josh Nurse and Tareke Lewis who are more than capable.

“I honestly think it’s going to be between one of those two to really step up for that starting spot,” Blackmon said. “We’re not sure who is going to be that person, but both of them have been making plays these first three days already. Josh Nurse has been playing really well so we are just excited to see what they both can bring because they both are going to play at the end of the day.”

Both prospects bring slightly different traits to the position according to Blackmon that can be really useful for Utah depending on opponent, down and distance, etc.

“Tareke is a really sleeper athlete,” Blackmon said. “Most people think they can go over the top of him, but the thing about it is he’s really athletic. He jumps really high as well. The thing about Nurse is that he’s really long and he has a lot of attitude. Kind of a Jalen Ramsey type attitude. He talks a lot. Almost like me. I talk a lot too, but he talks more than me. He’s definitely one of those guys.”

To prepare for his move to safety and his final year with the Utes Blackmon really focused on his body in the offseason putting on about 15 lbs. of good weight.

“So I started doing like 700 push-ups in the morning and 700 push-ups at night every day and then they switched my meal plan,” Blackmon said. “I was eating four meals a day and in between those meals I was having snacks through out the day through the whole month of May till now. I still do it. Right now I’m at 205.”

The effort it took for Blackmon to put on that weight wasn’t always easy, but he says his coach’s advice to treat it like a job helped when it got hard and has been a bit of a theme for the whole team in general as they work towards lofty goals in 2019.

“It’s definitely really hard to eat that much- especially if you aren’t used to eating that much but you’ve got to approach it as a job,” Blackmon said. “That’s one thing our coaches really tell us to do is to approach everything as if it’s your career. I make sure I get everything in me even if I don’t want to eat it.”

All of that hard work from the team should equate to some really good times according to Blackmon- especially in the defensive secondary where he says fans should expect excitement.

“I would say that there are a lot of good players in the backfield- secondary specifically,” Blackmon said. “I think there are going to be a lot of great plays made from us and I’m just excited to show that for the fans.”

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