After NFL days, Duke’s Jeremy Cash wants career as an FBI agent

MOBILE, Ala. — Duke’s Jeremy Cash is spending his week at the Senior Bowl doing everything he can trying to convince NFL evaluators he can make the transition from college box safety to playing more deep in the pro game.

And he’s dead serious about it. But he also has a backup plan — another three-letter organization, in fact — that he’s thought about for years.

“When these guys here [in the NFL] stop calling my phone and I’m no longer useful to them, it’s definitely the fallback plan: I definitely want to be in the FBI,” Cash told Shutdown Corner. “I think it would be a meaningful career. We need national security. The team atmosphere of being with women and men from various backgrounds to accomplish team goals, that sounds like something I am very interested in.”

Cash graduated a year ago in May with a psychology degree and has a liberal studies Master’s degree, with an area of concentration on political science. Being an agent would appear to fit Cash’s serious, meticulous and disciplined nature.

“I wanted a plan after football, and there was a point where I wasn’t certain I was going to get this opportunity,” Cash said. “I’ve thought about it a long time. This is something I could do. One small thing, one injury, whatever, could change everything. I want to know I have something to fall back on.”

For the meanwhile, the 6-1, 212-pound Cash is working on this deep-safety thing. It’s nice to have options. At Duke, in their 4-2-5 defense, Cash lived near the line of scrimmage. Want to see what kind of role he played in college? Turn on the final 10 minutes of the Georgia Tech game this past fall, and you’ll see a smallish-looking linebacker taking over the game against the run-heavy Yellow Jackets. Cash finished the game with 12 tackles and a sack.

“Whoo, boy!” Cash said when asked about that game. “Georgia Tech was a really, really successful game for myself and for my team. I happened to make a lot of plays in that game. I always did enjoy sticking my nose in there, and I kind of put that on display.”

Here, in three days down at the Senior Bowl, it has been a far different role: a lot of single-high and two-deep play as more of an NFL safety. It’s what the teams want to see: Can he make that transition?

“I’ve played more deep safety this week than I have in the last three years at Duke,” Cash said.

But Cash feels, at worst, he’s going to nail the interview — or, in FBI terms, interrogation? — process. His approach: be srtraightforward.

“You have the treat the last interview like the first interview,” Cash said. “You have to be energetic and honest with them. If they ask you a question, chances are they already know the answers.”

And while Cash might not know what NFL teams view him as, football-wise, or how long his NFL career will last, he feels pretty good about Plan B.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm