The Louisville safety no one is talking about
Crazy but true, Louisville safety JoJo Evans finished eighth in C-USA in tackles with 93 stops at Florida International last season.
Even crazier but true, the 6-foot-1, 195-pound underrecruited defensive back is the least talked-about impact player entering the 2025 Cardinals football season.
When you look at the 2025 transfer portal class, head coach Jeff Brohm and staff brought in a pair of highlight names like quarterback Miller Moss and defensive end Clev Lubin. Both are expected to be key factors in Louisville’s success and stars at their positions this fall, but the third-highest rated portal newcomer has seemed to slip through the cracks this offseason — and not because of his slender frame.
Evans has had a five-year college career full of starts and stops. He started his career at Marshall, playing in 17 games in two years (maintaining his redshirt for one of them), and then ended up at Kent State, where it looked like he was headed for stardom after his first season with the Golden Flashes. The Riviera Beach, Florida, native compiled 83 tackles and 3.5 tackles for loss in 2022, immediately making an impact against some of the best competition in college football. In the season opener at Washington, he tied for the team lead with seven stops, forced a fumble, and had a pass breakup. Then, against No. 7 Oklahoma, he made six tackles. Two weeks later, at Georgia, the No. 1 team in the country, he posted a team-high 10 tackles. Are you starting to sense a theme? Evans rises to his competition and is one of the best-tackling safeties in the country. Taking a step up after 2022, he went to FIU.
The 2023 season at FIU wasn’t the one Evans wanted. He only appeared in two games in September, finishing the season with three tackles as a reserve. But this past fall, the free safety shined. He finished the season with the aforementioned 93 tackles (52 solo), 19 of them came in one game, which was third most in school history, and had two interceptions (tied for the team lead). It wasn’t just a dream season that ended in a first-team C-USA nod, but one in the making for Evans, who was rated by On3 as the No. 15 available safety in the transfer portal.
The unranked class of 2019 product slid into the starting free safety spot at Louisville after a solid spring and has continued that this fall. But it’s not just tackling where Evans makes his mark on the field. He had a career-best seven passes defended last season and began to improve daily in coverage.
Having to ask your safety to tackle more than they want to isn’t a good thing. It typically means playmakers are getting to the second level of the defense, and at FIU, a team that won just four games last year, that was the case at times. But it’s the willingness of Evans to hit and make stops as a smaller safety that caught the Louisville coaching staff’s attention. He was ejected in two straight games last season for targeting — penalties that aren’t all created equal and can be cleaned up with technique and circumstance — but he still finished third-best on the team in tackles, a number that could have been higher.
This fall, Evans has brought his mature and experienced approach to Louisville’s defensive backfield.
“JoJo has come in here and kinda become a leader on that back end,” defensive coordinator Ron English said.
With Louisville’s defensive struggles a year ago, the staff has emphasized keeping the ball in front of them and preventing big plays, as well as communication. But even with Evans being portrayed as one of the most productive guys on the defense, coming up the the power-four level of college football still took some getting used to.
“JoJo is a guy who was not used to hard coaching and being demanded to get to the football and finish plays,” English added. “At times he could deflect, so…’ if you want to play at the next level this is what it takes and what you gotta do’…he’s bought into what I’m selling, now he’s just gotta get better at it.”
Deflecting isn’t something you see a whole lot from Evans anymore, and the Cards’ coaches want him to be an aggressive playmaker on the ball and in coverage, not just a tackler.
“Coach English, he’s big on the little things,” Evans said. “One thing about him, even on my visit, for a lot of guys on your visit, they kinda love you up, lie to you, and say you’re a dream, basically. Coach English is gonna put it on the table, whether you like it or you don’t…he never misled me.”
“You don’t get that at a lot of schools.”
That black and white coaching style is one that Evans can embrace and use to his advantage as he grows as a football player, but there’s still work to be done for this Louisville secondary — which should be bolstered by Evans’ play.
“Our DB room, it’s full of potential,” Evans added. “We’re trying to get the other guys ready…anybody can go at any moment, I don’t like there to be any downfall. That’s why the big thing now is the playbook. Us older guys we kinda get the playbook faster than the younger guys will. Sometimes it’s focus, sometimes you gotta let it come to you.”
“Our defense, we run a lot of things, so you actually gotta go home and study.”
Evans will need to be a vocal and productive leader for this Louisville defense, and getting comfortable with an ACC-level playbook is no easy task, but something a player entering their sixth season should be able to handle. Maybe it’s the cautious talk from his coaches or their push to get him out of his comfort zone as a player, but no one seemed to rate the portal addition of the FIU star as one that could make a large impact on Louisville’s defense. But, read between the lines, Evans hits hard and makes plays.
So, from being a two-star recruit out of high school to starting and performing at a high level against some of the best teams in college football, Evans might still be overlooked.
