Jabbar Juluke recalls the 2016 Florida-LSU game, happy to be back in SEC

Jabbar Juluke is in Gainesville for the first time. The new Florida running backs coach and former LSU assistant was asked Saturday about 2016, the year that should have been his first trip to Gainesville — but never materialized.

A six-week drama between two SEC rivals played out on a football field in the Bayou. Hurricane Matthew barreled down on the state of Florida, postponing the Florida-LSU game.

The Tigers refused to travel to Gainesville at a later date, and with the Gators needing one more win to secure an SEC East Championship, they agreed to move the matchup to LSU.

“We almost had a fight at the beginning of the game,” Juluke said.

The game went back and forth, but nothing else mattered on the game’s final play. It was fourth down, with LSU inches from spoiling the Gators’ championship hopes. Ed Orgeron called a timeout.

The next play is a blur. Tigers tailback Derrius Guice is stopped inches short of the goal line. There’s a mad dash of orange streaking every which way down, around, and across the field at Tiger Stadium.

LSU players slumped back to the locker room while Juluke, Guice’s position coach, looked on stunned.

What had just happened?

“Derrius went the wrong way,” Juluke said of the play, now six years later. But it was Juluke, playing the role of coach and protector, that took responsibility.

“That’s my fault as a coach. I did not tell him where to go, I assumed that he knew what he was doing. I should have told him what to do, repeated to him what to do,” Juluke said. “That’s my fault. That wasn’t his fault. I made him go the wrong way.”

Juluke’s secret is relationship building

Jabbar Juluke is a son of New Orleans. He got his start in coaching at McKinley High School in Baton Rouge. He moved to O.P. Walker High School on the west bank of Orleans Parish in Algiers.

In total, he spent 17 years coaching at the high school level in and around New Orleans and Lousiana. Other than two seasons at Texas Tech, this season at Florida will be his only coaching stop outside of the boot.

Along the way, Juluke learned something from Burton Burns, his high school coach.

“I try to emulate the things that he’s done and the impact that he has made in my life,” Juluke said. “I try to pay it forward to the young men that I’m working with because he continued to do that while he was in college. A great relationship with all of the backs that I’ve ever coached in college. We continue to talk today.”

Juluke isn’t kidding either. He’s had the same phone number since 2001 and he has more than 4,500 contacts.

He even promised reporters Saturday that he’d get Leonard Fournette on campus to talk to his new crop of running backs. Fournette has already been on the phone with Florida recruits, talking up Juluke and what he meant to Fournette the one year they worked together.

“Relationships are permanent. Whether they’re good relationships or bad relationships, they’re permanent, right? So, don’t worry about the ones I lose, because they might get to beat me one time. I worry about the ones I get because they can beat me every day,” Juluke said. “I’ve got to make sure that I keep them going, right? I was with recruit last night and I showed him a text message from a kid we lost after he signed with someone else. ‘Hey coach, how you doing man?’ It’s about relationships, and we want to continue to build relationships.”

New relationships to be made in Gainesville

Juluke was one of the first coaches to join Billy Napier at Florida. He’s been working with him since 2018 on his Louisiana staff. Their relationship began long before then.

Remember Burton Burns, Juluke’s high school coach? He was the running backs coach at Alabama and Napier was there coaching receivers. Juluke would bring his high school player to practice, support Burns and try to help his players get recruited. He developed a relationship with Napier, one that has paid off.

Now, Juluke has another talented group of running backs to work with. Juluke is familiar with Montrell Johnson, but that doesn’t mean the Louisiana transfer will have a leg up.

“He is only 18 years old,” Juluke said of Johnson, “so I’m still working with him being more mature. I’ve been working with him off the field and make sure that he’s doing all the little thing. Eating right, sleeping right, drinking enough water.

“So those are the things that he needs to be working on. He has some talent, he’s a talented football player, he wouldn’t be here, but we want to make sure he’s continuing to grow daily.”

Lorenzo Lingard and Demarkcus Bowman have also made an impression and the Gators will get Trevor Etienne in the summer.

“I’m proud of all everybody in our room, and we’re going to continue to work hard and get our best foot forward,” he said. “We’re going to be the best group of young men that you want to see, both on and off the football field. In the community, on the campus, in the locker room, and on the field.”