Colts fill need at cornerback by taking Warren Central's Julius Brents in 2nd round

INDIANAPOLIS — When Julius Brents saw the 317 area code pop up on his phone, he felt like he was in the middle of a dream, a dream he’s likely had dozens of times before.

Then, for only a moment, Brents’ heart jumped a bit, the thought crossing the Warren Central product’s mind that somebody might be playing a prank on him.

Brents had no reason to worry.

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The Colts were on the other end of the line, telling the Kansas State cornerback that they were using the No. 44 pick to draft him to his hometown team, the team he grew up watching.

“You couldn’t write a better story than this,” Brents said. “Being a Colts fan my whole life, growing up watching Peyton Manning. My favorite player growing up was Bob Sanders.”

Brents probably wasn’t thinking about it at the time. but the story hasn’t been written many times before.

According to IndyStar research, the Colts have only drafted four players born in Indianapolis in the team’s history — Jeff George, Anthony Johnson, Lamont Warren and now Brents — and the franchise hasn’t picked any Indianapolis natives in the draft since Warren in 1994, a span of almost three decades.

But Brents is a perfect prospect for an Indianapolis team that entered the draft desperate for cornerback help after trading away Stephon Gilmore and allowing Brandon Facyson to leave in free agency.

Making those moves left the Colts defense with just two cornerbacks with starting experience, Kenny Moore II and Isaiah Rodgers, and neither player has the sort of size that defensive coordinator Gus Bradley wants out of the position.

“The perception is tall, long guys with a lot of length, and we do like those guys because they can play at the line of scrimmage and play a lot of press technique,” Bradley said. “There are going to be times that there’s tight splits, where they have to play off, so you need to see that short-area quickness. The ideal part of it is a guy with some length who has good short-area quickness.”

Brents has everything the Colts want.

The cornerback is 6-3, has an incredibly long wingspan of 34 inches and turned in the sort of shuttle and 3-cone numbers at the NFL scouting combine that normally come from smaller players. Brents ran the 40-yard dash in 4.53 seconds at Lucas Oil Stadium, leaped 41.5 inches and broad-jumped 11 feet, 6 inches, posting a relative athletic score (RAS) of 9.99, making him one of the most athletic cornerbacks in the history of the draft.

“There are not a lot of guys 6-3 playing corner in the league, but he is a really good athlete," Ballard said. "He’s a really good fit for what we want to do because he’s a press corner. We do want to play a little more press coverage. We think he’s going to be really good at it.

Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard has always loved players with that kind of athleticism.

And even though he traded down twice at the start of Friday’s second round, dropping from 35 to 38, then 38 to 44, to add two extra picks, no cornerbacks came off the board in those nine picks, leaving Brents there for the taking.

Brents didn’t see it coming.

“I mean, you just never know,” Brents said. “I didn’t expect it. … I know they wanted a great corner, and they got one in me, but you just never know.”

For Brents, the Colts selection meant even more, considering the way his college career went. A four-star prospect coming out of Warren Central, Brents began his college career at Iowa, but struggled to get onto the field and ended up transferring after the 2020 season.

“I feel like a lot of people kind of wrote me off,” Brents said. “The past year at Kansas State, I just wanted to show that I am who I say I am.”

Brents turned in a solid season as a junior with 49 tackles, three tackles-for-loss and an interception, then made four interceptions and 3.5 tackles for loss in 2022, shooting up draft boards despite playing through a wrist injury that kept him from working out at the Colts’ local pro day.

“The wrist situation, it was something I had throughout the season — actually the very first game of the season and just decided to go ahead and play with it and deal with it afterwards,” Brents said. “I got it done after the Combine. … I’m pretty much ahead of the curve on my recovery, continue to rehab on that, but I’m going to be full go by the time we get to camp, so there will be no worries.”

That’s good news for the Colts

Indianapolis is likely going to need Brents to play right away in a secondary that lost a little more than 1,500 snaps from last season.

“If you need me for that press corner, 100% can do that; if you need me to be that guy where I need to be a little bit more zone coverage, having eyes on the quarterback and making a play on the ball, 100%,” Brents said. “There’s a lot to my game.”

Ballard hasn’t had much success drafting cornerbacks in the second round during his tenure.

Quincy Wilson never panned out, and Rock Ya-Sin was an up-and-down starter for three years before being traded to the Raiders last season.

But those two cornerbacks were drafted for a different defense, and the Colts have to be hoping that Bradley’s template works better.

Brents is confident he’ll be able to give Indianapolis what it needs.

“The talent that God has blessed me with, with my length and things of that nature, being able to use that to my advantage, get hands on guys, deter the route, throw off the timing, things of that nature,” Brents said. “I’m a smart football player, I’m real intentional in how I attack the game.”

Brents watched the draft from Birdies Miniature Golf Course & Sports Bar in Westfield, surrounded by his family and friends.

Then he got a call from that 317 number.

“I don’t think it’s fully sunken in yet,” Brent said. “But it’s crazy. It’s crazy.”

The kind of fairy tale few Indianapolis natives have ever gotten to live out.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: NFL Draft: Colts fill CB need by taking Warren Central's Julius Brents