Jones was loaded with other five-star recruits, and Jules didn't have much junior tape. Hill figures that's why he and other FCS schools had a shot.
"One thing about P.J. is he's loyal," Hill says. "He could have transferred. He had people in his ear from high school telling him to transfer. But he stayed all five years."
It was a mutual deal.
"He had faith in me from the get-go," Jules says. "He had faith in me the whole way. Even freshman year. I was a special teams all-purpose guy. He had faith in me. I'm just grateful for him."
Hill figures the 6-foot, 203-pound Jules could have played anything for him. Like cornerback, which he did some his freshman year. But he was so physical and so natural in the middle of the field directing traffic that they made him a hybrid safety-ish linebacker. Which is how he led the team in tackles, TFLs, and passes defensed while becoming a consensus first-team FCS All-American who finished sixth in voting for the nation's Defensive Player of the Year.
All the while calling the signals.
"I called everything," Jules says. "It also gave me freedom. How the game is going, how everyone is feeling, and I made the call based on that."
He's in that place where the stutter and everything else can't touch him. His extended family in Haiti is trying to get over here, and it weighs on him.
"It's not a good environment to be in right now with all the stuff going. It's still my home, though," Jules says. "I think about my family a lot. The things my people are going through in Haiti. When I'm on the field, I don't think about anything. I sacrificed a lot of time to football. Everything I do, I do for football."
Hill is a girl dad of three, and his daughters see Jules like a brother. He barely ever went back to Orlando when he was in college, so there were many holiday get-togethers with the Hills. Just like he's never really left Cincinnati ever since he got here, preferring to stay in the best football environment possible.
"We're glued to the preseason stuff," says Hill, who is in camp himself. The staff at Southern Illinois was all over the videos of Jules' locker room interview following his big practice on Sunday that included an interception and brief promotion to the first team.
Plus, Hill has an in. His roommate at the Mannings' passing camp all those years ago was a kid from Norman, Okla. Zac Taylor. Now the Bengals head coach, Taylor might send Hill clips of Jules and writing something like, "He's making you proud."
Usually, that involves some kind of a hit because Jules loves to hit. Hill, knowing how Jules would go through walk-throughs full speed, had to counsel him to back off in order not alienate the vets.
Jules has listened. Like at SIU, he's got friends everywhere.
"I'm happy for him," Stone says. "Since the start of camp, he was here early, and he's showing he can play."
"A hell of a player," Tycen Anderson says.
"He's physical. He's disciplined, and he has a lot of passion for the game," Burks says. "You can feel his energy on the field. He's a guy I really have been impressed with since OTAs."
Last year at the end of camp, Taylor called Hill to tell him they were cutting Jules but signing him to the practice squad. Who knows how that goes this year with more playing time in the preseason?
Jules knows one thing. Mr. Make A Way hopes to help other people find their way.
"A message I'd like to get out there to a lot of people is, anything is possible," says Jules, who has found his voice. "It's possible to have a glimpse of hope and work toward it."