‘Absolutely electric’: Michigan transfer Cam Calhoun blanketing receivers

It took until the second year of Cameron Calhoun’s college career for him to go through a loss.
Calhoun spent his freshman season at Michigan as Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines went undefeated in the regular season, then defeated Alabama and Washington in the College Football Playoff to claim the school’s first national championship since 1997.
Sitting behind future NFL cornerbacks Mike Sainristil and Josh Wallace, plus star Will Johnson, Calhoun didn’t see the field much — playing just 13 defensive snaps — but will always be able to call himself a national champion and has the ring to prove it.
“It was a good experience for me to get out there and just see all the things that we can do if we make it all the way through,” Calhoun said.
Of the many memorable quotes Harbaugh uttered during his time at his alma mater, one stuck out to the redshirt freshman cornerback — “Attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”
“That hit me deep just because I can apply that to just not being just on the field, but off the field. Just making sure you take care of your business, making sure when you’re doing something, you doing it at 100%,” Calhoun said.
After undergoing surgery in July, Calhoun attacked every day “with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind,” diligently doing what he needed to do to get back onto the field. By the time Week 2 rolled around, Calhoun was ready to go, and his return came at the perfect time. Following starting cornerback Kenan Johnson’s season-ending injury in Utah’s first game of the season, the Utes needed to rely on its cornerback depth more than ever.
Calhoun eased into his first action as a Ute, playing six snaps against Baylor, and just missed grabbing his first interception.
A week later in Logan, the Ohio native made a leaping interception near the end of the first half that stopped a promising Utah State drive and led to a Utah touchdown to take the lead going into halftime.
“He played that just right. It was a Cover 2. He shrunk back on the deep route, stole it underneath the deeper route,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said.
Calhoun had spring camp to get acclimated with Morgan Scalley’s defense, but after missing fall camp and the first game of the season due to the surgery, it’s been impressive how well he’s picked the defense up and performed.
Calhoun’s Instagram bio reads “Blanket at utahfootball,” and he’s backed that up with his play on the field so far.
The 6-foot, 177-pound player has an interception, 10 tackles and five pass breakups on the season and is Utah’s highest-rated cornerback, per Pro Football Focus. Receivers have caught just 35% of targets when Calhoun is covering them — that’s second-best percentage on the team behind safety Tao Johnson.
It’s not just on the field where he’s making his presence known, but in the football facility and in the locker room.
Cornerbacks coach Sharrieff Shah describes Calhoun as “absolutely electric” and “incredibly loud.” Coming from Shah, who’s the loudest coach at practices, that’s a big compliment.
“His energy is absolutely infectious. You love his energy. He is incredibly loud, almost like me. I hear him before I see him, and I love it,” Shah said. “’Where’s Coach Shah at?’ He comes in the building saying that. I’m like, ‘That must be Calhoun.’
“… He’s so good to be around. His energy is just so contagious and he pushes everybody. He pushes himself and he’s always asking, hold me accountable. If you see me messing up, please tell me what can I do better?”
After the national championship season at Michigan, Calhoun entered the transfer portal in search of more playing time, and Utah was a program that stood out. Born in Ohio and playing his first year of college football at Michigan, Utah was a long way from home, but once he visited, he fell in love with the peace and the mountains.
“You come here, you see the mountains and where I’m from, you don’t see nothing like that unless it’s on movies,” Calhoun said. “So the fact that I’m just able to be out here and see the mountains and just be able to live like a good life is just amazing to me.”
More important than the location, though, is the relationship that he built with Whittingham, Shah and Scalley.
“They gave me really a family feeling before I even got here, and that’s what most coaches are going to do. And then as you get onto the campus, some coaches start to change up or some coaches start to act different. They stayed the same. I really just enjoyed their company,” Calhoun said.
Even before Shah started to help improve Calhoun as a cornerback, he started helping him as a person.
“Coach Shah helped me develop as a person first. I still had a lot of growing up to do. Then as I started to grow up, I started to see things differently,” Calhoun said.
Calhoun’s role has continued to expand over time — he got his first career start against Oklahoma State — and he’s had some memorable plays on the field, but the moment that stands out for him at Utah didn’t come during game play.
“Us walking out on that field together at that Baylor game. That was the first game I was allowed to suit up. So just coming out that tunnel, just seeing all these guys behind me, they all got my back, that’s probably my top two favorite moments,” Calhoun said.
Though Calhoun’s play has been a bright spot, this season certainly hasn’t gone the way Utah thought it would preseason, and after never suffering a loss in his college career, Calhoun has gone through three in a row.
The next chance to right the ship is Saturday at Houston.
“I feel like we’re going through a lot of adversity right now. And for me, coming from Michigan, we didn’t lose, we didn’t for real lose, so I didn’t really understand how a loss really felt,” Calhoun said.
“So right now we just battling through adversity. But I got a great feeling about this week, I got a great feeling about this team, man, we going to bounce back.”