If PJ Jules reads this aloud, and he has been reading aloud for the last two years as he tames his stutter, he may stumble over a word or two.

And you may not even notice it. Fellow safety Tycen Anderson and his Bengals teammates hardly do.

"He did when we first met him. I haven't heard him stutter in a while," Anderson says.

But put Jules in the middle of a chaotic NFL field, in the middle of a level 600 college course teeming with those jumble of terms and calls and checks … Put him in there where you're only as good as your word … Make that the spoken word, and Jules is as smooth as anybody on the Broadway stage.

"I don't know what happens, but I don't stutter at all," Jules says. "Every time I step on the field, things come out quicker. In the moment, I flow. Pre-snap. Post-snap. Through the plays. Communication is a big part. It elevates everyone around me. It defines it."

Media interviews, different people and places, maybe not so easy. Much better than it used to be. But not as smooth as a football meeting room.

"When I have a lot on my mind, as soon as I step on the field, everything is gone," Jules says. "Every thought, every pain, everything I went through, I don't think about it when I'm on the football field."

Jules has been in the moment this week, the highlight film of an unlikely NFL career that began undrafted last year on the Bengals practice squad. When starter safety Geno Stone went down with a hamstring injury on the first series of the preseason opener last Thursday night, Jules vaulted into the second team.

"He's one of the best communicators on the field when he's out there," Stone says.

Or, as his safeties coach Jordan Kovacs says, "He's one of these guys who played all over the field in college but was never truly a safety. So he learned from the ground up."

Charles Burks, the cornerbacks coach who must monitor all communication back there, gives him the ultimate air traffic controller nod.

"A great communicator. I trust P.J. He can get people lined up," Burks says.

When Jules showed flashes this week in practice of what made him one of the FCS' most dominating defenders at Southern Illinois, he went from the college football fringe to some snaps with an NFL first team.

On Monday night in Washington (8-ESPN), his career hits a high note because he knows he's going to get some precious sound bites via film. Tycen Anderson figures to get the start in place of Stone opposite Jordan Battle at safety. Then Jules and roster incumbent Daijahn Anthony are expected to team up with the Twos. Usually, they keep four safeties.

"I'm excited whatever snaps I get and excited to take full advantage of it," Jules says. "Football is all I do … It's my life. It's all I ever wanted to do."

It's a remarkable life.

It began on an airplane a few months before 9/11 while his mother flew to the United States from Haiti. When they landed in Florida, they were both rushed to the hospital. They've been so close ever since, she stays with him during the season to look after each other.

When he was five, and just starting school in Orlando, Fla., he began to learn English after speaking Creole first. He wonders if maybe that's why he stutters, but he doesn't dwell on it because it didn't stop him. His best friend, Southern Illinois head coach Nick Hill, has proof of that. A blow-up picture on his office wall of Jules in cap-and-gown receiving his degree.

"One thing about him, about P.J. Jules," Tycen Anderson says. "He is Mr. Make A Way. He'll make a way out of no way, for sure. It's probably been like that his whole life."

Nick Hill has been amazed by his friend's life for years. Born and bred in Du Quoin, Ill., about 20 minutes from the Southern Illinois campus, Hill came home to quarterback the Salukis, stayed to coach, and is now in his 10^th season as the head man.

When he went to Orlando to recruit, he couldn't get Jules out of his head. Of course, Jules wouldn't let him because he called a lot.

"You just fell in love with the guy. If I could have adopted him, I would have," Hill says. "Just so genuine. I think that's probably what the vets up there see in him. Just pure. He'd always be saying, 'Thank you,' and you'd almost have to stop him."

Jules grew up in a rough section of Orlando near the Citrus Bowl, but he saw big-time ball at Jones High School in the form of his friend, Kerby Joseph, a man the Lions just made the richest safety ever.

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."