COSTA MESA, Calif. — Derwin James’ eyes locked onto Philip Rivers as the veteran quarterback homed in on his target.
During a two-minute drill against the first-team offense at Los Angeles Chargers minicamp earlier this month, James read Rivers and stepped in front of a pass intended for Keenan Allen for an interception in the end zone.
“My eyes were on the quarterback, and I just saw where he was looking,” James said. “I dropped into my zone, and I was where I was supposed to be and made the play.”
Those kind of instincts are a prime example of what Chargers defensive coaches expected when the team selected the Florida State product No. 17 overall in this year’s draft.
Chargers defensive backs coach Ron Milus said everyone in the building was excited when it appeared that a top-10 prospect like James would still be available when the team was on the clock.
“Obviously he has the physical traits — his size and speed,” Milus said of James. “But I think the biggest thing that really sold me is that this is a man’s man. He’s a professional and you can sense that when you talk to him.”
Chargers defensive coordinator Gus Bradley also remarked that while James is not one of the leaders of the defense as a rookie, he does have charismatic qualities that come through on the field.
“You’re starting to see him more and more [assert himself],” Bradley said. “… [Now] you’ll hear him talk like ‘Hey, it’s third down and this is what we need to do.’ So you’re starting to see him and hear him a little more as time goes on. I think as he gets a better feel for things those qualities will show even more.”
“Obviously he has the physical traits — his size and speed,” DB coach Ron Milus said of James. “But I think the biggest thing that really sold me is that this is a man’s man. He’s a professional and you can sense that when you talk to him.” Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
“No, I wouldn’t say as a leader,” Ingram said. “He’s out there doing what he’s supposed to do and making plays, but you don’t come in and do a three-day minicamp and some OTAs and become a leader. That’s not how it works. You’ve got to put your time in the right way.”
James is an alpha dog and has probably been the best player on his team since high school, but there’s always an adjustment when it comes to playing in the NFL.
“For the most part, he’s had an outstanding spring,” Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn said. “We’ve put a lot on his plate. He’s taken more reps of any DB on the team right now, and I think in the situations we’ve put him in he’s handled very well.”
Helping James grow on and off the field has been a veteran defensive backs group led by Jahleel Addae, Casey Hayward and Adrian Phillips. In fact, he’s already part of the family according to Hayward’s Instagram account.
Addae is paying it forward. Veteran safety Eric Weddle did something similar for Addae when he signed as an undrafted rookie out of Central Michigan in 2013. Now Addae has taken James under his wing.
Addae serves as James’ film study buddy in the meeting room and his sounding board when the Florida State product has questions on the field.
“He sits right behind me in the meeting room, and he’s always helping me, always telling me ways I can get better,” James said of Addae. “He’s a great help.
“He doesn’t have to do that. It’s not like college, where you’re supposed to look out [for people]. So for him to be able to do that, I respect him a lot for it.”
Addae offered some simple advice to James: Be yourself.
“I told him just to play ball,” Addae said. “There are a lot of expectations coming in as a first-rounder, but he has every tool in his toolbox to be a great safety.
“He can cover. He’s rangy. He’s fast, he’s explosive, and he’s smart. He’s picking up the defense both at free and strong [safety], and he’s making plays in the first few practices we’ve had. His future is bright.”
James mostly worked with the second-team defense at strong safety in practices open to reporters during offseason work. But he also started at strong safety when the Chargers went to their dime package (six defensive backs) for obvious passing situations.
“We’re trying to get him to see what he does well, what his skill set is like,” Bradley said. “What I love about him, even though he might be burdened mentally, it doesn’t slow his game speed down. He still plays fast.”
The Chargers used at least five defensive backs on 434 snaps last season, according to ESPN Stats & Information, so James likely will work his way onto the field.
“Watching him move around and the type of body he has, I think he’s a really rangy, long athlete,” Bosa said. “And the way he covers ground is impressive to me.”
But the rookie knows he has work to do. He has no plans to travel to exotic locales during the break before training camp, choosing to stay in town to acclimate to his new home in Southern California. He’s training to be part of that skilled Chargers’ defense.
“It’s a great group,” James said. “I just feel like it makes me step my game up to another level playing with guys like that. You know they’re going to give it their all and make plays, so it makes it easier for me coming in here to do my job and contribute to the team.”
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Isaiah Pead slips into the driver’s seat, metal leg first, turns the key and savors the seductive purr of the BMW-powered engine.
Pead’s newest toy is a cream-colored Campagna T-REX, the closest he can get to a motorcycle — and quite the fearless choice for someone who nearly lost everything in a car accident.
“This is for the young and wild,” said Pead, pulling out of a garage filled with toddler toys in plastic bags. “It’s like playing running back, low to the ground, see things before people see you. You have to make a split-second decision.”
Pead skirts out of the driveway, bolting through his suburban neighborhood in the oversized go-kart and clinging to normalcy at all costs.
The man who ran a 4.47-second 40 at the 2012 NFL combine isn’t about to slow down now. Pead, who spent five years as an NFL running back, lost his left leg in the early hours of Nov. 12, 2016, after his 2011 Cadillac CTS-V hit a divot on I-670, spun off a guardrail and took a terrible tumble at least 40 feet down an embankment.
Jeremy Fowler/ESPN
What happened in that car, and the eight surgeries that followed, only fueled his competitive drive and led to a second act: A push for the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo as a sprinter in the SB-LL1 sport class for significant impairment.
Pead earned nearly $4 million as a player, qualified for an NFL pension, started a trucking company based out of his hometown of Columbus, Ohio and has a 19-month-old son, Deuce, who was born a week before the accident.
So why is he spending most of his days grinding on a tattered high school track with his prep coach?
Because running backs run.
“My dream is done. But I’m still young, have my whole life ahead of me. What’s next?” said Pead, 28, wearing a diamond-encrusted handicap charm on his gold necklace “What do you want to be remembered for?”
***
Pead is back at Eastmoor Academy, where he once competed for state titles with effortless explosion. But this time around requires far more maintenance.
About every 10 minutes, Pead must pull a rubber cover off his “nub,” which requires constant lubrication as it shrinks throughout the day and causes the prosthetic bowl to rub against his crotch.
He’s tried various cream powers, but the chafing has affected his regimen in recent weeks.
From a blue tarp, Pead recalls the ease with which he used to square up defenders in the second level, ready to torture that poor backpedaling linebacker.
“With this, I just don’t know what to expect,” said Pead, who keeps a ripped torso from daily push-ups, still resembling an NFL back. “I want to perfect it, but I don’t know what average is, or what it feels like. If I don’t feel like it’s great, then it’s obviously not great.
“I want to be an athlete. This comes with a lot more than what I’m used to with being an athlete.”
Pead rises from the tarp and starts a series of leg kicks, which are all the more impressive against the backdrop of an accident so unsettling that family members have difficulty describing it nearly two years later.
That uncertain morning, medics used “war packing” to control bleeding since they couldn’t close up the mangled leg, mother Leshawna Pead remembers. Doctors eventually removed all but about 10 inches of the leg because the damage was too severe.
Pead was en route to Waffle House to meet friends with former University of Cincinnati teammate Wesley Richardson, who avoided serious injury. But Pead was ejected from the car and might have bled out if not for the 911 call from an onlooker.
While family members waited nervously in hospital halls, Pead, tube in mouth, was kept on IV sedation until regaining coherence two days later.
He put everyone at ease in the hospital room by writing “my whip game proper” on a piece of paper. Pead was not impaired the night of the accident but admits to going over the speed limit.
Loved ones knew Pead would eventually be in this position, somehow competing. Within weeks of his hospital stay, he started timing his trek from the bed to the wheelchair.
Thirty seconds. Nineteen seconds. Twelve.
“You cannot stop that man,” said Ruby Bowman, Pead’s longtime girlfriend and mother of Deuce (Isaiah II). “He got back into grind mode.”
On this May afternoon, under the signature Ohio gray, Pead raises his knee to his chest and lands softly on the blade, grunt-tap, grunt-tap, grunt-tap in a sideways shuffle.
“Let’s see how strong that glute is!” coach Jason Lewis orders Pead. “Is the bouncing going to help you get in that rhythm?”
Pead hops over to put his arm around Lewis, explaining the difficulty of trusting the leg to do the work. Lewis ensures they will get that “Pogo stick” right.
The quick-twitch movements are gone, no hamstring push, all buttocks and back for power.
“Take your time,” Pead tells himself. “Be patient with the technique.”
Lewis can tell Pead is fighting the mechanics, so he turns to something he knows will get his attention: timed races.
He needs that clock, Lewis figures. He always has.
After the third tarp rest, Pead takes to the white line, head down, waits for the go, reminds himself to ignore the fear of wiping out.
A few short runs get Pead warmed up for his first crack at a 60-meter run. Pead starts slow but gets his arms swinging like an open-field stride, each squeak from the leg joint representing progress. His eyes are fixated on the track lane as Lewis, shooting smartphone video, urges him to “get there, get there.”
Pead’s leg keeps jetting out toward the end but after three tries, he records a personal-best time of 12.6 seconds.
Low 12s will get him into competition range, he figures.
The goal is simple: Keep getting “PRs” (personal records).
“These small victories, I can go home and beat my chest,” he saiud. “Whatever goal I set, I’ll know I’m on my way there.”
***
And that’s the difficult part, knowing which goals to set.
So he got a state-of-the-art running blade from a manufacturer in Oklahoma, but otherwise he and Lewis are limited to YouTube training videos and advice from coach Joaquim Cruz, a former Paralympian who guides aspiring runners.
Reps with U.S. Paralympics track and field contacted Pead in the spring, moved by his story and confident his mix of athleticism and determination would aid training.
They also knew Pead faced a tough transition.
“It’s just going to take some time to get used to what his new normal is,” U.S. Paralympic director Catherine Erickson said. “But once an athlete, always an athlete. He’s definitely shown he’s a go-getter.”
If Pead is ready, he can target the Parapan American Games in Lima, Peru, next summer and the World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai in November 2019, Erickson said.
Pead is flying to Dallas to consult the Adaptive Training Foundation to learn best practices and troubleshoot the leg discomfort. He eventually plans to get a sponsor for his competition trials.
“It’d be a great story,” Erickson said. “Time will tell where he is, and how determined he is will be the precursor of what his success can be. From Day 1 in talking with him, he was absolutely determined. I have no doubt he’ll be successful.”
Lewis has coached track for more than a decade but never like this. The connection to the runner is more emotional. His job is to understand Pead’s mental hurdles, know when to push or stay back.
Pead trusts Lewis, who never asked for anything after Pead made the NFL and stood as a father figure of sorts.
“I’m doing this for him. That’s it. I don’t get paid to do it,” Lewis said. “We have a closeness because of the history of working together. I’ve seen him become a man. I was so grateful he survived the actual accident. Now that he’s doing well, I’m doing this for him. I’m all about being a part of this story.”
This story needs a rewrite after a promising football career stalled well before the accident.
***
In May, Les Snead got a message from his wife that included a link of Pead running. It made the Rams’ general manager tear up a bit.
He sent Pead a text to let him know he was proud. He saw Pead struggle to crack the lineup for two years, then tear up his knee before a potential breakout season in 2014. But that didn’t matter anymore.
“This isn’t a player with a rating on Madden. This is a human being,” Snead said. “He’ll always be a part of my life. What he’s doing now is inspiring.”
A second-round pick of the Rams, Isaiah Pead spent four seasons in St. Louis. Matthew Emmons/US Presswire
Pead is proud of a football career that earned him a second-round draft selection, but he admits life on the thin NFL margins is a painful one.
The Chiefs said they would call back, but Pead knew it was over.
“I still hadn’t proved myself to be the player I knew I could be,” Pead said.
In St. Louis, Pead had played two seasons behind Steven Jackson and Benny Cunningham while struggling with typical youthful pitfalls such as pass protection and preparation, Snead recalls. Pead said he butted heads with then-coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and regrets not asking coaches why he was on the bench, admitting pride got in his own way. He internalized, then got in premier shape for an expanded role in 2014 before the knee buckled on a kickoff return in an Aug. 16 preseason game against the Green Bay Packers.
The special teams play was called “bounce left,” with Pead selling the inside and needing one more cut to get loose. He heard the knee snap on that cut.
That career stat line of 27 carries for 100 yards and no touchdowns feels incomplete.
“I definitely miss the game. Ain’t no way around it,” said Pead, who had 4,009 scrimmage yards and 33 touchdowns at Cincinnati. “Some of the best moments of my life were on the field.”
Bowman believed 2017 would have been Pead’s “breakout year” if he found the right situation.
But Pead learned early in his recovery to bury all past expectations and replace regret with optimism. His mother taught him that.
“It’s the plan God has for you,” LeShawna said of the accident. “It doesn’t change what is destined.”
Football isn’t done with Pead, who could see himself coaching or running a player development program in the NFL.
Snead said he’d like to invite Pead to a Rams game soon. Pead would take that call.
“There may have been some dislike at the time, but the Rams gave me the keys to my dream,” Pead said. “I’d be open to anything they have to offer.”
***
Pead knows he will go restless if he plays out all the scenarios of the last two years in his mind. He equates most things to football: Like hitting that divot in the road compared to Russell Wilson’s off-target throw at the goal line to lose Super Bowl 49. In both cases, he explains, a few inches to the left or right and trouble is avoided.
What if he made that flight to Kansas City, he has wondered?
“I’m a firm believer in not dwelling on things, living in regret, but I’m human,” Pead said. “I think about it sometimes. I think about Deuce not having a dad.”
Pead doesn’t live in this space for long. He chooses to hug his son a little tighter or plan that next trip to IKEA with Ruby. The couple is renovating a four-bedroom home sitting on 1.4 acres in the suburb of Reynoldsburg, Ohio.
The “Momma’s Boy” tattoo on his right bicep reminds him of his mom’s constant care, raising him as a single mother and, now, helping him manage medical insurance red tape. Pead has NFL disability but sees the phrase “explanation of benefits” more often than he’d like. “I’ve got three piles (of paperwork),” Leshawna said.
And he’s thankful for his father, DeJuan Taylor, who was in the car that frightful night but got out to connect with other friends early in the evening. Pead was a teenager when his father re-emerged in his life.
The outpouring of support from those following his training progress on social media keep him running.
“It’s humbling. It’s inspirational to keep doing whatever I want to do,” Pead said. “I want to do this, compete at the highest level. The fact of the matter is I came from wanting to do something else that I did, but now this is who I am.”
Pead embraces being disabled, though he searches for a normal life. The constant staring in fitness centers makes him want to open his own gym for the handicapped. Going to the doctor reminds him of what he can’t do.
That’s why he hits the track in the late afternoon, leaving time for a night-time spin in the T-Rex, unafraid to turn at high speeds.
A previous investor had fallen through. Ray Reyes, a restaurateur based in Norman, Oklahoma, was searching for another partner. Ryan Broyles, meanwhile, had been looking for another opportunity.
Broyles read Reyes’ proposal for a restaurant overlooking the University of Oklahoma campus, understood the market and jumped in. At the time, Reyes didn’t know the type of investor he was getting for The Porch.
Broyles worked hard rehabbing from injuries his entire time with the Detroit Lions. He knew how to make his money last, living on $60,000 per year during his career so he could have funds after football. He was smart and shrewd, and he wanted to work. When Reyes saw Broyles jump in alongside the workers they hired to construct the restaurant, he knew he had something different.
“He’s a hands-on guy, likes to be right in the middle of things,” Reyes said. “Likes to really expand his knowledge base. He talks about his real estate investments and then gets in there and starts demo-ing tile and putting in toilets, doing things of that nature. He’s kind of a Renaissance man.”
This has been post-football life for Broyles — who left Oklahoma as the FBS’ all-time leader in receptions (349, a mark that since has been broken) — following an NFL career that began as a 2012 second-round pick by the Lions.
Football never worked out, with injuries continually derailing Broyles’ chances to be consistently productive. He was released during the 2015 preseason.
Broyles already had begun plotting his future, even if he wasn’t quite ready to leave the NFL behind. When Broyles was at Oklahoma, a mentor, Rachel Welcher, spoke to him about options for his money if he reached the NFL. She explained different ventures.
One stuck: real estate.
“When you get some money, you’ve got to put it somewhere,” Broyles said. “So 2012, the first time I bought a house, even when I was in the league, I was buying property. But I never thought that I would own a property-management company. Never thought at some point I would be raising money to build buildings and apartments. Once football wasn’t in my future, it was kind of an easy transition for me.
“I’m like, ‘You know what? This is something I’ve already established. I want to continue to build that way.’ Obviously, you have a lot of successful investors who love real estate, so I wanted to go all-in in that aspect.”
Between solo and joint ownership, Broyles and his wife, Mary Beth, have approximately 40 rental properties in Oklahoma and Texas, with rents ranging from $600 to $3,000 per month. They started a property-management company, Infinite Rentals, which Welcher helps manage.
Broyles also started flipping houses, but the self-described “hoarder” prefers to hold on to properties for future investment and equity unless the value is too good.
Not that he ever anticipated his life going quite like this when he left Oklahoma. After three injury-riddled years in Detroit, Broyles was cut by the Lions, forcing him to re-evaluate his NFL future. He spent the 2015 season working out four days a week at the Michael Johnson Performance center in Dallas, waiting for a phone call for a tryout or a chance to re-enter the league.
That call never came. Broyles went to Oklahoma’s pro day the following spring. He had a tryout with Jacksonville that went nowhere. Not wanting to be a guy who hung on just to hang on, he moved on.
That 2015 season taught him that he never again wanted to be in a position where he didn’t know what was coming next. He says now, that during the 2015 season, even his wife didn’t know there was part of him struggling with that.
“Just the mental strain of being on the fence,” Broyles said. “A lot of people my first year were like, ‘Are you going to give it another shot?’ I’m like, ‘Heck yeah, I’m going to give it another shot, but it’s not up to me. Somebody’s going to have to give me a call.’ So having that communication with my family and friends and really not giving them any concrete answers.
“Then you have the naysayers, who are saying’ he’s never going to play again,’ and being the competitor that I am, I’m going to give it a shot, so I’m going to work hard at it. But obviously, if a call doesn’t come, like it didn’t, I felt comfortable because I knew what my next step was, and it was going to be in real estate.”
The idea came from Welcher years before. She first met Broyles in her special-education class at Norman High School when he came to work with students. She saw how he interacted with special-needs kids and suggested he work at the YMCA summer camp while he was at Oklahoma, after getting university approval.
That was more than a decade ago. Welcher had by then started to do her research, too. She knew the percentage of athletes who ended up broke. She heard Broyles talk about wanting to reach the NFL.
Welcher began repeating this message: You want to live to be 100 years old? Your money has to last. She’d grown up around commercial real estate, invested on her own and began advising and making suggestions. She says he didn’t listen then.
Broyles bought his first investment home in Tulsa in 2012, a property he recently sold. He eventually bought three properties with Welcher during his Lions tenure, all based in Oklahoma.
“It was just stuff we did over the phone. It just became like a drug. We gotta do more, gotta do more, gotta do more,” Welcher said. “And then he bought a house in Dallas, and he was like, ‘I love this house, but I want to move back to Oklahoma.’
“I told him, ‘You know what? That’s going to be your next rental.’ He’s like, ‘So I’m going to keep my house in Dallas?’ I’m like, ‘Yep.’ That thing has turned out great.”
It was the start of Broyles’ real estate career, one he’s still pursuing 40-plus properties later. He branched out to restaurant co-ownership last year, too. But there’s still always a connection to sports. He describes The Porch restaurant as a “4-iron” away from the school’s football stadium. And he’s compared his new world of real estate to his old one of memorizing X’s and O’s, of drilling route combinations and route trees.
When he finishes a transaction, Welcher said, Broyles compares it to scoring a touchdown. He still sticks to a budget, though it’s more than his $60,000 NFL plan, because he has a son, Sebastian, and is doing well in real estate. Plus, he has a handle on plans for his long-term future. He’s a real estate and restaurant investor. He’s a father. A husband. A mentor to those who might want to follow in his path.
He learned something else along the way, too, something that helped him partner with Welcher and Reyes and other people in his real estate ventures — something he didn’t always understand in the NFL.
“When you’re playing in the NFL, you’re speaking with like-minded people, you’re in a locker room. You’re hanging with high-net-worth people,” Broyles said. “I always kept the people that weren’t in my world away, but now that I’m in the real world, I need people. I need relationships. I need bankers. I need mentors.
“So that’s really been a jump-start for me. I think a lot of people, when they leave the game, they may not realize their full potential until they actually have to use it.”
Or even though he’s entering his eighth NFL season, he’s not yet 28 years old.
This season could dictate how the Green Bay Packers receiver is viewed and what it means for his future with the team that picked him in the second round of the 2011 draft.
It’s a pivotal spot not only because he’s in the final season of a four-year, $40 million contract, but given the opportunities he should have after the Packers cut receiver Jordy Nelson this offseason. Some thought the Packers might dump Cobb and keep Nelson. Instead, the receiving corps consists of Cobb, Davante Adams, Geronimo Allison and a host of young, unproven players, including three draft picks.
A monster 2014 season — with 91 catches, 1,287 yards and 12 touchdowns — created expectations that Cobb has not matched in part because of nagging injuries. He’s missed only four games combined the past two seasons, but he’s also played hurt throughout. That’s to his credit, although his production has slipped. Yet at times, there have been moments of brilliance; he caught three touchdowns in the 2016 playoff win over the Giants after he missed the last two weeks of the regular season because of an ankle injury. Cobb is again dealing with an ankle injury that could sideline him for the beginning of training camp, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“When he’s healthy and playing for us, our offense is a lot different,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said this offseason. “I think we saw it a couple of years ago against the Giants when he came off some injuries and a disappointing season filled with multiple injuries, he had three touchdowns. Obviously one was the Hail Mary, but he had two other really nice plays for us in a big game. That’s what he can do for us when he’s out there.
Entering his eighth season, Randall Cobb says “I feel like I’m still young, but they’re looking at me like I’m old, so I guess I must be.” Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK
“Tough guy to cover. He really understands coverages and route concepts and soft spots in zone — stuff you just can’t really teach. And he’s so multidimensional. We can obviously put him at punt returner, we can split him out, we can put him the backfield and give him the rock.”
Even with the addition of a dynamic pass-catching tight end in Jimmy Graham, Cobb could have a significant role in the offense.
“He’s got a lot left,” Adams said. “He’s an incredible athlete, he’s still got the burners and he has a lot to offer for the young guys as well. You go out there and you watch how he gets down on the field; he’s consistent and he’s one of the best, one of the hardest-working guys in the game and in practice and things like that. It makes it easy for the young guys to pick up on that.”
In some ways, Cobb has always been mature beyond his years. He was 20 when the Packers drafted him, and in his NFL debut he returned a kickoff 108 yards for a touchdown against the Saints. On that night, he became the first player born in the 1990s to play in an NFL game.
“When I came in, I thought about him like he was 10 years in,” said Adams, who joined the Packers in 2014, Cobb’s fourth year. “It’s funny, because when [Allison] came in [in 2016] he said the same thing about me. He felt like I was an old guy. And I still don’t feel like an old guy now. So now, when they come in, I let them know — I’m right there with you. I’m not that old just yet.”
So how does Cobb feel?
“Do I feel like the old man in the room?” he said. “I feel like I’m still young, but they’re looking at me like I’m old, so I guess I must be.”
Not so fast, according to Cobb’s new receivers coach, David Raih.
“This business is funny, like 27 years old all of a sudden you’re old,” Raih said. “I just think there’s a lot of football left in Randall Cobb, and especially now this guy is one of the most tenacious people I’ve been around — and I’m talking about all the time. His story, too, I mean his entire life he’s heard something along those lines.
“And that’s just something that fuels his fire. He and I come in and we just have a business approach together, and I think it meshes well. I’m excited about Randall because every single day, every rep you can see him trying to use what he’s learning and what we’re talking about to improve his game, and he’s got the type of approach that will get results.”
By the time his eighth NFL season opens on Sept. 9 against the Bears, Cobb will be 28; his birthday is Aug. 22.
Just don’t tell that to his quarterback, who tried to settle the young/old issue.
“He’s done a number of things for us over the years, and still he’s relatively young,” Rodgers said. “First player born in the 1990s, so he’s not even 28 yet. He’s obviously a great friend of mine, but I look for a resurgence from him this year as long as he can stay healthy.”
