It’s easy to look at Duke cornerback DeVon Edwards — all “5-9, if that” of him as his high school coach Kirk Hoffman puts it — and think “aha.”
Seeing Edwards dip and dart around the field, return kickoffs, and even juke a 290-pound lineman during one of two interception returns for touchdowns in a surreal 16-second span against N.C. State, you get it.
Edwards, from Alcovy High in Covington, is a little undersized, but shifty. He’s an underdog at an underdog program.
No other FBS school offered him a scholarship, but he claimed national defensive player of the week Nov. 10 after scoring three touchdowns against N.C. State, including a 100-yard kickoff return, without taking a snap. Three weeks later, he went 99 yards on a kickoff return against North Carolina and made an interception with 13 seconds left to seal a trip to Duke’s first ACC title game, Saturday in Charlotte, N.C.
Players like Edwards and two-time ACC coach of the year David Cutcliffe, winner of this season’s Walter Camp national coach of the year — mentor to the Mannings, Peyton and Eli — are what got Duke there.
When a “basketball school” won 10 games for the first time in its 100-year football history and stands as the last team between Florida State and a shot at the BCS Championship game — people want to know why.
It’s only then, when curiosity runs a little deeper than an easy assumption about someone such as Edwards, that the picture gets clearer. Height and weight don’t tell Edwards’ story and why he fits so perfectly for Duke. It only explains why other FBS schools didn’t try to snap him up.
Ask Cutcliffe about Edwards, and the first thing he goes to isn’t Edwards’ 4.4 speed or his penchant for the big play. It’s his 4.0 high school GPA and this little nugget he learned from Hoffman: Edwards used to sync his wristwatch with the school clock at Alcovy High. He’d set it to alert him when seven minutes between classes were up so he wouldn’t be late for his next class.
“They didn’t need to tell me much more than that,” Cutcliffe said.
The break between classes was Edwards’ only real chance to socialize — and the homecoming king of his high school class had plenty of people who wanted to stop and talk — but this way he could be prompt.
“Everybody would ask me, they’d yell in the hallway, ‘How much time we have left?’” Edwards said. “I’d tell them so nobody got a tardy. Everybody was on time.”
Hey, he’s a team player. And a little geeky, too. Edwards likes to color coordinate his folders by subject. This semester he’s using different colors for his psychology, sociology, sports performance and marketing classes.
“I like to finish stuff early, so I can go back and make it look nice,” Edwards said. “I just feel more comfortable when my work is spread out. I don’t like stuff crammed together. I just like to have to space with things.”
When the Edwards family moved to Rockdale County from DeKalb, DeVon had to stay back in first grade, his mother, Valarie, said. He’s never been caught behind since. It has been the honor roll and a top-15 finish in his Alcovy graduating class of more than 300 students.
“He’s very self-motivated,” Valarie Edwards said. “When he puts a goal in front of him, nothing can stop him from achieving it. He has always gone that extra mile.”
That includes helping around the house, pulling weeds in his mother’s flower bed, if that’s what’s needed.
Valarie, a hairstylist and single mother, raised two sons on a budget. When it came to clothes shopping, they started at the clearance rack. They made it work. No complaints.
“He’s a planner, and he’s a budgeter,” Valarie said.
Edwards worked one summer with a youth football coach installing swimming pools so he could make enough money to buy a car. He bought a used Geo and installed a new engine and stereo.
When it came time to figure a way to college, he knew his size would hurt with basketball, his other love. And it might cost him with football. So an academic scholarship was his backup plan.
Edwards had smaller schools Furman, William & Mary and Western Carolina, showing interest in football. But some of the bigger schools, such as Georgia Tech and Maryland, that had asked about him as a sophomore dropped out of the picture after Edwards broke his collarbone and missed his junior football season.
But a Duke assistant took notice of film from Edwards’ sophomore season and asked Hoffman if he would send more tape after the first two games of Edwards’ senior season. Edwards had three kickoff returns for touchdowns in those two games. Word got to Cutcliffe.
Edwards missed out on the red-carpet version of an official visit to Duke. As a hairstylist, his mother has to work Saturdays. DeVon didn’t want to miss a basketball game either. So together they visited Duke on a Sunday when all was quiet on campus. Good by him.
“Every coach I met, they called me by my name, they’d say ‘Hey DeVon, how’s basketball going, I heard you had a pretty good game last night,’” Edwards said. “I was like ‘Wow, y’all know about that?’”
They did their homework, and that impressed him.
Football season was over by the time Cutcliffe could return the favor and visit Alcovy. But he said he saw all he needed from Edwards during a basketball practice. Edwards practiced with the same kind of effort that made him the team’s second-leading rebounder as a guard.
Earlier that afternoon, Cutcliffe had had to wait for an hour while Edwards finished taking a test. So he pulled out his laptop and started showing Hoffman a presentation outlining Duke’s plans for rebuilding its football program.
“That right then, you could just see the two were so similar,” Hoffman said. “‘Everything’s got a plan. I know where I want to go. I know how I want to get there. And I’m going to be successful.’ And to me coach Cutcliffe is a very humble man, just the way he handles himself on the sideline, never too high, never too low. ‘All right now, what’s next?’ They’re so similar in that. That’s why they get along so well.”
Edwards’ celebrated his back-to-back “pick sixes” against N.C. State with a little skip. He was mostly trying to catch his breath as he got mobbed by teammates.
After the Duke-North Carolina game, Edwards walked around the field holding the ball from his interception, but only because he had tried to give it to his position coach and was told to keep it. So he got all his teammates to sign it.
“I’ve been asking him, ‘Can you give me a little sign, a little dance, something when you do a touchdown?’” Valarie said, laughing. “I haven’t gotten that yet.”
This not-so-big man on campus said he doesn’t get recognized for his feats on the football field as much as he does for being the guy who works at “Quenchers.” He makes smoothies at Duke’s on-campus rec center.
Wait, the star football player is holding down a job, too? Yes, two days a week during the season, including this week, and four days a week in the offseason.
So what’s his smoothie recommendation?
“The Blue Devil,” Edwards said. “With blueberries and banana with protein powder. That’s my favorite.”
Of course it is. No wonder. It all makes sense.
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