If you think it’s difficult corralling Devonta Freeman when he picks up the first scent of freshly painted end zone, try getting him to stand still on a locker-room carpet.
Interviews this week with the NFL’s leader scorer and the found gold of every fantasy football league out there were fleeting at best. A minute here. Two minutes there. Sorry to cut you off, got to go lift weights.
Understand that the man has run in six touchdowns the past two weeks, the only player since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger to rush for three touchdowns in each of his first two starts. Additionally, he is the team’s third leading receiver (17 catches, 196 yards).
A real package of multi-dimensional dynamite, that one.
“His foot quickness and his hand-eye coordination are right up there at the top,” Falcons running back coach Bobby Turner said.
“That’s why we call him Free (and not just because of his given name). I want him to play free. Want him to be free, be creative, make plays with that ball in his hand and he’s been doing that.”
Free with everything except his time.
Expansive everywhere except in the arena of the microphone and digital recorder.
Freeman does leave the impression that no one could possibly appreciate these breakthrough weeks more than the 103rd player taken in the 2014 draft, a 5-foot-8 fellow in a 6-footers world, a poor kid from Miami whose work resume notably includes some time at the neighborhood funeral home.
Why does Freeman run hard you may ask?
Why does he make coaches drop their gaze until they have no choice but notice him — including the new guy in town this season? “He was one of the people who absolutely went for it in the offseason, as hard as you possibly could,” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said. “One of the things I absolutely love about his game is that he does not back off.”
Freeman explains why, the condensed version: “Not having nothing; wanting to always become the best. Being told no, being denied before because of what people have said about me. I always want to prove people wrong.”
So, even as Freeman has discovered what life is atop the NFL pyramid, he has not yet found the need to revel in it. It is his “brothers” on the offensive line or at fullback who have made all this happen, he’ll say. More than once.
If you insist upon taking away a message, take this one, he said: “A lot of hard work, dedication, determination. It’s just not giving up. Whatever you want to achieve you can do it. Stay focused and committed and anything is possible.”
Someone else in town has run many parallel themes. He, too, was a smallish runner and terrific pass-catcher out of the backfield, the survivor of a challenging background and even was the last Florida State back to go for more than 1,000 yards until Freeman did it as a junior.
Warrick Dunn, now a minority Falcons owner, certainly likes what he has seen so far in Freeman. “Another story of an athlete who overcame adversity and is doing good,” he said.
“More proof that you can’t let your situation control your outcome. You do have some control.”
In Freeman’s case, he grew up in the Liberty City area of Miami. His mother raised six children there, on a hospital worker’s salary.
Freeman in the past has pointed to two factors that contributed to his survival there.
One was a willingness to take on whatever work he could as a youngster to help with the family finances. That included working as an assistant at the Richardson Memorial Funeral Home, washing cars in the neighborhood and doing other assorted odd jobs.
Sometimes that meant doing work around the house of one of the patrons/controversial figures of Miami’s inner city, Luther Campbell. Campbell has been known as the front man of the group 2 Live Crew and a passionate sports fan (his largesse included a pay-for-play arrangement with Miami Hurricanes players in the 1980s and ’90s, according to a Miami Herald report).
He was simply known to Freeman as Uncle Luke, a mentor in the place of his absent father. Campbell noticed the boy playing baseball in Liberty City when he was just 9, invited him to play for the youth football team he sponsored and a bond was formed.
In a 2014 story, Campbell was quoted as saying that it was more than Freeman’s athletic potential that caught his eye. “He smiled and was really respectful for a kid his age,” Campbell told Al Jazeera America. “Most kids out of the ’hood are angry. They have an attitude, and you’re trying to break that out of them. Devonta didn’t have anything. It was like life was beautiful for him.”
Upon arrival with the Falcons, Freeman had little opportunity to express either his athletic ability or his personality. While the team’s running game foundered behind Steven Jackson, Freeman and Jacquizz Rodgers were left with the scraps.
In tempting little bursts, Freeman showed his promise. Those who saw him every day seemed to know a little more of what might be coming.
“I’ve always known he was a beast,” offensive tackle Jake Matthews said. “Even last year he was one of those guys that at any moment he could make a play.”
And now look at him, producing touchdowns like Krystal turns out little belly bombs.
“It’s pretty exciting to finish your block and spin around and see him darting off to the end zone,” Matthews said. “He always looks fast from that perspective.”
With the return from injury of fellow back Tevin Coleman, the Falcons now have the enviable issue of how to feed and care for two talented backs. Let the juggling act commence. And let the fantasy players make their hard calls as well.
And one of Freeman’s Falcon predecessors asks aloud, can Freeman sustain his success? Can he handle the load, and continue to be a factor on a weekly basis?
Dunn at the same time will testify to how he made it through a dozen seasons in Tampa Bay and Atlanta. “I always had a chip on my shoulder, always felt I had to show I belonged. I used that as motivation through the years, always proving the difference between perception and reality,” he said.
Freeman appears to have no problem taking that approach and running with it.
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