That's not the vibe I get from this forum. People started threads earlier today bitching about others voicing their displeasure with picks(I liked the first round, BTW). I don't hate this pick, I just feel it's very average. I say as much and I'm a communist which is VERY ironic. I've dealt with this type of thing before on this forum. It gets old which is probably why I seem sensitive.
Lamarcus Joyner vs Clemson 2013
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That's not the vibe I get from this forum. People started threads earlier today bitching about others voicing their displeasure with picks(I liked the first round, BTW). I don't hate this pick, I just feel it's very average. I say as much and I'm a communist which is VERY ironic. I've dealt with this type of thing before on this forum. It gets old which is probably why I seem sensitive.
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'sall good. So who were you targeting with that pick?
EDIT: You know, that might be a Florida thing with that joke. I find myself saying that to people on occasion too. Like when my wife told me she didn't like baby back ribs, I accused her of being a communist. Not sure where that originated, but I've heard it before...
This is tough! And that's a good thing:
1. tie Matthews
2. 0
3. Brooks - but Fish/Snead took the guy that played next to him. I trust their judgement over mine! We got the best slot corner/ safety available.
On to round 3
I liked Brooks, maybe Matthews, Garopollo,...there are others but it's kind of moot. The main thing here is that from what I've watched of Joyner, I found that he got pushed around, I feel he'll be injured sooner rather than later, and I thought there were others that could cover better. I'm not sure if the Rams plan on using him as a slot CB or FS so that could make a difference. I don't hate it but I kind of expected more from our 2nd pick, especially considering how deep the draft is supposed to be. That last sentence could pretty much sum up my feelings behind, "meh".
I assume you're talking about the Same thing every year thread. If you read it again, people were basically just lamenting the fact the some posters can't stop complaining about things that are already water under the bridge. I'm not sure anyone likes that. There were also dissenters.The thread didn't have much play either. Relax V3 and enjoy the draft.
I didn't like the Robinson pick if that makes you feel any better.
Snisher doesn't seem to know anything about OTs or he would have drafted Matthews. Idiot.
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Gotcha. I've watched a good bit of Joyner, as I HATE Florida State and Florida. I like to watch them fail. But Joyner, despite is shortcomings (pun intended) was a really good player for them. I don't know what the Rams' plans for him are, but he's really versatile. I think we'll try him at nickel, outside and at safety to determine where he best fits, and he'll be an upgrade at kick returner in the process too, I'd imagine. He's really instinctive, and I think some of the camp reports that come out this year might put your mind at ease a little. We'll see.
I knew Joyner was a great player but I thought we just got a guy very similar to him in Greg Reid. I was hoping for a 6'2" type CB that is all the rage these days in the NFL. This obviously is a value pick that fits a scheme we haven't seen yet. Now, I can't help but call for the drafting of his college teammate OLB Telvin Smith. He too is seemingly too small for his position in the NFL but is fast and a baller in his own right. And the connection is twi-fold. He is also from Valdosta where I now live which of course is Greg Reid's hometown. This could get interesting!!!
I can think of 3 players I rather of had than Robinson but oh well, and before you ask - Matthews, Mack, Watkins.
I have nothing against you not being a fan of Joyner V3. I like the pick(love it really). Not a big fan of the Mason pick though, can think of quite a few I rather have but again, oh well. Robinson and Mason were both meh to me when they were announced, as many know.
If you feel Joyner is an average pick then ok(I will hate you for life for it), but ok...jkjk lol. We all have opinions, hope people aren't to hard on you for yours. At least you weren't pulling for Manziel at #2
*and yes, I have been drinking!! So I have no idea if this post accomplished anything besides making me look like an idiot or awesome..
I have nothing against you not being a fan of Joyner V3. I like the pick(love it really). Not a big fan of the Mason pick though, can think of quite a few I rather have but again, oh well. Robinson and Mason were both meh to me when they were announced, as many know.
If you feel Joyner is an average pick then ok(I will hate you for life for it), but ok...jkjk lol. We all have opinions, hope people aren't to hard on you for yours. At least you weren't pulling for Manziel at #2
*and yes, I have been drinking!! So I have no idea if this post accomplished anything besides making me look like an idiot or awesome..
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/06/4099661/former-fsu-star-lamarcus-joyners.html
Former FSU defensive back Lamarcus Joyner, a star at St. Thomas Aquinas and Southwest Miami High, survived a rough childhood in Liberty City to make it to this week’s NFL Draft.
Florida State defensive back Lamarcus Joyner (20) before the start of an NCAA college football game against Syracuse on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013 in Tallahassee, Fla. Florida State beat Syracuse 59-3.
Phil Sears / AP
By MANNY NAVARRO
mnavarro@MiamiHerald.com
Former Southwest High defensive coordinator Cory Johnson hasn’t forgotten the scene he encountered the first time he took Lamarcus Joyner home after a track meet.
As soon as Johnson’s car pulled into the Victory Homes projects in Liberty City, he saw a group of people “about the size of a Little League football field” gambling with dice in the middle of the street.
Nobody wanted to move out of the way. Instead, they stared into his car, trying to figure out who had the guts to drive into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Miami unarmed at 10 at night.
“Once Lamarcus rolled his window down, and they realized it was him, one of them whipped his head around and told him, ‘Don’t bring people around here we don’t know,’ ” Johnson recalled. “I told Lamarcus, ‘You’re going to need to get your [butt] home earlier than this.’ This is crazy up in here.”
The truth was Joyner, a consensus All-American defensive back at Florida State, didn’t have to look outside his window to see danger. He lived it every day. It was inside his home. It was a part of his life.
Joyner said he was 6 the first time he saw his dad slap his mother. The abusive relationship carried on for nine years before he finally had enough and talked his mother into leaving him for good. Joyner said he hasn’t spoken to his father since his freshman year at FSU.
By the time Joyner was a freshman in high school, his older brother Keenan was on his way to prison, locked up for armed robbery.
Two years later, as Joyner was just becoming one of the nation’s premier high school football talents at Southwest, his eldest brother, Michael, was busted on a gun charge, Joyner said. Joyner said both brothers are due to be released from prison next year.
So how is it that the fourth of Rose Joyner’s five children has managed to escape suffering the same fate as his older brothers? How is it that he’s heading into this week’s NFL Draft expected to be a first- or second-round pick and not dead, on drugs or in prison?
“It has to be God,” Joyner said. “I’ve never smoked or drank a day in my life. And I was always around it. I know you’re supposed to fear God only. But I feared my mom and God. I just wasn’t going to disappoint my mama.”
ROUGH UPBRINGING
Joyner did that once in middle school when he was 12. He got into a fight with a classmate, was suspended and spent a night in a juvenile detention center.
“I remember telling myself I never wanted to be here again,” he said. “My mom showed up the next day crying, saying, ‘You disappointed me Lamarcus. I thought you were different.”
“I said, ‘Mom I’ll never disappoint you again.’ I felt so bad. I felt like a loser. We laugh about it to this day because I’ve never let my mom down again.”
And he hasn’t. Since that fight, Joyner, now 23, has channeled much of his energy toward football. Despite being categorized as undersized — he’s listed at 5-8, 190 pounds — Joyner plays with the mantra: “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.”
That attitude is what made him an All-County standout for three years at Southwest, a program he led to its first district title in 2008 before leaving for tradition-rich Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas his senior season. At Aquinas, Joyner was named USA Today’s 2009 National Defensive Player of the Year.
Critics point to his size and average NFL Scouting Combine numbers (14 bench-press reps of 225 pounds and a 4.55 40-yard dash time) as reasons why Joyner might not be a successful pro.
“I just tell people to put on the film and trust your eyes,” said Joyner, who in his four years at FSU started 40 games and never missed a game because of injury. “I’m not a track star. But put on the film and tell me who the best player on the field was.”
HELPING HANDS
Jon Drummond was the first of many to help Joyner escape the projects.
An assistant coach at Southwest High eight years ago, Drummond said he got a phone call one day from his old Pop Warner coach at Tacolcy Park who was looking to get Joyner to take classes outside of his neighborhood.
Soon, Drummond was picking Joyner up at his house at 5 a.m. to take him to school across town. When Drummond wasn’t there, Joyner would take a city bus to the Metrorail station, ride the train and then take another bus before walking a mile to campus each morning.
Joyner did the same at Aquinas before he started spending school nights at the home of Michael and Laura Simmons, whom he calls “my second parents now.” Laura is a secretary in the Aquinas football office who offered to take Joyner in after seeing him walk in the rain to school one day.
“For him to get on the bus that early every morning and have stellar attendance, not miss days, for four years, it was remarkable,” said Johnson, now the head coach at Killian. “There’s not a kid in this draft that plays with the hunger, tenacity and desire of Lamarcus.”
Drummond, Johnson, former Southwest coach Patrick Burrows, Aquinas assistant Cris Carter and many others did a lot to help Joyner.
Drummond would drive him to the beach for morning workouts on the days he didn’t have school and would take him to church on Tuesday and Sunday nights.
Joyner said Johnson showed him tough love and taught him two of the most valuable lessons of his life: “To be humble and to be clutch,” Joyner said. “When I wanted a pat on the back he would say ‘You’re supposed to do that.’ He also taught me that it doesn’t matter what you do during the first 59 minutes of the game if you don’t make the play at the end.“
Joyner, who has a 3-year-old son named Jamarcus, is three classes short of graduating with a degree in sociology. His plan is to finish college online and use football as his platform to get his story out to other kids from the projects. He wants them to know that no dream is impossible.
He also wants to help his mother move out of Victory Homes once and for all once he gets his NFL money.
For years, Rose has struggled financially on her own, cooking conch fritters, fries and chicken wings in her home to make whatever money she could selling food in the neighborhood. Things were so tight, Lamarcus said there were nights the family went to sleep without air conditioning so they could save on electric bills. To deal with the South Florida heat, Lamarcus would soak his T-shirt in the bathroom sink and sleep next to a fan.
“I don’t regret one minute of it,” Joyner said of living in the projects. “I loved living in that environment. It taught me so much. It taught me right and wrong, taught me loyalty, dedication, everything. Without it, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/06/4099661/former-fsu-star-lamarcus-joyners.html#storylink=cpy
Former FSU defensive back Lamarcus Joyner, a star at St. Thomas Aquinas and Southwest Miami High, survived a rough childhood in Liberty City to make it to this week’s NFL Draft.
Florida State defensive back Lamarcus Joyner (20) before the start of an NCAA college football game against Syracuse on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013 in Tallahassee, Fla. Florida State beat Syracuse 59-3.
Phil Sears / AP
By MANNY NAVARRO
mnavarro@MiamiHerald.com
Former Southwest High defensive coordinator Cory Johnson hasn’t forgotten the scene he encountered the first time he took Lamarcus Joyner home after a track meet.
As soon as Johnson’s car pulled into the Victory Homes projects in Liberty City, he saw a group of people “about the size of a Little League football field” gambling with dice in the middle of the street.
Nobody wanted to move out of the way. Instead, they stared into his car, trying to figure out who had the guts to drive into one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Miami unarmed at 10 at night.
“Once Lamarcus rolled his window down, and they realized it was him, one of them whipped his head around and told him, ‘Don’t bring people around here we don’t know,’ ” Johnson recalled. “I told Lamarcus, ‘You’re going to need to get your [butt] home earlier than this.’ This is crazy up in here.”
The truth was Joyner, a consensus All-American defensive back at Florida State, didn’t have to look outside his window to see danger. He lived it every day. It was inside his home. It was a part of his life.
Joyner said he was 6 the first time he saw his dad slap his mother. The abusive relationship carried on for nine years before he finally had enough and talked his mother into leaving him for good. Joyner said he hasn’t spoken to his father since his freshman year at FSU.
By the time Joyner was a freshman in high school, his older brother Keenan was on his way to prison, locked up for armed robbery.
Two years later, as Joyner was just becoming one of the nation’s premier high school football talents at Southwest, his eldest brother, Michael, was busted on a gun charge, Joyner said. Joyner said both brothers are due to be released from prison next year.
So how is it that the fourth of Rose Joyner’s five children has managed to escape suffering the same fate as his older brothers? How is it that he’s heading into this week’s NFL Draft expected to be a first- or second-round pick and not dead, on drugs or in prison?
“It has to be God,” Joyner said. “I’ve never smoked or drank a day in my life. And I was always around it. I know you’re supposed to fear God only. But I feared my mom and God. I just wasn’t going to disappoint my mama.”
ROUGH UPBRINGING
Joyner did that once in middle school when he was 12. He got into a fight with a classmate, was suspended and spent a night in a juvenile detention center.
“I remember telling myself I never wanted to be here again,” he said. “My mom showed up the next day crying, saying, ‘You disappointed me Lamarcus. I thought you were different.”
“I said, ‘Mom I’ll never disappoint you again.’ I felt so bad. I felt like a loser. We laugh about it to this day because I’ve never let my mom down again.”
And he hasn’t. Since that fight, Joyner, now 23, has channeled much of his energy toward football. Despite being categorized as undersized — he’s listed at 5-8, 190 pounds — Joyner plays with the mantra: “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.”
That attitude is what made him an All-County standout for three years at Southwest, a program he led to its first district title in 2008 before leaving for tradition-rich Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas his senior season. At Aquinas, Joyner was named USA Today’s 2009 National Defensive Player of the Year.
Critics point to his size and average NFL Scouting Combine numbers (14 bench-press reps of 225 pounds and a 4.55 40-yard dash time) as reasons why Joyner might not be a successful pro.
“I just tell people to put on the film and trust your eyes,” said Joyner, who in his four years at FSU started 40 games and never missed a game because of injury. “I’m not a track star. But put on the film and tell me who the best player on the field was.”
HELPING HANDS
Jon Drummond was the first of many to help Joyner escape the projects.
An assistant coach at Southwest High eight years ago, Drummond said he got a phone call one day from his old Pop Warner coach at Tacolcy Park who was looking to get Joyner to take classes outside of his neighborhood.
Soon, Drummond was picking Joyner up at his house at 5 a.m. to take him to school across town. When Drummond wasn’t there, Joyner would take a city bus to the Metrorail station, ride the train and then take another bus before walking a mile to campus each morning.
Joyner did the same at Aquinas before he started spending school nights at the home of Michael and Laura Simmons, whom he calls “my second parents now.” Laura is a secretary in the Aquinas football office who offered to take Joyner in after seeing him walk in the rain to school one day.
“For him to get on the bus that early every morning and have stellar attendance, not miss days, for four years, it was remarkable,” said Johnson, now the head coach at Killian. “There’s not a kid in this draft that plays with the hunger, tenacity and desire of Lamarcus.”
Drummond, Johnson, former Southwest coach Patrick Burrows, Aquinas assistant Cris Carter and many others did a lot to help Joyner.
Drummond would drive him to the beach for morning workouts on the days he didn’t have school and would take him to church on Tuesday and Sunday nights.
Joyner said Johnson showed him tough love and taught him two of the most valuable lessons of his life: “To be humble and to be clutch,” Joyner said. “When I wanted a pat on the back he would say ‘You’re supposed to do that.’ He also taught me that it doesn’t matter what you do during the first 59 minutes of the game if you don’t make the play at the end.“
Joyner, who has a 3-year-old son named Jamarcus, is three classes short of graduating with a degree in sociology. His plan is to finish college online and use football as his platform to get his story out to other kids from the projects. He wants them to know that no dream is impossible.
He also wants to help his mother move out of Victory Homes once and for all once he gets his NFL money.
For years, Rose has struggled financially on her own, cooking conch fritters, fries and chicken wings in her home to make whatever money she could selling food in the neighborhood. Things were so tight, Lamarcus said there were nights the family went to sleep without air conditioning so they could save on electric bills. To deal with the South Florida heat, Lamarcus would soak his T-shirt in the bathroom sink and sleep next to a fan.
“I don’t regret one minute of it,” Joyner said of living in the projects. “I loved living in that environment. It taught me so much. It taught me right and wrong, taught me loyalty, dedication, everything. Without it, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/06/4099661/former-fsu-star-lamarcus-joyners.html#storylink=cpy
https://sports.yahoo.com/news/flori...-after-grueling-upbringing-224619159-nfl.html
Florida State's Lamarcus Joyner won't 'pass the eyeball test' but he's on his way to NFL after grueling upbringing
By Eric Adelson May 1, 2014 12:37 PM Yahoo Sports
At a certain point, Lamarcus Joyner got sick of seeing it happening over and over again. There had been too many fights, too much fear.
He says he was 6 years old when he allegedly first saw his dad hit his mom. He was watching cartoons in his parent's room at Victory Homes projects in Miami and he heard a slap. She fell off the bed. Lamarcus saw his mom and cried. Nine years later, the man was still around, and the boy was fed up. On his way off to football practice, he decided to say something.
View gallery
.
Lamarcus Joyner (USA TODAY Sports)
On that day, Rose Joyner was crying again. She was wondering about giving Lamarcus' father another chance, and Lamarcus felt there were already too many.
"You raised me to be tough," Lamarcus told her. "Mom, you're not being tough right now.
"You're a fool, Mom," he said. "You're being a fool."
Later that night, Lamarcus got home from practice, and his father was gone.
"You changed my life," Rose Joyner told her son.
The NFL draft is held on Mother's Day weekend this year, and it's never difficult to find a powerful bond between a football player and his mother. It seems like every Hall of Fame speech is founded on a tribute to a mom who believed when nobody else would. Deion Sanders, a former Florida State defensive back like Joyner, told the crowd in Canton, Ohio, at his induction that he invented his "Primetime" persona in part so that "my mama would never have to work another day of her life."
Lamarcus Joyner's bond with his mother is a little different, though. Its power is not from sticking it out through anything; it's from knowing when not to stay. It's from knowing when to leave. Because Joyner's character is built from watching his father go, and from watching his two older brothers go.
And from his own decision to go.
Joyner and his mom have the same laugh and the same candor. They speak about terrible circumstances with openness and a pinch of levity. Asked about how he got into football, Lamarcus mentions an older friend named David who wanted him to join a team. Lamarcus, only 12 at the time, said he couldn't because his mom didn't have the money. The older boy smiled and said, "I got you," and soon the insurance was magically paid. He never found where the money came from.
View gallery
.
Lamarcus Joyner helped lead Florida State to the national title in January. (Getty Images)
"Probably selling drugs," Joyner says.
Trouble was everywhere in the neighborhood and in the house. Rose got weary of separating her two oldest boys, Michael and Keenan, and finally laid down a rule: "If they're going to fight," she says, "go out that door, and when they come back, I'll beat both of them."
Ultimately, there wasn't much she could do. Both Michael and Keenan went to jail – one for armed robbery and one for stealing guns. Lamarcus is still upset at the way they ignored their mother.
"I got tired of hearing my mom crying," he says. "I never wanted anyone to do my mom like that."
Most of the crying, though, came from other problems: the domestic abuse, the unproductive job search, the poverty. (Efforts to reach Lamarcus' father were unsuccessful.) Rose did hair styling for extra money, and then started making fried food to sell in the neighborhood. She calls it "managing." Lamarcus jokes that it's something else: "She was a hustler."
She felt she had no other choice, as many of the jobs she applied for required a car or time away from her five children. So she did hair. She washed clothes in the tub until she saved enough for a washing machine. She cooked. The stench from the oil filled the duplex and made the Miami nights even hotter. Lamarcus says he would pour water on his shirt before going to sleep to keep cool.
Rose worried Lamarcus would get hurt playing football, but she figured there was more of a chance he'd get hurt not playing football. He got into trouble once, at 14, when he got into a fight and went to a juvenile center. Rose was so incensed that she nearly didn't go get him. That, she says, was the last time he messed up under her watch.
"He was the only one who always listened to me," Rose says.
Lamarcus could always take guidance. He wondered why he was one of the few players who consistently showed up at the little league fields. His coach told him, "All these guys are not going to make it. I want you out of this."
The coach said he knew someone in a southwest Miami suburb who might help with that. Lamarcus could go to school in a safer neighborhood and play football there. "That sounds real good," Lamarcus said.
The commute did not sound real good. It was two-and-a-half hours each way. Lamarcus would have to wake up before dawn, take a city bus from Liberty City to a Metrorail, then take another bus, then walk a mile to Southwest Miami High. He would put in a full day of school, then practice, then come all the way back. He wouldn't arrive home until after 7 p.m.
He didn't care. He wanted out.
"I'd wake up at 5 a.m. with a boom box on and football on my mind," he says. "Every morning."
Rose didn't mind at all.
"If you see your child going the right way, why not let them keep going?" she says. "If we keep them around us, they'll end up like us – with nothing."
For years, Lamarcus made the trek, coming home late and locking the door behind him every night. His defensive coordinator at the new school, Jon Drummond, made sure Joyner knew he would have to leave his childhood behind.
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Defensive coordinator (L) Jon Drummond helped mold Lamarcus Joyner on and off the field in high school. (Special …
"He was a kid that needed to be taken out of his environment," Drummond says. "He was a kid that had to be reformed. Just because you can knock somebody out doesn't mean you have to knock somebody out. He was a rough kid. Coming from those projects, he had to be rough."
During his time at Southwest, Joyner learned to channel his anger into proving himself. "You know you're short, right?" Drummond would tell him. "You have to work the hardest."
He did. Drummond tells a story about having his players pull sleds up a hill with 20-pound plates on the back. Joyner went up once and then told the coach to "put 45s on." Drummond did and watched Joyner go. Then he turned around and told Drummond to sit on the sled himself. "Four plates and me sitting," Drummond says. "He dragged me up that hill."
Lamarcus met an office worker at his new school named Laura Simmons, and soon after she saw him walking from the school to his first afternoon bus in a driving rainstorm. "I saw this kid, in the uniform, in the pouring rain," she says. "That said it all. When you take three buses and a train and you walk, that says how much you want things. If I had to pick one word that makes him tick: survival."
Simmons and her husband invited the teen over for dinner. After trust was built, Lamarcus ended up moving in with them. Simmons reminded him of Rose: "strict." He transferred to St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale at the end of his junior year, and by then he was one of the most [URL='https://sports.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/player-Lamarcus-Joyner-78710']highly touted prospects in Florida as a Rivals.com five-star player – a star on offense and in the secondary. Since the time he was a little boy, falling asleep in a soaked T-shirt, he had always wanted to go to Florida State, and he would get that chance.
Joyner became a unanimous All-American cornerback in Tallahassee and helped the Seminoles win a national championship in the 2013 season. He's projected to go as high as the first round in next week's draft, but he knows he'll always be short (he measured at 5-foot-8 and 184 pounds at the NFL scouting combine), and perhaps discounted by those who haven't seen him on the field.
"I'm never gonna pass the eyeball test. Never ever," Joyner says. "But when I do play, it's a different story."
So if it's corner, safety or nickel, Joyner doesn't care. He did it all at Florida State. Nor does he care what round or what team.
"I believe I have done everything to get to this point," he says. "I expect it to happen. I deserve to be in the NFL. I'm not going to be like, 'Wow, I made it here.' I deserve to be here. I'm gonna do what I did all my life."
If you expect Rose to be shopping for mansions, you might be surprised. She's not sure she wants to leave Liberty City. Lamarcus has prodded her about it for years, but she's reluctant.
"I've been here for 22 years, stuck, sir," she says. "This was all I had. For me to give up the little of what I had because of what he accomplished, that's kind of hard."
Lamarcus calls this thinking "nonsense." He already has ideas in mind for where he wants to move her. But her sense of caution has already seeped in, just like all the other lessons from his childhood.
"You don't know how long you'll be in the NFL," he says. "To be on the safe side, I'll probably get a nice house or apartment. Nothing too fancy. We're very simple people. We just want to be comfortable."
Comfortable is something that Lamarcus and his mom have never been. He grew up around violence, saw it all the time, succumbed to it at one point, and now will be paid to play a violent game. The danger is absorbing the violence too much, and resorting to it. But he says what he saw as a child is now guiding him.
"Any time we tried to be violent, she was hard at disciplining us," Lamarcus says of his mom. "I just never had it in me to be that way. I always felt bad for the people it happened to."
As difficult as it is to fathom, Joyner sees his childhood as a blessing. "Because of my dad, he has made me a great man," he says. "I would never treat my wife like that."
The child changed his mother's life. Then he changed his own. Now, with both of their lives about to change, the shared hope is that some vital part of them can stay the same. [/URL]
Florida State's Lamarcus Joyner won't 'pass the eyeball test' but he's on his way to NFL after grueling upbringing
By Eric Adelson May 1, 2014 12:37 PM Yahoo Sports
At a certain point, Lamarcus Joyner got sick of seeing it happening over and over again. There had been too many fights, too much fear.
He says he was 6 years old when he allegedly first saw his dad hit his mom. He was watching cartoons in his parent's room at Victory Homes projects in Miami and he heard a slap. She fell off the bed. Lamarcus saw his mom and cried. Nine years later, the man was still around, and the boy was fed up. On his way off to football practice, he decided to say something.
View gallery
.
Lamarcus Joyner (USA TODAY Sports)
On that day, Rose Joyner was crying again. She was wondering about giving Lamarcus' father another chance, and Lamarcus felt there were already too many.
"You raised me to be tough," Lamarcus told her. "Mom, you're not being tough right now.
"You're a fool, Mom," he said. "You're being a fool."
Later that night, Lamarcus got home from practice, and his father was gone.
"You changed my life," Rose Joyner told her son.
The NFL draft is held on Mother's Day weekend this year, and it's never difficult to find a powerful bond between a football player and his mother. It seems like every Hall of Fame speech is founded on a tribute to a mom who believed when nobody else would. Deion Sanders, a former Florida State defensive back like Joyner, told the crowd in Canton, Ohio, at his induction that he invented his "Primetime" persona in part so that "my mama would never have to work another day of her life."
Lamarcus Joyner's bond with his mother is a little different, though. Its power is not from sticking it out through anything; it's from knowing when not to stay. It's from knowing when to leave. Because Joyner's character is built from watching his father go, and from watching his two older brothers go.
And from his own decision to go.
Joyner and his mom have the same laugh and the same candor. They speak about terrible circumstances with openness and a pinch of levity. Asked about how he got into football, Lamarcus mentions an older friend named David who wanted him to join a team. Lamarcus, only 12 at the time, said he couldn't because his mom didn't have the money. The older boy smiled and said, "I got you," and soon the insurance was magically paid. He never found where the money came from.
View gallery
.
Lamarcus Joyner helped lead Florida State to the national title in January. (Getty Images)
"Probably selling drugs," Joyner says.
Trouble was everywhere in the neighborhood and in the house. Rose got weary of separating her two oldest boys, Michael and Keenan, and finally laid down a rule: "If they're going to fight," she says, "go out that door, and when they come back, I'll beat both of them."
Ultimately, there wasn't much she could do. Both Michael and Keenan went to jail – one for armed robbery and one for stealing guns. Lamarcus is still upset at the way they ignored their mother.
"I got tired of hearing my mom crying," he says. "I never wanted anyone to do my mom like that."
Most of the crying, though, came from other problems: the domestic abuse, the unproductive job search, the poverty. (Efforts to reach Lamarcus' father were unsuccessful.) Rose did hair styling for extra money, and then started making fried food to sell in the neighborhood. She calls it "managing." Lamarcus jokes that it's something else: "She was a hustler."
She felt she had no other choice, as many of the jobs she applied for required a car or time away from her five children. So she did hair. She washed clothes in the tub until she saved enough for a washing machine. She cooked. The stench from the oil filled the duplex and made the Miami nights even hotter. Lamarcus says he would pour water on his shirt before going to sleep to keep cool.
Rose worried Lamarcus would get hurt playing football, but she figured there was more of a chance he'd get hurt not playing football. He got into trouble once, at 14, when he got into a fight and went to a juvenile center. Rose was so incensed that she nearly didn't go get him. That, she says, was the last time he messed up under her watch.
"He was the only one who always listened to me," Rose says.
Lamarcus could always take guidance. He wondered why he was one of the few players who consistently showed up at the little league fields. His coach told him, "All these guys are not going to make it. I want you out of this."
The coach said he knew someone in a southwest Miami suburb who might help with that. Lamarcus could go to school in a safer neighborhood and play football there. "That sounds real good," Lamarcus said.
The commute did not sound real good. It was two-and-a-half hours each way. Lamarcus would have to wake up before dawn, take a city bus from Liberty City to a Metrorail, then take another bus, then walk a mile to Southwest Miami High. He would put in a full day of school, then practice, then come all the way back. He wouldn't arrive home until after 7 p.m.
He didn't care. He wanted out.
"I'd wake up at 5 a.m. with a boom box on and football on my mind," he says. "Every morning."
Rose didn't mind at all.
"If you see your child going the right way, why not let them keep going?" she says. "If we keep them around us, they'll end up like us – with nothing."
For years, Lamarcus made the trek, coming home late and locking the door behind him every night. His defensive coordinator at the new school, Jon Drummond, made sure Joyner knew he would have to leave his childhood behind.
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Defensive coordinator (L) Jon Drummond helped mold Lamarcus Joyner on and off the field in high school. (Special …
"He was a kid that needed to be taken out of his environment," Drummond says. "He was a kid that had to be reformed. Just because you can knock somebody out doesn't mean you have to knock somebody out. He was a rough kid. Coming from those projects, he had to be rough."
During his time at Southwest, Joyner learned to channel his anger into proving himself. "You know you're short, right?" Drummond would tell him. "You have to work the hardest."
He did. Drummond tells a story about having his players pull sleds up a hill with 20-pound plates on the back. Joyner went up once and then told the coach to "put 45s on." Drummond did and watched Joyner go. Then he turned around and told Drummond to sit on the sled himself. "Four plates and me sitting," Drummond says. "He dragged me up that hill."
Lamarcus met an office worker at his new school named Laura Simmons, and soon after she saw him walking from the school to his first afternoon bus in a driving rainstorm. "I saw this kid, in the uniform, in the pouring rain," she says. "That said it all. When you take three buses and a train and you walk, that says how much you want things. If I had to pick one word that makes him tick: survival."
Simmons and her husband invited the teen over for dinner. After trust was built, Lamarcus ended up moving in with them. Simmons reminded him of Rose: "strict." He transferred to St. Thomas Aquinas in Ft. Lauderdale at the end of his junior year, and by then he was one of the most [URL='https://sports.yahoo.com/footballrecruiting/football/recruiting/player-Lamarcus-Joyner-78710']highly touted prospects in Florida as a Rivals.com five-star player – a star on offense and in the secondary. Since the time he was a little boy, falling asleep in a soaked T-shirt, he had always wanted to go to Florida State, and he would get that chance.
Joyner became a unanimous All-American cornerback in Tallahassee and helped the Seminoles win a national championship in the 2013 season. He's projected to go as high as the first round in next week's draft, but he knows he'll always be short (he measured at 5-foot-8 and 184 pounds at the NFL scouting combine), and perhaps discounted by those who haven't seen him on the field.
"I'm never gonna pass the eyeball test. Never ever," Joyner says. "But when I do play, it's a different story."
So if it's corner, safety or nickel, Joyner doesn't care. He did it all at Florida State. Nor does he care what round or what team.
"I believe I have done everything to get to this point," he says. "I expect it to happen. I deserve to be in the NFL. I'm not going to be like, 'Wow, I made it here.' I deserve to be here. I'm gonna do what I did all my life."
If you expect Rose to be shopping for mansions, you might be surprised. She's not sure she wants to leave Liberty City. Lamarcus has prodded her about it for years, but she's reluctant.
"I've been here for 22 years, stuck, sir," she says. "This was all I had. For me to give up the little of what I had because of what he accomplished, that's kind of hard."
Lamarcus calls this thinking "nonsense." He already has ideas in mind for where he wants to move her. But her sense of caution has already seeped in, just like all the other lessons from his childhood.
"You don't know how long you'll be in the NFL," he says. "To be on the safe side, I'll probably get a nice house or apartment. Nothing too fancy. We're very simple people. We just want to be comfortable."
Comfortable is something that Lamarcus and his mom have never been. He grew up around violence, saw it all the time, succumbed to it at one point, and now will be paid to play a violent game. The danger is absorbing the violence too much, and resorting to it. But he says what he saw as a child is now guiding him.
"Any time we tried to be violent, she was hard at disciplining us," Lamarcus says of his mom. "I just never had it in me to be that way. I always felt bad for the people it happened to."
As difficult as it is to fathom, Joyner sees his childhood as a blessing. "Because of my dad, he has made me a great man," he says. "I would never treat my wife like that."
The child changed his mother's life. Then he changed his own. Now, with both of their lives about to change, the shared hope is that some vital part of them can stay the same. [/URL]