Sunday, February 03, 2002
Don't fence him in
Faulk can't be covered by most NFL defenses - or media
By Paul Daugherty
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NEW ORLEANS — Marshall Faulk was not going to be someone's sociology project. “Can you tell us some of the bad things you saw growing up?” a man wondered. “I don't remember,” Faulk said.
Faulk wasn't interested in furthering the urban sports cliche. Thousands of pro athletes have grown up the way he did.
Put a map of America on a wall. Throw a dart, hit a city. There will be a jock from the sad heart of that town, who mixed his skill with his determination to forge an escape.
The fact that Marshall Faulk is playing in the Super Bowl in his hometown — and that he emerged from a housing project ironically named Desire to become the best player in the NFL — is a good story for some. Good stories don't interest Faulk. Not if they advance a stereotype.
“I don't think it matters where you grow up. It's what you have inside,” Faulk said this week. “It's a mindset. It's the decisions you make. You can grow up in the little house on the prairie, and if you have the mindset that you're not going to quit, you'll be successful.”
Here's what we know about Faulk: He is the only player ever to gain 2,000 combined yards running and receiving four years in a row; he was the league's MVP in 2000 and its offensive player of the year each of the last three seasons.
He is the best offensive player on arguably the best offensive team of all time. The St. Louis Rams are the first team to score more than 500 points three seasons in a row. Because he is as good a receiver as he is a running back, Faulk is virtually impossible to defend. “The hardest player in the league to match up against,” New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick said.
Faulk is a smart player. He studies miles of tape. He wants to know where defenders will be in given situations. He also wants to see how a defensive coordinator will react after being burned several plays in a row. Will he keep calling blitzes? Will he back off?
Faulk doesn't get fooled. “The highest football IQ of any player I've ever played with,” said Rams backup tight end Jeff Robinson, a nine-year veteran.
“I've always watched football not only as a fan but as a student,” Faulk said. “I always ask, "Why?' ”
Tonight, how the Patriots fare against Faulk will decide how they do against the Rams. This is not open for debate. This is all we know for certain about Marshall Faulk. The rest is interpretation and opinion. Because beyond football, Faulk is willfully silent.
Draw your own rags-to-riches conclusions. No. 28 won't play that game.
He grew up in a housing project 12 miles east of downtown New Orleans. At one point, Desire had 1,800 two-story units, spread over 99 acres. Desire is mostly undesirable now. Most of it has been razed; about 30 units remain. The plan is to replace all of it with mixed-income, single- and multi-family homes.
From the window of a taxi driving past on Desire Parkway, it seems an awful place, broken and lost, a typical urban shame. But James Youngblood, a supervisor at Desire, says the project worked for people willing to commit to themselves and their neighbors. “The neighborhood was in tune to helping you do something with your life,” he said. “Especially with the kids.”
He always had help. Everyone says that. Faulk didn't go it alone. His mother never saw him play football in high school, either because she was working or tired from working. Yet she told him, “Work hard and don't limit yourself.”
Wayne Reese, Faulk's coach at Carver High, would take the entire team out to breakfast at Shoney's on Saturdays, then open the school up Sundays so the players could gather to watch the NFL games and see the possibilities.
“We kept him close. We knew every move he was going to make,” Reese said. “We were all poor, but we let them all know, whatever we've got, you've got.”
“Coach Reese made you love the game, and if you really did, he developed you,” Faulk said. “You had to follow certain rules to play for him. If you didn't make good grades, you weren't playing for him.”
Marshall Faulk was never beholden to his surroundings. “He had that positive self-image we try to instill in all these kids here,” said Danielle Foley, Carver High's athletic director. Foley will fill you in on another urban cliche:
It isn't the leaky roof or the dated textbooks or the constant fight for funding that is the biggest problem in city public schools. It's mending the tattered self-worth they conspire to create.
“Your surroundings don't matter. It only matters what you want for yourself. You can succeed if you want to work at it,” Foley said.
Compare that to what Faulk said this week:
“I'm not trying to run away from where I came from. You (media) make it a big deal, so kids think they're up against the Great Wall of China. That they can't get over the hump. But they can. You just have to apply yourself. It's like everything else: You work for it, you get it.”
Faulk didn't play running back until his junior year. “He was so quiet, we almost missed out on him,” Reese said. His senior season, Faulk didn't make the New Orleans Times-Picayune's All-Metro team. His versatility hurt him. Faulk played running back, wide receiver and cornerback. The MVP of that all-star team: Kordell Stewart.
Faulk wanted to play running back in college. “I like having the ball in my hands with people chasing me,” he explained. The only school that would sign him as a running back was San Diego State. The rest wanted him as a corner.
Said Faulk of his San Diego State experience:
“You learn something from everything. I grew up in an all-black housing project, went to all-black schools all my life and then I went to the melting pot of the world. It was a little different, but I was open-minded.” He was also a three-time All-American who spent his summers working in a San Diego law firm.
Ultimately, it came down to this for Faulk, same as it does for anyone: He wanted to be successful and was willing to work overtime for it.
Someone asked him how hard that was. “I don't know,” he said. “I didn't know anything different. I didn't have any rich friends on the lakefront. Everyone in my neighborhood was just like me.
“The whole upbringing thing, people want to make a story out of it. I don't want a story. I play football, and I love what I do and that's that. It has nothing to do with where I grew up or how I grew up in a rough environment. There's other people who grew up in that environment who make it.
“They're doctors or lawyers. They make it in business. But we're not talking about that. I don't think that makes me what I am. What makes me what I am is that I kept my head on straight and made the right decisions.”
How things are doesn't determine how things can be. Geography is not destiny. “Tell us about growing up in the projects, Marshall,” someone demanded.
“Next question,” Faulk said.
His story returns home Sunday, as all great stories must. Marshall Faulk once sold popcorn at the Superdome. He was a fry cook at a French Quarter restaurant for exactly one day. When they asked him to switch to washing dishes, he took off his apron and left.
The last time the Rams played here, the homestanding Saints beat them in a playoff game. “From that day, all I thought about was getting back here and winning the Super Bowl. Now, I'm just about there. It's a great accomplishment,” Faulk said.
We all climb our own mountains. Our degrees of difficulty aren't always the same. But we get there, if that's what we really want. No matter where we were raised. Or how others try to define us.
“Do you have any bad memories growing up?” someone wondered.
“Not at all,” Faulk said. Memories are what you want them to be. “All memories are good memories,” Marshall Faulk decided.
Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8550; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.
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Don't fence him in