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No matter where I am--if I'm in Maryland or Memphis or somewhere on vacation--I work out every day. When I'm home visiting my family, I always carve out a few days to drive down to Oxford for a couple of days of intense training at my old field and gym at Ole Miss. There are several former Rebels who do that, and the coaches have told us that it's a good thing for the younger players to see us there working out because some of the younger guys think that once you make it to the pros your work is done and it's just about collecting a paycheck. The truth is, once you make it to the pros, you have to work harder than ever.

That's really my goal--to be the hardest-working guy in the NFL. My conditioning coaches sometimes tease me because I am so stubborn about getting in my workouts. I never, ever miss a practice, never miss a training session. Some of my friends think it's funny that I'm working on flexibility with the goal of doing a full split. I know guys my size don't really seem like the bendy gymnast type, but I've heard that there are one or two tackles out there on other teams who can do the splits, so that's become one of my motivations: If they can do it, I should be able to, too. It's about always looking forward and making sure that you give your job all that you've got. If I lose my starting position, it had better be because there was someone out there with more talent, not because I just didn't push myself enough.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Blind Side

During my junior year of high school, while I was staying with the Tuohys but before I had moved in permanently, I met a childhood friend of Sean's named Michael Lewis. He was in town to talk to Sean for an article he was writing about their high school baseball coach for the New York Times Magazine, and he seemed to find me an interesting and surprising addition to their family.

Sean had picked Lewis up at the airport and brought him back to the house, where I was working on homework. I had become such a normal part of the Tuohys' lives by that point that I guess it didn't occur to them to mention that I was a part-time resident of the house. It seemed to really throw Lewis off to see me in the house with everyone acting as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a big kid from the ghetto to be working through algebra problems at the dining room table.

As for me, I didn't really give him another thought, since I was up to my ears in homework and sports practice. But apparently, curiosity about me and my story started eating away at Lewis and would continue to bug him for about six months after he left.

In the meantime, Sean and Lewis struck up their friendship again and enjoyed laughing about their own teenage years growing up in New Orleans. Several times they ended up seeing each other while Sean was traveling on the road working as a commentator for the Memphis Grizzlies. They were hanging out together, in fact, when Sean got the call about the car accident I was in with S.J. my senior year of high school. The more Lewis was around our family, the more he started to wonder about my story. Lewis started asking Sean more questions about who I was, where I had come from, and why on earth I was living with them. Sean told him what he knew, but since I didn't like to talk too much about my past and I was still pretty quiet in general, there wasn't a whole lot that he could share except from the point that I'd started at Briarcrest.

Lewis talked to his wife about what he had learned from Sean, and his wife immediately felt it could be a great story and told him he should look into doing a piece for the magazine about me. He called his editor and pitched the story to him as a Pygmalion piece--a story about a young person from the poor side of town who has his life and opportunities turned around by learning what's necessary to succeed in mainstream society. Ironically, that very same play would end up being one of my favorite pieces of literature I was studying around