I Beat the Odds

by Michael Oher

  One thing I always did was stay true to myself, and when you do that the people around you are going to stay the same. I’ve always been a good guy, a guy who cared, and nobody will look at me differently because I’m going to the NFL. Everybody still acts the same way—we don’t change who we are.

  They throw everything at you—a lot of things. But I took everything head-on. . . . You’ve got to make sure you take every small step when you’re getting ready to go to the NFL because if you don’t, that one small step can hurt you.

  LATER, DURING THE SEASON, I had an interview with NBC commentator Bob Costas, and he pointed out how emotional I looked when Roger Goodell called my name that day at the draft. I agreed with Costas and told him, “I had had dreams about that moment coming years before—dreaming about having my name called and waiting for that moment. Because I know how hard I worked to get to that point—for so long—and had to go through so many things. It was just unbelievable and I couldn’t wait for it.”

  But my dream wasn’t just about getting there—it was about staying there. And I knew that day wasn’t the end of a dream. It was just the start of my next stage in making it all come true.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On Raven’s Wings

  People like to talk about “Cinderella stories,” but Cinderella didn’t get her happy ending without lifting a finger. She had to show up at the ball, be charming and smooth, and win over the prince. Of course she had help along the way, but ultimately it was up to her to make the fairy-tale ending happen.

  When I was drafted in the first round by the Baltimore Ravens, I knew I had done the impossible. I hadn’t just beat the odds; I had blown them out of the water. But the story isn’t just about arriving at the pros. My goal had never been just to get the offer, or to sign the contract, or to get the paycheck. I wanted to do something, to know that I was working each day to do something with my potential, pushing myself to make sure that I was always giving my all. Making it to the pros wasn’t the finish line for me. The world is full of people who got their big shot and then never did anything with it. I had come too far to just let being drafted be the end of my story.

  I’D NEVER BEEN TO BALTIMORE. I’d never even been to Maryland. All I knew about the city was that it had some great sports history and some of the best seafood in the country. I didn’t get to see much of it when I first arrived, either. I landed at Baltimore-Washington International Airport after it was already dark, and the Ravens representatives picked me up and drove me straight to the Castle, which is the team’s training center and headquarters. It is a gorgeous building that really does look like a castle (both on the inside and outside—stone fireplaces, wooden halls, surrounded by acres of forest), but it also has a number of state-of-the-art workout facilities, including the NFL’s biggest weight room. It blew me away. I was so excited to get to work, I wanted to start training right away!

  But I wouldn’t be able to jump into things immediately. I had to travel back and forth a few times to sign papers, meet people, and so on. And it took some doing to get me all moved in and settled in Baltimore before the start of training camp. I had to finish up at Ole Miss, pack up all my stuff, learn my way around my new city, find a place to live, and get the new place put together. Thankfully, my family put their skills to work right away to help me find a great home to rent, one that would be perfect as my Baltimore bachelor pad. Leigh Anne took care of all of the decorating and picking out furniture while I wrapped up everything I needed to back in Oxford and Memphis.

  I ended up choosing a couple of my high school and college awards and framed jerseys to take up to Baltimore with me, but I didn’t want to take them all. There’s nothing like going back to visit your parents’ house and seeing your old bedroom just how you left it. That’s one of those little things that makes you feel at home again. But I wanted my new house to feel like a fun, relaxing place to be, too. I wanted it to be somewhere Collins and S.J. would want to bring friends, and where my new teammates might want to come and hang out. So Leigh Anne helped me find a nice pool table (with Baltimore Ravens pool balls, of course), and some comfy couches that are set up in front of an enormous TV so that we have a great place to watch movies. You can’t beat watching The Godfather on a big screen! The end result was a great house that isn’t too fancy or extravagant, just a nice place for me to live and have friends over.

  I wanted to be careful about losing my head over money. It’s very tempting when you’ve spent most of your life with empty pockets to want to go crazy and buy everything you’ve ever dreamed of with your first big paycheck. But there are so many stories out there about people who become famous, start raking in huge amounts of cash—and then suddenly are bankrupt and don’t seem to understand how it happened.

  USA Today ran a story not too long ago with the headline “Michael Oher cautions NFL rookies on value of money, learning to say ‘no.’” I was glad that they wanted to shine a positive light on my feelings about the subject because some people seemed confused that I would choose to rent instead of buy a house my first year, or that I don’t wear flashy jewelry. I wanted to get to know the area so that I could take my time deciding where I wanted to live. That way, when I bought a house, it would be a smart investment and not just a rush job of trying to find the biggest, fanciest place I could just because I could afford it. And tons of jewelry—what’s the point? You can’t wear it when you’re playing or practicing, and since that’s my job, that’s where I’ll be spending most of my time. Besides, I’m not really into the party scene or nightclubs, which is the only place where wearing that stuff seems to make sense for an athlete.

  Now, I’ll admit that I do have a soft spot for cars. I think it’s because growing up, I was always depending on the Memphis city bus system or walking, so having a nice car was something I could really appreciate. I have three cars, but one of them always stays in Memphis so I have something to drive when I’m home. (S.J. generously volunteered to look after it while I’m away.) One stays in Baltimore, and the other sometimes I will drive back and forth if I don’t fly. But beyond that, if I find that I’m tempted to buy another car, especially if it is a really expensive luxury kind, I’ll buy a remote control car instead and play with it around the house or in the driveway. I have a couple of them, so when friends come over we can have races and just act like big kids. It may not be quite as much fun as driving the real thing, but I think it’s a lot more fun than to wake up one morning and realize that I burned through every last cent of my contract.

  JUST LIKE WHEN I GRADUATED from high school, the summer after I graduated from college was no time to relax, either. Training camp started almost as soon as I moved to Maryland in July; it was intense but started out our season in an exciting way. Our first preseason game was August 13 against our neighborhood rival, the Washington Redskins. We won, 23 to 0. Our second preseason game was a 24 to 23 defeat of the New York Jets. The next two games were on the road, with a 17 to 13 win over the Carolina Panthers and a 20 to 3 win over the Atlanta Falcons. Even though they were just scrimmages that didn’t count toward our final records, those four games really got us fired up for the season that lay ahead.

  Our season opener was a home game versus the Kansas City Chiefs on September 13, 2009, and I was playing right tackle. Kickoff was at 1 p.m. at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, and it was a gorgeous day—upper seventies and not overly sunny. Even in all of my years of imagining that moment when I would take the field as a professional athlete, I never dreamed of more perfect weather. And, of course, my family was in the stands, decked out in purple and gold and cheering like maniacs. I am sure I could pick out Leigh Anne’s shout out of the 67,000 people there. With a 38 to 24 win to wrap things up, I couldn’t stop grinning for at least the next twenty-four hours.

  The next Sunday, we beat the San Diego Chargers on the road, 31 to 26, and moved to first place in the AFC North; then we were back at home for a 34 to 4 win over the Cleveland Browns. It was an amazing start t
o my rookie year.

  I alternated between right tackle and left tackle the whole season and, thanks to an amazing team that pulled together and learned how to read one another as the games went on, I started to get more and more notice from the press. I was named a Sports Illustrated Mid-Season All-Pro, and in December I was named the NFL’s rookie of the month. The Ravens made it to the playoffs with a Wild Card game against the New England Patriots at Foxborough Stadium on January 10. I was at right tackle and our 33 to 14 victory was made even better by the fact that we didn’t allow a single sack the entire game.

  We’d made it to the AFC-Divisional Round, one of the top eight teams of the season. Our next opponent was the Indianapolis Colts, who ended up making it all the way to the Super Bowl. Even though that game marked the end of our season, we had a pretty good record to look back on.

  The Ravens averaged 24.4 points per game, which made us the NFL’s ninth-best scoring team for 2009. In a league of thirty-two teams, that’s pretty good. That year, 2009, was also a year that tied or set several franchise records: 391 points (which matched the 2003 total) and forty-seven touchdowns—twenty-two of which were rushing TDs. The team also racked up the franchise’s second-highest number of yards at 5,619. Our line helped to protect quarterback Joe Flacco, who set six career-high records that season.

  At the end of the season, having started all sixteen games, I was named to the All-Rookie team by the Pro Football Writers of America, and I was runner-up for the AP’s NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award. It was a pretty amazing end to an amazing season.

  But just because our season was over didn’t mean that I could sit back and relax until training camp started up again in July. I know how many guys out there would love to take my job, and I know that the minute I stop pushing myself to get better, one of them will step up for the chance. I got my position because someone else lost his; that’s the way the game works, and I always try to keep that in mind so I never take for granted the opportunities I’ve been given.

  A lot of people want to know what it’s like to be a celebrity, and I feel bad when the most honest answer I can give them is “I don’t know.” But it’s the truth. I don’t feel like a celebrity and I don’t live like one. I try to stay grounded, live simply, pay cash for everything, and just focus on doing my job. I try not to get into the “celebrity” mind-set because then it becomes easy to think you can slack off just because you’re a big name. It also means you’ve forgotten where you came from and the hard work and discipline that got you to this level of success. The minute you start thinking that your reputation is enough to carry you is the moment that you start to slip.

  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 that same time.

  He began to do some digging to see what he could piece together about my past. In the meantime, my senior year started, my football really began to take off, and the college recruiting began to really crank up. The more Lewis tried to learn about me, the more he felt that there was too much of a story just for a magazine article. At the same time, he had begun to research the left tackle position for his next book, which, in his usual style, was going to be a study of how something seemingly minor changed the whole shape of the game. In this case, it was how Joe Theismann’s career-ending injury when he was sacked by Lawrence Taylor in 1985 changed the nature of football. This led a lot of coaches to see the importance of the left tackle to protect right-handed quarterbacks (and right tackle for lefties). Basically, they need someone strong to protect their blind side, since they can’t see how or when they are being charged. The position grew to be much more heavily scrutinized, trained for, and highly paid than before—and it could all be traced back to that one game.

  Lewis quickly figured out that since I also played left tackle, he’d found a link for his story line: Something as small as enrolling in a private school or making a bond with the Tuohy family could change my life the way that one play on one night changed the game of football. He talked to his editor at the Times magazine again and they agreed that instead of the article they were planning to run, the magazine would instead get first dibs to run a chapter from the book that Lewis was going to write.

  For the next year and a half or so, Lewis worked on his book, analyzing football rosters and team payrolls, as well as traveli
ng to Memphis to talk to a lot of people who had known me when I was younger. A few times he would call Sean and Leigh Anne late at night to report his location, as he knew he was in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Memphis. I guess he figured if he got killed, they would know roughly his last location. He went by a lot of my old schools and old hangouts and tried to talk with anyone he could who had a connection to me, in an effort to piece together the details of my early life. Of course, by that point, I was getting to be a well-known college prospect and then a successful freshman at Ole Miss, so a lot of people suddenly were willing to step up and take credit for my success.

  For a long time, though, I was pretty unaware of what Lewis was doing as he tried to get my story right for his book. He had talked to me about wanting to work me into a book he was working on, but that just sounded so crazy to me that I didn’t give it a lot of thought and I didn’t share much information with him. I mean, what was so interesting about me? Who would want to write a book about my life? What was there even to say that would fill up a newspaper column, let alone two hundred or more pages? Besides, I had tried to put a lot of stuff out of my mind in order to make it to where I was. At the time, I really couldn’t see the point in pulling it all back up again. I just kind of figured he was some eccentric friend of Sean’s and it would all blow over soon. Besides, I was starting college, so I had a lot more pressing things on my mind.

  Eventually, I got the message that this Michael Lewis guy was actually planning to do something with my story. I had started hearing from people that he had talked to them about me—it seemed he had talked to everyone about me. So I decided to do two things that I thought were important: I googled his name and I gave him a call.

  First of all, I wanted to learn more about him. I mean, it’s only fair if he was trying to learn all about me, right? I typed in his name and read all about Moneyball and how he broke down the way that some baseball teams were able to build surprisingly good teams without having the highest payroll. What he said really made sense, and it occurred to me that maybe this guy knew a thing or two about sports after all. Then, when I saw that he had a number of other books published, too, I realized that he was definitely not just some weirdo with a tape recorder and a strange interest in the ghettos of Memphis.