I Beat the Odds (19 page)

In fact, I even looked up the definition of “character” after I heard McShay’s remarks, because I thought that maybe I had the wrong idea about what it meant and I was not being fair to him by being offended by what he said. But everything I read about character just confirmed what I felt: The comments were totally off base and completely unexplainable.

Thankfully, Coach Nutt was just as confused by McShay’s comments as I was. He talked to the Memphis
Commercial Appeal
about me, saying: “I’ve had him for a year and there isn’t a better person than Michael. He never was belligerent, always ‘Yes-sir, no-sir,’ worked hard in the weight room, voted captain and he played great all season long.” It made me feel so much better knowing that my head coach was willing to vouch for my character.

I decided to just shake it off. I figured that McShay must have had me confused with someone else. But as you can probably imagine, Leigh Anne was not happy. She was so angry that someone would say something like that about one of her children without having met us. I think I might have had to calm her down a bit from going into full-on “mama bear mode.”

When April 26 arrived, I was sitting in a room in Radio City Music Hall in New York City, waiting to hear my name. The Tuohys were all there, as was my big brother Marcus and Miss Sue. We were sitting in a room with a number of other players who were expected to go in the very first round. It was crazy to look around the room and see other big-name college football players like Matthew Stafford, Jason Smith, Eugene Monroe, Josh Freeman, Aaron Curry, Brian Cushing, and Michael Crabtree sitting with their families all trying to play it cool, even though I knew they were probably feeling every bit as on top of the world as I was.

One by one, their names were called. As they left the room for their photo ops, I was still sitting there. Finally, I was the last person left in the room and my heart started to sink. For a split second, I started to panic, thinking McShay’s comments must have really spooked some coaches; or maybe they had believed that now that I had a family, my drive to prove something with my game was gone; or maybe they had read the book and incorrectly assumed I wasn’t smart enough to learn the team’s playbook.

But then I looked around and thought, “Michael, you are at the NFL draft.
You are at the NFL draft!
What were the odds of this just a few years ago? Who cares if you are the number one pick or the number one hundred pick—think of what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve gotten to be a part of!”

And just then, my phone rang. I was the number twenty-three overall pick, and I was moving to Baltimore.

I couldn’t have been happier. I respected Coach John Harbaugh from his time with the Eagles before taking over as head coach for Baltimore and was thrilled at the idea of playing for him. I admired General Manager Ozzie Newsome, who was the first African American GM in NFL history and one of the most well-respected men in the league. And I couldn’t help but smile a little that after all of my struggles in school, I was going to be playing for the only NFL team to be named for a work of literature. (The Ravens are named for the famous poem “The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, who lived and died in Baltimore.) Everything was coming together—it just all felt right. I was absolutely grinning in all of the pictures as I held up the purple and gold jersey while my family clapped proudly and brushed away tears.

After the big announcement and the photos, I had a lot of interviews. In one I said:

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.

P
eople 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 to 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.