The kid people called “Little Will” followed his father into the seafood warehouse. A palpable bustle mixed with the chilly pungency of lobster, shrimp and fish. Hands heaved potent packages into trucks that’d soon supply the Atlanta region’s yachts, casinos and white-tablecloth establishments with the food of finer things.
Little Will reached his father’s office. Managing a seafood warehouse, Big Will told his son, was not a fancy job. They’d arrived at 3 p.m. on a Sunday. They’d leave at 1 a.m. Little Will sat alone in the office for five hours, got bored, raided the vending machine, then wandered onto the warehouse floor. He talked to workers. He played with lobsters. He dozed on his father’s desk until Big Will woke him, saying it was time to get home before school.
School became a sort of refuge for Will Anderson Jr. So did football, the sport that’d eventually make him the No. 3 overall pick by the Texans. But not at first. Really, all Little Will wanted to find was a place where he belonged. It certainly wasn’t the warehouse. His father took him there often to deepen that point. This isn’t what you want for your life.
But it wasn’t at home with his five older sisters, either. Their childish cruelty hadn’t yet matured into familial love. They once locked him in a dryer. They once dressed him up in a giraffe costume (left over from Halloween) and shoved him out the back door into the peril of their three pit bulls (who were friendly but not with giraffes). “Tore him to shreds,” Big Will recalled. He commanded his girls to quit.
At Alabama, Will Anderson Jr. started most plays from a linebacker's stance.
Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesLittle Will still persuaded his parents to let him live with his grandmother. He spent one year of middle school with Big Will’s mother, Betty, who didn’t live far from their house in Riverdale. There may have been no more formative a year. Betty, whose husband died when Big Will was only 6, had raised seven sons while working multiple jobs. She formed a strong bond with her grandson founded on faith, teaching him to try to be a positive influence on those around him, to try to touch their souls, to try to keep love in his heart.
The memory of those lessons might seem incongruous for a devastating defensive end who pulverized enough quarterbacks to earn the nickname “Terminator,” a two-time All-American whose second-most career sacks (34½) and tackles for loss (62) at Alabama generated five national awards and two SEC defensive player of the year titles. But they explain the basis of his belonging, the purpose from which all other decisions made sense.
See, Betty had also taken her sons to her night job. Big Will had seen her clean office buildings. He’d wanted more for himself, for his own kids. He’d wanted to be the father he never fully had. He also knew how hard it was for Little Will to be the youngest, especially with him working the night shift, and his wife, Tereon, working days at a healthcare facility. When Little Will rejoined his parents in their move to nearby Stockbridge, Betty later came to live with them, too.
Anderson carries his last name with reverent gravity. Yes, he embraces the “Terminator” persona. He wore a bejeweled necklace to the NFL draft whose pendant carried the face of a robot from the blockbuster film. But when Anderson opened the coat of his blue blazer, family photos of Betty had been etched into the fabric.
The Texans had to reserve multiple rows in their team auditorium to account for Anderson’s family when he was formally introduced the day after the franchise traded up from No. 12 to select him. One seat was missing. Betty died during Anderson’s freshman year at Alabama, a season, like his arrival in Houston, that Little Will viewed through her memory.
“I don’t take this for granted,” Anderson said. “(The trade) showed me how much they actually wanted me here. That’s all I wanted is to go somewhere where I felt wanted, where I felt like it was family.”
Will Anderson Jr. is a former Alabama linebacker like Texans coach DeMeco Ryans and shares a similar mindset.
Yi-Chin Lee/Staff photographerThe NFL adjustment
The Texans’ largest draft-day trade in history made it clear Will Anderson Jr. is where he’s wanted. His development from standing outside linebacker to hand-in-the-ground defensive end and subsequent production will determine if Houston’s parting with a package of picks that included a 2024 first-rounder will have been worth it.
DeMeco Ryans certainly needed to upgrade a Texans defense that pressured quarterbacks at the league’s 13th-lowest rate last season. He’d constructed a top-rated 49ers defense with All-Pro edge rusher Nick Bosa careening into opposing backfields, and Ryans made improving the defensive front a top priority when the Texans named him their fourth head coach in four seasons.
But is Anderson a schematic fit? Ryans admitted Anderson must learn new techniques but insisted “it’s not a big-time position change.” Alabama coach Nick Saban indeed sometimes deployed Anderson as a three-point stance lineman, but he most often unleashed the Terminator from an array of standing positionings as a hybrid “Jack” linebacker.
At 6-3, 253 pounds, Anderson is leaner than typical defensive ends. But his speed (4.6 40-yard dash at the scouting combine) and quickness draw a considerable comparison to Chargers edge rusher Khalil Mack, who provided an interesting precedent having entered the NFL with an eerily similar 6-3, 251-pound frame.
Mack, an outside linebacker at Buffalo, was drafted No. 5 overall by the Raiders in 2014, and he made the same positional transition when former coach Jack Del Rio was hired in 2015. Jethro Franklin, Mack’s position coach, said they tried “not to make it overly complicated.” It wasn’t simple by any means. But they began with a small scope of tedious techniques that, once mastered, led into understanding the whole.
Placing a hand in the ground presented the newest challenges. Where is your weight distributed? Which hand is down? Which foot is back? Each combination gave Mack a different angle, a different leverage point, a different purpose. Of course, a defensive end’s vision is from a lower viewpoint, and, depending on what kind of blocks one attacks, that could determine which foot it is up, which is back, how will the defender position himself to see the play progress?
Mack was a two-time All-Pro in Oakland and recorded 36½ sacks and 52 tackles for loss in three seasons under Del Rio. Franklin credited then-Raiders defensive coordinator Ken Norton for not being overly concerned with Mack’s ability to drop back in coverage than expanding his strengths for rushing into opposing backfields. Sometimes they did have defensive ends drop back in coverage. They jokingly called those “relief breaks,” breathers after slugging it out with 6-6, 320-pound offensive tackles all day. But they weren’t the priority of the scheme.
“You’ve got to put time into both (dropping and rushing) as a coach,” said Franklin, now the defensive line coach and run game coordinator at Fresno State. “But at the end of the day, we know he’s going to get his numbers by getting after the quarterback and getting sacks and creating tackles for loss and causing fumbles.”
Such are Ryans’ intentions for Anderson. He must become Houston’s biggest backfield threat, the kind of game-wrecker Franklin knows can help field winners. Take Oakland’s 2016 season. Take Mack’s pick-six against the Panthers, his game-sealing sack-fumble with less than a minute remaining.
“Ball game. Done,” Franklin said. “Those are the kind of guys who can affect a game and help you win a game.”
The Texans know an edge defender’s impact as well as any team. J.J. Watt, a five-time All-Pro, energized a flatlining franchise with a playoff pick-six, 101 career sacks and a swath of passes swatted. But Anderson doesn’t have to be Watt. Since the Texans picked quarterback C.J. Stroud No. 2 overall, Anderson also doesn’t have to bear the spotlight of this year’s draft class alone.
“He doesn’t have to be the staple of the defense,” Ryans said. “He just has to come in and be the best Will Anderson. That’s it. He doesn’t have to do anything more than that. Nothing more, nothing less. Just be the best version of himself, and that’s going to be good enough for our team.”
Will Rogers, the defensive coordinator at Dutchtown High School, would often take Will Anderson Jr. fishing to bond with one his top players.
Courtesy Will RogersAn ‘old soul’
Will Anderson wasn’t afraid of snakes. He was one of few defensive lineman at Dutchtown High who’d casually walk the bushy banks of Fayette County’s lakes in search of the best spot to drop a few poles for bass and crappie. Will Rogers, Dutchtown’s defensive coordinator, would take his whole position group fishing every summer, but Anderson loved fishing enough that he’d often ask Rogers to go one-on-one.
Anderson “is a country boy at heart,” Rogers said. Listen to enough Stockbridge stories, and Anderson seems like the kid that family-oriented baby-boomer TV programs tried to create. He’d fool his father into checking him out of school sick, and only a few hours later, Big Will would see his brother, Rodney, pedaling down the street to a fishing hole, poles and lures swaying in rhythm with the bike, Little Will sitting on the handle bars.
I thought you were so sick? Feeling better now? I just bet you are…
He seemed from another era. Demetrius Douglas, his linebacker coach at Dutchtown, called him an “old soul” whose word and handshake were as good as a contract. May 9, 2023 was officially “Will Anderson Jr. Day” in Stockbridge. Douglas, now a state representative, honored Anderson with a state proclamation that Stockbridge’s city council and Henry County’s school board matched with their own.
Anderson had grown close enough to his principal, Nicole Shaw, that she’d considered him like a son. She created a male mentorship program for the roughly 2,000-student campus called The Dutchtown Way and made Anderson its first member. When visiting parents toured the school, Shaw had Anderson on call to be their guide. There was no script.
“Just tell your story,” she’d tell him.
The stories are striking when considering Anderson is now playing for Ryans. There is a growing sense that Ryans helped the Texans draft himself. A Bessemer, Ala., native whose faith-bound foundation with his mother birthed a respect-inducing career in which his teammates nicknamed their captain “Cap,” Ryans became the relatable role model whose personality and credibility allowed him to easily push his players as defensive coordinator for the 49ers.
There’s only a 17-year difference between the two former Alabama linebackers, and the experiences with which Ryans, a one-time All-Pro and 2006 defensive rookie of the year, can mentor Anderson to perhaps achieve the same or more contain similarities sometimes only families share.
Does it matter that they’re so similar? It could. Because when people marvel over a person’s loyalty, there’s often a critical portion of the equation that’s unsaid. There has to be someone worthy of such loyalty, too. Anderson trusted his father, Rogers and Shaw. He learned to keep his circle of friends small. Trust birthed full-on effort, a belief in the success that followed.
“Once he bought into it,” Rogers said, “it was over with.”
Anderson has given Ryans that trust. He was the first prospect the Texans hosted during the draft cycle, and Anderson immediately bonded with Ryans in a visit he said “felt authentic.” There are few partnerships more important to the immediate improvement of the team than theirs, and Anderson believes they’ve already established a firm foundation.
“Whether it’s high school or college, I’ve always had a head coach that I shared the same mentality with,” Anderson said. “That’s why it was easy for me to relate to the message he was trying to say to the team or just talking to me, and that’s what I love. That’s what I need. I want to play for somebody that’s got the same way I think.”
"loyalty" - Google News
May 21, 2023 at 06:05PM
https://ift.tt/aZrd6gy
Houston Texans rookie Will Anderson's defined by fish, family, loyalty - Houston Chronicle
"loyalty" - Google News
https://ift.tt/oAtUeiW
https://ift.tt/Pv0UeHL
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Houston Texans rookie Will Anderson's defined by fish, family, loyalty - Houston Chronicle"
Post a Comment