From Hard-Luck Kid And Shooting Witness To The NFL: Cornelius Lucas' Story
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - When Cornelius Lucas, now 6 feet 8 inches tall and 320 pounds, started seventh grade at Edna Karr High School in New Orleans, he had no interest in football.
Lucas, who now plays tackle for the Detroit Lions, had wanted to be in the band. The coach at Karr, Jabbar Juluke, had to badger Lucas to come out for the team.
Already 6 feet 3 inches tall in junior high, Lucas eventually relented, and once Juluke saw him in action, he knew he had a chance to be special. After watching Lucas play an unprecedented number of snaps for the Lions in 2014, his first season in the NFL, Juluke holds the same view for a different reason.
"He is a young man that, initially, he didn't love football," said Juluke, now an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech. "He played football because I made him play. Now he's starting to love football and see how it can change his life.
"I always talk about, 'Change your life, man. Make football change your life, and you won't ever have to work again,'" Juluke continued. "If he stays healthy, he can play in the NFL for 15 years at that position."
One year in, Lucas reflected on his journey to the league and the forces – his mother, his father and his hometown among them – that shaped him along the way.
* * *
Back in New Orleans with his family this offseason, Lucas appreciates the beauty and unique culture of the city in which he grew up. He also knows firsthand, however, that the negative publicity the region garners is not entirely undeserved.
People who live in New Orleans understand that violence happens there – Lucas has lost a couple of former high school teammates and cousins to it – but the city's reputation cemented in his mind when he came home from Kansas State University for Thanksgiving his freshman year.
He was sitting at a red light by the gas station near his subdivision, not paying too much attention to the car in front of him or the car behind him. Then it happened.
"The driver of the car in the back of me got out of the car, walked around the front of my car and went to the backseat of the passenger side and pulled a gun out and I guess tried to shoot the driver, was trying to shoot the passenger that was in the car," Lucas said. "Luckily the guy got away, or the car got away or whatever.
"Then the guy turned around and looked at me, as in like, 'What did you see?' or what not," Lucas continued. "He just looked at me, looked at his gun, looked at me, and he got back in his car and drove off."
The encounter shocked Lucas, and it crosses his mind every time he passes that gas station, and he looks around to make sure everything is OK. Even as he prefaced that story as "some things that I don't think anyone should probably witness or have to go through," he noted that in New Orleans the story would not raise eyebrows.
"There's a lot of positive things about New Orleans, but at the same time, there's a lot of negatives, and that could have been any other day of my life," Lucas said. "I have friends that's been shot at, just stuff like that.
"That's kind of like the norm down here almost," Lucas added.
Lucas' mother Priscilla Jones realized the potential for trouble, and from the time Lucas was young, she did all she could to keep him out of it. She planned work around her son, scheduling herself while he was in school or at practice. If she had a 12-hour shift, Lucas' grandmother would be around for the time Jones was not.
Jones always emphasized academics, putting him at Karr despite a commute of more than a hour -- each way -- because Karr is one of the best high schools in the city. Lucas had no doubt Jones was serious about him prioritizing his school work; if his grades started to slip, he would not be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities until he brought his grades back up.
"I just really stayed on him because I didn't want him to become, honestly, a statistic of this city, because the young men here have such a hard time for whatever reason it is, and all of them are not the same, but they have a hard time here," Jones said. "They have a hard time because even if you're doing good, you have people that just hate you ... I think he got a lot of flak when he was playing ball because he stayed on the honor roll, and people would be like, 'Aw, he not hard, he not hard, he's on the honor roll.'
"He was so into his books, and he had no choice," Jones added. "He had no choice because I wasn't going to have it, see it any other way."
Jones and Juluke, whom Lucas calls a father figure, both had a tremendous influence on Lucas. The 23-year-old spoke highly of their support.
He also acknowledged the help of his father, who died when Lucas was 7 years old. Lucas was there when it happened.
* * *
It was July 25, and Lucas and his father had gone camping on the beach. Lucas had spent most of the day in the water. He and his dad, a great swimmer, were about to go back out when Lucas decided to stay and toss a football with another kid. His dad was about 100 yards out when Lucas saw him waving his arms.
"It looked like he was just waving his hands, waving at us, and I was waving back at him," Lucas said, "and shortly after, he just went under the water."
Panic ensued, and lifeguards took out boats to try to find him, but the current had sucked him under.
"40 minutes later, probably like an hour later, he floated back," Lucas said.
Because Lucas was so young at the time, he did not understand what exactly had occurred. Devastated, Jones did not explain the situation at first.
"I remember one of the things she told me, she was like, 'Oh, he's sleeping right now, your dad's taking a nap,' when we saw him in the morgue or when we were at the funeral," Lucas said, "so it was just like, 'OK, well – ' Didn't really know too much of what was going on, but just throughout the years it was just more and more of knowing that he wasn't going to be here anymore."
To a certain extent, though, Lucas feels like his father is still here, watching over him.
"It's been a lot of situations where things could have played out bad or if I would've stayed there two or three minutes longer, left two or three minutes earlier I could have got in some trouble or what not, but just I feel like throughout my life, like since he's been gone, he's just been steady like looking over my shoulder making sure I'm OK," Lucas said.
"Really, him being gone kind of shaped me into the person I am, of being very self-dependent … making sure I'm the man of the house, taking care of my family and stuff like that because … that's what he was all about, taking care of his family and being very independent," Lucas said. "I feel like he's just been instilling that in me ever since I've been born, really. All the major life lessons I've learned, I feel like they stem from him, like him putting certain things in my way to make sure that I learn certain things."
Two such roadblocks came recently.
* * *
After his senior season at Kansas State concluded, Lucas was practicing his 40-yard dash launches at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, in preparation for the upcoming NFL combine, when he noticed a stinging in his foot. The pain got worse throughout the week, but he dispelled it as soreness he could endure. After two full-speed 40s for a mock combine, however, Lucas knew he needed to see a doctor.
Sure enough, there was a problem. He had a stress fracture.
"I cried like a baby," Lucas said. "Cried like a baby."
Interest in him from NFL teams – virtually unlimited before the injury – dissipated when he showed up at the combine on crutches. Ultimately, no team drafted him. The Saints had spoken of drafting him, but his hometown team ended up taking his Kansas State teammate Tavon Rooks instead.
"At the moment of just going through that whole three-day process of just not hearing your name called and then it's like the last couple picks and the Saints come up and it's a possibility they could pick you and then they pick your teammate from your college, it was a very interesting moment," Lucas said. "It was a moment of being happy for him but at the same time, like, 'Wow, you just passed me up again,' but I didn't really have too much time to really sulk about it because shortly after I was headed to Detroit, and I haven't looked back since then."
The Lions pursued Lucas intently during the draft, with two members of the organization calling Lucas repeatedly – to the detriment of other teams trying to land him – to ask if he would accept their offer to sign with them. Their level of excitement about Lucas won him over.
"I was wanted there, and in the NFL, it's about the talent, but it's more about the situation that you fall into, and how your chips fall out, and just them showing me how much they wanted me to be there, that was already a leg up," Lucas said.
When he signed with Detroit, Lucas bought a truck to replace the 1998 Ford Explorer he drove throughout college and most of high school. Other than that purchase – one he needed to make, he says – he has been as frugal as he was before he joined the NFL. That might have been a little different if he had been drafted in the second or third round, but Lucas now views going undrafted as part of a grander plan.
"When you're drafted first round you kind of get that silver spoon, almost, and my family's never been a silver spoon family, so I feel as though that was always his plan just to make sure I work for everything I receive, and just like on how this year played out, I started off as the fourth tackle, not really hoping – it really wasn't projected for me to play much this season," Lucas said, "and it was almost just another, a reminder how things played out, like he was like, 'You're going to earn everything you get,' and that's basically what I did this year – earned every penny I made, almost."
Originally brought aboard by the Lions as a developmental player, Lucas would end up with more opportunities as a rookie than he ever could have foreseen. Tackles LaAdrian Waddle and Corey Hilliard both suffered injuries in the season's first game, so into service Lucas went – and on the right side. He had always played left.
"It was pretty hard because my body was so trained just to move from the left side, and when I had to do that from the right side, it was like learning how to read backwards," Lucas said, then chuckled. "Not as drastic as reading backwards, but you can catch my drift."
In many ways, his transition to the NFL and his first season there did not unfold as he had expected. The way Lucas sees it, however, even the development that disappointed him most – going undrafted – actually worked in his favor.
"I definitely think that if I wouldn't have got in the way I did, my mind state would have probably been different," Lucas said. "I probably would have seen that big signing bonus up front and probably lost some of my focus, maybe, but being undrafted and going in the situation that I did was just what I needed because I was just super-focused and just ready for whatever because I had been through a lot already."
At the end of the season, Lucas received a positive review from his bosses.
"They just told me that I'm going to be a very good player," Lucas said, "just to keep progressing, keep working on my skill, over the offseason getting better, getting stronger, and that they plan to see good things out of me next year."
Lucas thinks back on when Juluke, his high school coach, told him to make football change his life. Back in New Orleans for the offseason, his life – although changed indeed – does not necessarily feel that different than it was before.
Of course, now everyone wants to shake his hand or take a picture with him.
He laughed as he ponders the question of what he would be doing had he not given football a chance way back in eighth grade.
"Hopefully something positive, hopefully something productive," Lucas said. "I would probably be … sitting behind somebody's cubicle, maybe, or in somebody's nine to five, doing something I probably wouldn't like.
"It definitely wouldn't be this, though."
