RICHARDSON, Texas — The humidity is draining on this 80-something degree Texas day even though the sun is hidden. The clouds gain control of the skies and threaten rain which never comes. The hot, worn turf field is starting to hurt some feet.
Front and center stands Broncos all-pro cornerback Aqib Talib, full of energy, rocking a gray Yellow Jackets United long-sleeved shirt, representing the youth football organization he helps run and finance. On this recent Sunday, he is “Coach Aqib” to more than 100 grade-school children hanging on every word of his postcamp speech, during which he tells them to chase their dreams and emphasizes the importance of staying out of trouble.
It’s odd to hear this message from Talib, who has had his share of off-the-field incidents extending back to his college days at Kansas. But that’s exactly what makes him real to the kids.
Talib probably is a little bit of whatever you think he is — rough around the edges, a special talent, authentic, a loose cannon — but here he is the man. And, at age 31, entering the twilight of his NFL career, the word legacy has been eating at him. He is beginning to wonder how he will be remembered.
It was just over a year ago — on June 5, 2016 — that Talib accidentally shot himself in the right leg during a wild early morning in Dallas. It was a taste of his old life, but it was a reminder of just how volatile his career has been, and how his legacy might be tarnished by bad decisions.
“To judge somebody, you go off what you hear or what you know. We grew up rough. We made a bunch of mistakes. We still do. But we’re real people,” said Aqib’s brother, Ya’qub “Q” Talib. “When you get the full picture, you’ll see what the real Aqib Talib is.”
Respect and loyalty are so ingrained in the Broncos star that he jokingly says those words may be his next tattoo. His competitiveness, which shows its horns on and off the field, led his former defensive coordinator, Wade Phillips, to compare his game to Hall of Famer Bruce Smith. Talib admits to fantasizing about wearing his own Hall of Fame gold jacket someday.
To his youth team, Talib is the one who made it big out of Richardson, a beacon of hope, a teacher, a coach, a big brother and a friend. To fans of teams he has played for, Talib is a game-changing playmaker with a propensity for pick-six touchdowns and having an unpredictable, short fuse.
To his local community back here in Texas, Talib gives back more than he takes and has enough street cred to run every block. That’s an image that may have tempted Talib years ago. Not anymore, he said.
“It’s a lot of sides to everybody,” Talib said “You can read about what you want to read about.”
While Talib teaches one young camper a proper backpedal, another slender kid tells his friend that he will be the next Talib. The idea of Talib as a role model may seem perplexing, but it’s natural for kids who don’t grow up in a peaches-and-cream world.
Talib knows all about that.
Respect is vital
Why did you snatch that man’s chain, Aqib? It’s his Yellow Jackets players, not reporters, who are asking. Talib’s unfiltered personality came through on New Year’s Day when he snatched a chain off the neck of Oakland Raiders wide receiver Michael Crabtree like Deebo from the movie “Friday.”
Talib did it for a reason — a belief that Crabtree was being disrespectful by wearing a flossy chain while playing a gritty sport. But he doesn’t want a group of 11-year-old chain snatchers running around.
“It’s entertainment. You don’t snatch a chain. I get paid millions of dollars to be an entertainer, to a certain extent, and play football,” YU vice president Shunte Nettles recalled Talib telling the kids. “Your job is to be a youth football player, so you can get a shot at a collegiate scholarship and NFL career. Until you get to an NFL career, you need to be in your books and on the straight and narrow. Don’t try to be like Aqib. There’s only one Aqib.”
Most of the kids, though, want to be like Aqib.
Respect isn’t bought; you have to earn it, Talib declares. Respect is high on his list of core values. He has it in his city, family and among his NFL peers. And he will fight to protect it.
Kansas defensive coordinator Clint Bowen recalls a scrawny Talib butting heads with coaches, including himself, in Lawrence and escalating fights with players at a moment’s notice. He also remembers Talib’s passionate pursuit to get every Jayhawks player to spat up their cleats before the 2008 Orange Bowl to satisfy then-head coach Mark Mangino’s team uniform rule. He succeeded.
“You can have one of them fat, lazy horses or you can have a thoroughbred. Talib’s a thoroughbred. And with thoroughbreds, they’ll bite you every now and then,” Bowen said. “What makes him great in football is the high energy and willingness to take a risk. And that’s the way he lives his life.”
Dallas has been home since the eighth grade when Q, older than Aqib by three years, convinced their mother, Okolo, to move there so he and Aqib could be exposed to a higher level of football.
Those traits Bowen spoke of were established from early childhood, growing up in the roughest neighborhoods of Cleveland and Trenton, N.J. Aqib and Q, the two youngest opposite their two older sisters, learned how to survive and even thrive amid chaos.
“That’s where a lot of that ferociousness came from, that not scared of nothing, defend yourself,” Talib said. “There was so much stuff going on in Trenton, you either stayed in the house or you were in the mix of all of that.”
As Talib ages, he spends less time in those types of neighborhoods and more time at home. He married Gypsy, his girlfriend for the better part of a decade, in March 2016. She has been his rock and his voice of reason. They raise their son Jabril, 4, and her son Fabian, 10, in Allen, an upper-middle class suburb of Dallas. Talib’s 9-year-old daughter, Kiara, lives with her mother in California.
Gypsy trusts Talib’s maturation, particularly since the shooting incident, but it would be foolish to assume he is beyond another headline-grabbing incident. All it takes is one flashpoint to challenge his resolve.
“Some people see trouble and they take off running,” Bowen said. “Aqib ain’t a runner. If one of his boys are in a fight, he ain’t gonna leave him there. He’ll deal with the consequences later.”
Loyalty always in season
Gypsy still has nightmares of the phone call from her husband in the early morning hours of June 5 last year in Dallas.
Talib offered few details, other than he was shot and was headed to Medical City Dallas Hospital. She immediately thought the worst: Is this how it ends? Once she arrived, the hospital wouldn’t let her see or talk to her husband.
“It freaked me out; I thought he was dying,” Gypsy said. “It was really an eye-opener. I can move forward with life without him, but the kids are who needs us the most. Without a dad, a lot of kids are dysfunctional. He’s so involved with our children that it scares me if they were to lose him. Where would they go? How would their childhood and adulthood be?”
Talib was lucky. The self-inflicted gunshot went through his right thigh and calf and avoided major arteries. He didn’t need surgery, wasn’t charged with a crime, wasn’t suspended by the NFL. He recovered quickly and was named to the all-pro first team last season.
Gypsy and her husband said the shooting incident was more a byproduct of too much alcohol and bad decision-making compared with previous scrapes that involved violence or anger issues. No matter the reason, it once again was time to question who Talib hangs around with.
Loyalty is king for the Talib family, which can be a blessing and a curse. Talib’s circle of friends remains the same, for the most part — he has dropped a few troublemakers over the years — but those who have been with him from the beginning get to partake in the fruits of his success now.
On the right side of Talib, working with the 8-and-younger Yellow Jackets team is an older, light-skinned, stockier version of himself — his brother Q. Talib’s bond with Q, who many have blamed for the cornerback’s off-the-field mistakes, is as tight as ever.
“Growing up, he was always there with me and my friends. That got him ahead of the curve with his competitiveness,” Q said. “If you had a problem with one, you had a problem with the other. No denying that some of the things I did got him in some trouble and he learned some bad things, but overall, there’s so many positives he gained from me or us.”
For Gypsy, friends were more of a problem than family early in her relationship with Talib. She found herself competing for attention with the parties, clubs and friends that attracted her future husband. Nowadays, there’s not much of a fight. She said Talib has become a homebody.
Talib credits his wife and children for his maturation, but Gypsy gives much of the credit to New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
“Once he got with Bill Belichick (2013-14), it was a total (change). When he got there, he turned,” Gypsy said. “We had a son when he got traded there, but honestly it was all him. I wish I could thank Bill Belichick more, because he helped him mature very much.”
Now entering his 10th NFL season, Talib knows he may be down to his last strike. Another significant off-the-field problem could leave him unemployed, so two themes come into play whenever he makes a decision now: leaving a positive, respect-filled legacy and remaining a successful head of his family.
“They play a big part in the decision-making — it’s not just me and my immediate family. I got a household of people who are expecting me to be there, expecting to me to take care of them, expecting me to do the right things,” Talib said. “I don’t just do things with me on my mind. I do things with my whole family on my mind.”
Competitiveness is key
Practice is over, the photo session is finished, all the kids have left the Berkner High School practice field, but the competition has just begun. Talib, Q, Nettles and other YU coaches are arguing about the inevitable Cavaliers vs. Warriors matchup in the NBA Finals.
“They don’t have no answers for ‘Bron,” Talib yells. “He ’bout to get another ‘chip on boys. Just like last year.”
This debate is more about passion than stats. Talib wins, mostly because he’s louder and more intense than his friends. That same competitiveness is starting to flow in Jabril, who kept up with kids twice his age during the youth camp.
It would be easy to see Jabril following his father’s NFL path. He begs Talib to practice football drills every weekend that he’s home. But Talib and Gypsy hope Jabril can avoid some of Talib’s pitfalls on the way up.
Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 track “Mortal Man” seems like the perfect note on Talib’s tie to loyalty, respect and competing to hold your ground in times of confrontation. At the end of the song, Lamar has a dialogue with Tupac using the late rapper’s answers from a 1994 radio interview in reference to evergreen struggles of many men. One particular clip from Tupac stands out.
“I like to think that at every opportunity I’ve ever been threatened with resistance, it’s been met with resistance. And not only me, but it goes down my family tree. You know what I’m saying; it’s in my veins to fight back.”
When looking at Talib’s past, respect, loyalty and competition star in nearly every situation he’s been involved in, such as poking Indianapolis Colts tight end Dwayne Allen in the eye in an ill-fated attempt to protect Broncos star Von Miller from a late-game scrum two years ago.
“It is his competitive nature to not back down,” said Je’ney Jackson, Talib’s mentor, cornerback and strength and conditioning coach at Kansas. “It’s hard to want him to have that on the field then take it all away off of it.”
The eye-poke led to a one-game NFL suspension. Nettles said that negative birthed his favorite moment with Talib. The next week, Talib came down to Richardson, coached the young cornerbacks, gave them life advice and went to every practice and game.
“Peyton Manning and Christian McCaffrey didn’t have to worry about being in poverty, not having a father or being out in late hours of the night dealing with the wrong people growing up,” Nettles said. “That in itself creates a different person, a different mentality.”
Talib added: “You live and you learn until you’re gone. My mom, she’s 60-something years old, still learning life lessons. It’s part of growing up. The one thing you can do when you go through stuff like that — you can pass it on to these guys, so they don’t make the same mistakes.”
“You never quit”
Jon Gruden goes into his trademark chuckle. The former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach said the day he drafted Talib is one of his favorite memories.
“He reminded me of Charles Woodson — big, physical, great instincts, could play offense and we needed somebody to cover Steve Smith,” Gruden said. “A lot of coaches across the league would stand on a table for Talib.”
Gruden felt confident in the calculated risk to select his top-rated cornerback 20th overall in 2008 despite Talib’s off-the-field problems at Kansas. Some NFL teams believed Talib wouldn’t last in the league.
Nine years later, some of that discussion remains the same — but there’s little debate that Gruden’s risk paid off. Talib’s coaches from Berkner High School to the Broncos almost unanimously agree.
That takes Talib back to his fascination with legacy. He’s obsessed with following Deion Sanders’ path as a football player and a pillar to the community, which is partly why he invested in YU.
Talib wraps his arm around the shoulders of a thicker kid he refers to as “young M.J.” The kid slumped his head in disappointment as he was beat in a mismatch against a smaller kid in a 40-yard dash and back drill.
The kid wears No. 21, like Talib, and gets compared to former Hall of Fame defensive tackle Warren Sapp. Speed isn’t the kid’s game, but he figured a loss was inevitable halfway down the stretch run and throttled down in sadness.
“Don’t you quit. Don’t you quit,” Talib yelled as the boy slowly raised his head. “What if he tripped? You never quit. Never.”
Young M.J. jogs to the back of the line with some spunk. He races another boy of similar stature next time up. This time, he wins.
Maybe years from now Talib will be remembered as a Hall of Fame cornerback. Maybe he will be remembered as a knucklehead whose negative headlines outweighed his performance, denying him Hall induction. But for this kid, Talib will be remembered as a role model and a motivator. It’s all in how you experience him.
By the numbers
A look at some numbers highlighting Aqib Talib’s NFL career
9 – Talib got his ninth pick-six, against Andrew Luck, in 2016 to tie him with his childhood idol, Deion Sanders, for fourth best all-time. Talib, the active pick-six leader, often mentions the number ’13’ as his ultimate numerical goal. He trails only Rod Woodson (12), Darren Sharper (11) and Charles Woodson (11) on the all-time pick-six list.
30 – Not many NFL players peak in their late 20s and early 30s, but Talib isn’t most players. At age 30, Talib was named first-team all-pro selection as one of the top three cornerbacks in the NFL a year ago.
49.5 – The passer rating Talib allowed when targeted last season, second best in the NFL, per Pro Football Focus. He was the only cornerback, with at least 315 defensive snaps, who didn’t allow a touchdown in 2016.
4 – Talib has named to the Pro Bowl each of the last four seasons, an example of his maturation on- and off-the-field. He joins Patrick Peterson (Arizona) and Richard Sherman (Seattle) as the only three NFL cornerbacks to make the Pro Bowl in each of the last four seasons.
