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Worth keeping around
UCA’s Ford validates Titans’ faith in ability
BY NICK WALKER ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Jacob Ford says now is not the time to be content.
Not with the Baltimore Ravens coming to Nashville today to take on Ford and the Tennessee Titans in an AFC divisional playoff game at LP Field.
“I can’t afford to sit around and think about how good a season I’ve had,” said Ford, who has seven sacks as a defensive end for one of the NFL’s best defenses. “We’ve got a big game ... coming up and we want to make it to the Super Bowl.”
The mere mention of the Super Bowl by Ford would have sounded far-fetched after Ford dropped out of the University of Memphis after one semester in 2001, got one job unloading trucks for FedEx, then another taking apart computers for Hewlett Packard before resurrecting his football career at Holmes Community College in Goodman, Miss., and later at Central Arkansas in Conway.
“When I flunked out, I was really down about it,” Ford said. “When I flunked out, I didn’t want to get back into football.”
He almost didn’t.
Ford began working for FedEx in Memphis loading trucks at their hub.
His brother Jamil and Jamil’s wife both worked for Hewlett Packard in Houston and persuaded Ford to move there and work for a while before he was ready to go back to school.
Ford said the work he did in Houston wasn’t that bad, but it was enough to show him that he needed to get back into football.
“I was basically checking computers that got sent back to H-P,” Ford said. “We’d dismantle them and make sure that there were no viruses or broken parts.”
Returning to college football was an arduous task. Ford enrolled at Holmes Community College, where he showed flashes of ability during his one season with the Bulldogs in 2004.
But the NCAA’s 5-yearsto-play-4 guidelines dictated that Ford could no longer play at a Division I program like Memphis and he had to drop a division to gain immediate eligibility.
Ford chose Central Arkansas over North Alabama.
“His coaches at Holmes knew that there was something special about him,” said Central Arkansas assistant Brian Early, who was responsible for recruiting Ford.
“He just had a knack for getting to the quarterback. And we knew that even though he was a little undersized at 214, 215 pounds, we could get him there.”
Ford made his presence felt immediately in 2005, recording 54 tackles, 9 sacks and 17 tackles for a loss and earning NCAA Division II All-America honors as the Bears made it to the quarterfinals of the Division II playoffs.
His senior season, he got his shot at NCAA Division I football again. Sort of.
The Bears began their transition to NCAA Division I’s Football Championship Subdivision (formerly I-AA) and Ford began making his case for the NFL.
Ford had 48 tackles, 16 tackles for a loss, 8 sacks, 4 passes defensed, 3 forced fumbles and a fumble recovery and was named first-team All-America by College Sporting News.
“He had a really high motor and he was constantly in pursuit of the quarterback,” Central Arkansas Coach Clint Conque said. “I knew that he had a chance to be an impact NFL player if somebody gave him the chance.”
Ford was still undersized at 6-4, 255 pounds, but the Tennessee Titans took a chance and drafted him in the sixth round of the 2007 NFL Draft with the 204th overall selection.
Part of Tennessee’s interest had to do with Ford running the second-fastest 40-yard dash time (4.63 seconds) among defensive endsat the NFL combine.
Then adversity hit again. Ford’s rookie season essentially ended before it began when he suffered a torn Achilles tendon in his left leg on Aug. 14, 2007.
“I was really down about it because I had worked so hard to get to the point where I was out there competing for my spot,” Ford said. “It was rough, because my body had never failed me before.”
Ford said he had never experienced a setback like the one he was dealing with that summer, plus he didn’t know what to expect from the Titans since he was a sixthround selection.
So, instead of focusing on what he couldn’t control, he channeled his energies into rehabilitating his leg and trying to come back stronger.
“They told me to just keep working at it,” Ford said. “All the players were real supportive of me and just told me to focus on getting better.”
Those close to the Titans, like beat writer Jim Wyatt of the Tennesseean in Nashville, recognize how far Ford has come.
“Coming in as a rookie, he was really behind the eightball,” Wyatt said.
“He had a strep-throat incident and then he tore his Achilles. This off-season, with him getting bigger and stronger, he really started to impress people. His coaches raved about him during the off-season. They saw enough of him that he was worth keeping around.”
Conque said he can empathize with his former player.
Conque was signed as a free agent by the Los Angeles Raiders after an All-America career as a linebacker at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La.
A knee injury, however, prevented Conque from ever seeing the field for the Raiders.
“The difference, though, is that the Titans saw something in Jacob that told them they needed to keep him around,” Conque said.
By the time the season started, Ford had earned a role splitting time with defensive end Javon Kearse.
His ability to play several positions on the defensive line has come in handy as both Kearse and the team’s other starting defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch, have missed time because of injury.
“He is so quiet and I don’t think a lot of people know how hard he works on improving,” Vanden Bosch told the Tennesseean.
“When given the opportunity he has really stepped up.”
Ford said that while he’s pleased with the progress he’s made in his first season, he knows that there are areas he needs to improve on, even if one of those things — his animal alter ego — has nothing to do with football and is totally beyond his control.
Each Titans defensive lineman ha a picture above hislocker of an animal that — by group vote — is chosen as the one that looks the most like the player.
Albert Haynesworth has a bear,
Jason Jones is a giraffe, Tony Brown has a wild boar.
Kearse doesn’t have an animal above his locker, but according to Jones, Kearse is a komodo dragon. What’s Ford’s? A koala bear. “I’m not real happy about that one,” Ford said. “Why couldn’t I have something fiercer than a koala bear.
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