Najee Harris: Road to the Pros Episode 1

[Music] every day around nine o'clock today like since i've been out here yeah so around nine o'clock i go to the la fitness and that's the time when i just i there's a pool in the jacuzzi that i do stretches and i'm sending you coupons be like damn like i just think about life the business i'm in you know like i said how like how fake people is like how crazy like society is and like how they look at people and i think how far i came it's crazy like i'm really humbled to be there because like i said man like really really tough living really hard and just to be in this position it's crazy [Music] [Music] he was born in california so in martinez but right after he was born we moved up to washington and there up in washington we're in shelters so i was homeless with all five of them packing them up under my arm and taking them wherever we had to go to get to the next spot i stayed in san francisco stay in oakland sacramento stockton antioch panel richmond hercules i stay elsa bronte san pablo black i stay late everywhere because like like i said it it's hard to live in california so we got evicted a lot as a family you know compared to like other people like i was just poor i don't say i didn't go to school with like different pairs of shoes hella clothes i had the same clothes same but i was just like really really just poor bounced around a lot from hella places stay with hella people slipping cars slept in uh something a lot of homeless shelters back then it was more like a like just survive in the day type thing back then uh more of like you know getting through the hard times getting through the day nadja's always been close to me he's always been my little buddy you know i've always called him my little buddy he was so used to being with me and i think uh from us transitioning to moving around a lot and me keeping him under my wings so much and trying to protect him and harbor him when it was time for him to go to school it just did not work out i was i was a badass kid i was like all type of fights i got the police call to me a lot of times in school destroyed the classroom flipped the tables over there was other times when he would just walk out of school and walk down the street just get frustrated and walk down the street on a busy street in seattle i'm getting phone calls like hey your son's walking down the street right now in a busy street we can't touch him because you know we don't want him to get upset but he is in a dangerous position right now he's just walking down rayner beach boulevard so not fun yeah not fun to hear but yeah he had some issues and we used football to get that back together to kind of reel it in i was a sinner and a linebacker and i hated it especially had a hell week i didn't know nothing about hell week like some ab workouts running like this little stuff running cutting and i'm saying putting on pads and running with that on too it was just like something new for me so i hated it and you know every time i wanted to quit they was like you know like you know it's only a week you'll be done it's a couple more days that's when i like start believing in myself a lot because i i was like if i was i felt like i'd get through this right here i'll be straight and i got through that by myself so i remember all that though like it was yesterday that whole week and uh i think ever since that day you know i just felt really confident myself and then it just took off on a whole nother level there i was like yeah this works yeah no football if we get kicked out of class today and it started working it started working i moved to antioch from richmond california and uh you know i didn't know nothing about antioch i don't know how how it was antioch i thought little richmond was the hardest place that i went to and i'm like damn my first day there i saw a gang fight down the street first day moving in the second day moving i saw swat across the street just raising people's houses i'm like damn it i thought i left this enrichment so we're just passing up to high school right now uh we're actually heading over to sycamore where nigel used to live so his house is right up there this is you know one of the areas that a lot of a lot of the you know the drugs are being sold um gang wars uh you know there's turf wars even within a few blocks you know and just just a lot of things that he could have got caught up in you know they're just people in bad situations i want to say it was a week living there someone was shot right in front of my on the side of our apartment you know like crime scene tape and a dead body on the side of my apartment early in the morning and i'm just laying there going i didn't even hear this this is crazy one of my kids one time told me about trying to come home from school and a drive-by shooting and bullets whizzing by his face and that's scary you know for a mom to know that i live in an area where i have to worry about my kids just getting up going to school every day naji liked to work out at the school which was two blocks away but of course you got to pass through two blocks of hell to get to the school and it would scare me at night i would i would hate it you know but at the same time i still didn't want to stop him from doing what he wanted to do but i hated that he would leave at night [Music] here we go uh he was here all the time he called me on saturdays and i'd open up open up the field for him open up the equipment room and and he would spend the day down here come down bring him lunch and you know just kind of keep him out of the atmosphere across the street so this is where he lived that's where he wanted to be and and you know i just said lock up when you're done you know and that's he lived out here he was already six one uh probably almost 200 pounds so he had a good impact from day one and we brought up the varsity uh the next week and he actually started for me on defense so within two weeks you know he's up on varsity playing playing varsity football for us so we played against freedom and freedom had joe mixon there him and leonard fournette was the two guys that class two best running backs um so every time joe mixon was there hella scouts was there hella people was there and i played off of 10 defense so i was on a d-line like i hit him got a force fumble on him something like that hit him again i'm saying we'll just do hell of one of ones then i had to i ended up being my first touchdown i scored all that stuff and i ended up having a better game than him uh he did a real hit that was a breakout game really i mean that's when we went okay we have we have something big here just the level of competition um the atmosphere is a big night at the game he come to me man bro joe mix came to me man but hey bro you you the truth like you're gonna be good as love all that all that stuff he you know he gained respect and then joe mixon trainer was marcus and maury this is where um tough love lives you know this is where hard work lives too and as you can see um you know a lot of people may see naiji's up here on that wall that wall this wall and you know it's he's the foundation of you know he's kind of like the the reflection of how me and mori are you know uh work work work work work and just keep working and knowing that there's a light at the end of the tunnel and when he came and he told me and marcus that he wants to be the best and i told him right off the bat before you ask me that know what that means you know because it comes with all the ugliness it comes with all the late night early mornings it comes with being forced to do stuff and he was like i know i know he really wanted to learn how to how to properly lift and you know even just doing a lot of agility drills on the ladder and i remember i think i think it was like maybe the second or third session uh i remember talking to maury i remember having him a speaker and he goes what do you think i said i think we got like this is this is it this this is that kid and so i would just tell him i said i think with the right molding i i think this kid is gonna be really special bro i promise you man i just i lived in that weight room where he was at cause he had a small gym we just snuck in there uh we had first it was a little small weight room a fitness place we snuck in and snuck in there until he raised enough money to open up his own shop his shop was like literally like this big right here it's like no bigger than this and you should fit everybody in house to live there type stuff i actually slept there before type stuff like um but you know like how he he he took me they took me under the wing for sure you know i think they're in a one-bedroom apartment with five people and you know the problem reason why he had backgrounds because he was sleeping on the floor so his sister go sleep on the couch so you know stuff like that you know he sees and i tell him hey you we can't get mad at this situation we could sit here and ponder and and talk about about what we're going to do about it so you know he just pushed him just to help better his now his mom but help his siblings you know stuff like that gets to you and then you want to help a little bit more uh and like i said not to take away anything from anybody else we still helped a lot of kids but whatever was happening to him it didn't stop him from wanting to do to get better he was one of them kids where he just came in and just it was like full speed full speed you know and there will be times where you know me and him kind of argue i'm like you need to slow down a little bit and he goes nah and i'm like you need to slow down you need to rest right and he goes nah they met me when i was at my lowest type stuff and they helped me out all through that man they believed in me too though that that's one that that's why i failed to tell people that is marcus amore really helped me out a lot man like without them like like it would be hard to say that i would have been here it would have been a harder route they they helped me out a lot man like pushing my name out there like making me meet joe mixon and taking pictures with him and saying like hey this is the next this is the next big thing right here [Music] once nazi got here it was it's everything kind of turned turned around that was that was the missing piece i mean it's for any team he would turn any program around but uh we're kind of we're on the right path and for him to show up when he did it just you know put us over the top right there he's worth the price of admission if you have nothing to do on a friday night folks you do a lot worse than coming and watching antioch play football [Applause] i mean he was so dominant and strong and actually more of his vision than anything he played like a smaller bat even though he was bigger than everybody else and he's bigger than some of our linemen um so he was something special definitely different uh different athletes back with time floats one i think he's looking for harris one-on-one he's got it touchdown harris is in the end zone we're undefeated his junior year and um so it's it was it was good for the program really really good and and he proved you don't have to go somewhere to make a difference you know go to a bigger school or you know school's in the championship every year you can make make your own path you want to stay here make the program better and he did and that's what kind of person he is i wasn't the number one recruit my sophomore year i just worked my way up to be the number one recruit by going through all these camps and serving like all these guys all these high tech high top guys names we've been offered and like way before me all this stuff like that so i worked my way up and i worked my way up coming from this little ass place in the bay area called antioch and nobody heard about and um you know so going to all these camps stuff like that i'll start really saying like like i really like like competition like i'm really like it really like thrives me it gets me going here comes jeffy rush off [Applause] so my recruitment was like very like extremely busy but extremely busy he started getting acknowledgements and then offers started coming in and then more offers started coming in i'm like dang i hoarded all these too just i hoarded all of his offer letters uh i had two large garbage bags of the reusable garbage bags filled with offer letters from so many different schools that was just crazy it it just took off on a i didn't expect it to get to where it is i started off at peewee football i did not expect it to morph into what it did alabama came to me that was probably like my tenth offer probably my first one was uh hawaii cow and then like first big one was ucla tash lupoy was my recruiter he's from the bay area too and think about tasha is the bear like alabama they don't really recruit west coast people at that time they didn't todd schluber came in he's from california got california ties then they start getting uh all these west coast boys that's like tash got me to uh i think it worked he had a cali cali credits that's what it was we gave him cali credits so uh he knew how to speak the lingo but he was great though he was a great recruiter um real personable but saban was somebody different and i think when i met him i was a little more intimidated i think so because i'm hearing about the school and how big bama is and they're known for their championships and their titles and getting players off into the nfl and then here's the guy that leads all this he was about business and that's what i expected him to be about was about his business because of what you know about alabama so i think that kind of threw him a little bit because you know coach saban is just a you know once once answers when he asks questions and naji's you know on the on the on the goofy side and he likes to joke around so it was trying to get a get a feel for him i think trying to fill him out so it was pretty funny to watch him uh interact with with coach saban so i know that going to alabama in practice i'm gonna go up against all the five stars the number one recruits number one running back number one receiver number one linebacker number one dn and one safety so i'm like oh i for sure they want to go here and then there was like um there was like a alabama and sc sec is the best conference so i'm like okay that's another reason why i want to go here and then the last point is like i'm coming from a small place called antioch and nobody heard about like like i don't i did not go to a powerhouse like de la salle modern day saint john bosco like i didn't go no powerhouse so no one really like like people heard of me i'm not gonna say like no one ever heard me a lot of people heard of me but like i want to find out like how can my name be like worldwide type stuff and alabama wants to replace like they have the most people viewing their games i'm like they see me on this stage and like you know they really could say people could be like man who is this kid right here so i'm like alabama like we'd like to offer you for the new university of alabama how would you like to carry the ball for us like how would you like to put the whole organization you know in in your arm type stuff like that i was like that's dope type stuff caught me off guard because i didn't know he was going to verbally commit that day so but i kind of like gave him the okay when i came out to alabama during our official visits and i did my tour and i told him yeah you guys can have my son i was i was still committed to alabama but like i wasn't like i was open to options so uh jim harbaugh was the coach coach now actually but he was a coach for the diners and barry airwell of jim harbaugh and the niners and the raiders too but that's just the whole argument right there but uh everybody loves jim horowato especially with different niners he took him to the super bowl all that stuff well kaepernick like everybody loves kaepernick everybody loves everybody like the whole that whole team in the bay area um so we ran a uh we had a satellite camp that's when harbaugh was doing all the all the camps so the michigan staff came out um and he came to my school though and when he came to my school and never said everybody live in barrie like i was like oh hell like it's over with type stuff like he was just sitting on the sideline too like this and then like and then it was homecoming that night so he pronounced the homecoming king a homecoming queen that went viral it was just dope but like i was like oh hardball's the truth bro hello i am very proud to announce the 2016 homecoming queen the winner is tatiana mendez [Applause] it was crazy because i was i was sold on bama and then all of a sudden michigan comes into the plane so i'm like oh damn now i got to figure out that because i had made plans to move to alabama so i made all these plans and then the last minute we're we're entertaining michigan so i'm like oh okay i might go to michigan i didn't like anything about their program they just had a big huge stadium and so i wasn't sold on on michigan i didn't like their whole role but he was making me nervous because he was out there testing his toes in the snow walking around with flip-flops on in the snow saying i'm testing my toes out like dude we're not coming here so yeah testing my toes out in the snow the only kid in a snow blizzard walking around with flip-flops and socks so he left everything actually to all of his friends here so he made individual bags from all of his recruiting trips all the schools and all of his stuff he gave away we're at the all-star game and he's like i need to go shopping i don't have any clothes so he didn't bring anything with him just brought his about himself uh the end of the whole uh football game the whole army bowl we still don't you haven't given me a decision so i'm like you're coming home then since you don't know where you're going you're coming back to california and we'll decide there we had a big sit down with tua's family i got to meet everyone uncles they're such a large and close family so i got to meet the whole family this is just hanging out and just talking you know trying to get nothing you know getting naji comfortable with coming out there hey buddy come out here with me to alabama michigan bought me a flight and i would battle about me a flight and you know two was like two was in the room i was cool with two in high school he was just reading his bible in the book in his room and i was like hey man like you going to uh where you going alabama like yeah i mean just come with me type stuff he's come with me huh he's coming in brad come on brother i'm like yeah i ain't gonna come with you and the next day i'm going to bama and i'm just running around crazy going oh my god this is it he's leaving now oh my oh my goodness i'm saying bye i was i was crying at the airport because it was just like we're saying bye he packed his stuff he was gone bye that's my son loves the dramatics that's my son [Music] you

Channel: Alabama Crimson Tide on AL.com

Views: 660,907

Rating: 4.9388595 out of 5

Keywords: Alabama, Crimson Tide, Roll Tide, antioch, california, nick saban, roll tide, documentary, al.com, road to the pros, seattle, nfl draft 2021, running back, highlights, high school, inspiring, tuscaloosa, hurdle, tua tagovailoa, jim harbaugh, michigan, crimson tide, mori suesue, michigan wolverines, tianna hicks, marcus malu, recruiting, leap, series, miami, dolphins, pittsburgh, steelers, 49ers, tampa bay, buccaneers, new york, jets, jacksonville, jaguars, atlanta, falcons, cardinals, bills

Id: ImsK9gpsO18

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MathiasTheGiant]

He reminds me a lot of Sammie Coates in terms of character. He's almost certainly a better player, too.

[u/AngriestBeaver]

Watched it this morning. I fucking love this guy.

[u/icecubetre]

Just watched all 3. I'm willing to bet this guy is about to be as loved as Juju is.

Dude has insane natural skill, but after watching this, I like his character even more. Now I know why the Steelers pick was in almost immediately.

[u/wabrown4]

There are 3 episodes out now and they are making a 4th for about after he got drafted. The first episode is about high school and recruitment

Second Episode is about his college career

Third Episode is about his draft preparation

[u/combs72]

I still can't believe he got drafted to the Steelers. Playing with him in high school I knew he would end up making it to the league, but to actually see it happen and to my favorite team? I'm so happy.

[u/KillaBags]

LOVE this dude. Welcome Najee let's get it

[u/gabbawockey]

We got something special boys. Coming from Northern California this hits hard. I can’t wait to see him become an all out superstar