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Grady Jarrett came out of high school as the 1,161st ranked recruit in the country.
Georgia, his home state school, signed eight defensive tackles that year. Not him.
South Carolina ran him through a camp and told him this.
"We like you, but you're too short."
His father is in the Falcons Ring of Honor.
Here is the whole thing.
His dad is Jessie Tuggle. Five time Pro Bowl linebacker, 5 foot 11, spent his whole career in Atlanta. Grady grew up in Conyers, Georgia, half an hour from the stadium. His father has said that if Grady had been three or four inches taller he would have been a five star.
Clemson was the only big program that moved, and barely. Dabo Swinney had not planned on him, because he wanted somebody taller and he was short on scholarships. Then he watched him at a camp and offered him anyway.
Then came the draft, and this is the part.
His mother Elisha threw a party at the house in Conyers. Before it started she wrote a few words on a piece of paper, rolled it up, and put it in her son's pocket.
Falcons, pick 105.
Pick 105 came and went.
Then Atlanta traded up and took him at 137, in the fifth round.
He still has that piece of paper.
And then, that same night, the house caught fire.
It started upstairs in the middle of the party and moved fast. Grady picked his mother up and carried her out of it. Everybody got out, every family member and every friend in that house. A few of his old jerseys were pulled from the wreckage covered in soot. Most of it was gone.
Then he went and gave Atlanta ten years.
152 games, the fifteenth most anybody has ever played for that franchise. Team captain six separate times. Twice their nominee for the league's man of the year award. He played in a Super Bowl.
And when it was over he was the all time leader in quarterback hits in the history of the Atlanta franchise. 126 of them. Third in tackles for loss. Tenth in sacks.
A year and a half ago they released him.
The Bears signed him within hours.
Today he walked back into Mercedes Benz Stadium for the first time since, wearing 50 instead of 97, against the team his father is enshrined in and the team his mother wrote on that slip of paper.
He expected her to be in the crowd.
Here is what he said about Atlanta this week.
"Ain't never no love lost for a place that's been so good to me, so good to my family, for so long."
"I've enjoyed every bit of it, and that was well-time served."
Chicago won 31 to 23.
Now the honest part. He got let go because he was expensive and that defense was getting younger, and his last seven years there ended without a single playoff game. Nobody runs a franchise on loyalty.
But a kid that every recruiting service in America put eleven hundred spots down the list ended up owning a record inside the building his father is honored in.
And his mom called the pick.