Terrance’s Take: Darrell Green football accomplishments don’t tell full story

Darrell Green is known for so much.

The Houston native is a Pro Football Hall of Famer, arguably the fastest man to ever wear a football uniform, a two-time Super Bowl champion with the Washington Redskins, and the player who played the most games during an NFL career that spanned 20 years.

But let Green tell it, none of that comes close to defining the man he is. His true measure comes as being a man of God, husband, father of four, grandfather of 17, and a man committed to charitable work and giving back.

“These are the spoils of my career, but these don’t tell the whole story about Darrell Green,” he said recently while in town for Texas Southern’s football camp. “This is just some stuff that I got from working at this company called the Redskins that I played cornerback at that company. But they don’t tell my whole story.

“This ain’t nothing. My kids, my wife, my friends, they are what make me something. When you get that revelation, that is the biggest victory of my life.”

Truth be told, everything about Green’s life is a victory. Raised in the Cuney Homes Projects, across the street from TSU in Third Ward, were it not for some decisions Green made back when he was in seventh grade, he might not have ascended to the heights he has.

There is no other way to describe Green’s path than to say it was simply a blessing. How else do you explain how a young man, knowing he had speed at an early age, decided in middle school that in 10th grade, he would go out for track, and then in 11th grade, he would give football a shot?

Wrap your mind around that.

But even more miraculous is that he did what he planned from way back in seventh grade – almost. He did go out for track at Jones High School in 10^th grade, and then added football in 11^th grade. The only hitch was that since he had never played organized football in a state where little boys are born with a football in their hands, Green was relegated to junior varsity.

He didn’t get his shot at varsity until senior year, where his athletic gifts were obvious from the get-go. But Green was small and inexperienced, so playing football in college wasn’t necessarily a given.

“I had one year to make varsity,” Green said. “I wasn’t going to go to college or the NFL. I just wanted to play.”

Green jokes that he grew up right across the street from TSU, and the Tigers never looked his way. Nobody did. He ended up as a walk-on at NAIA Texas A&I (now known as Texas A&M-Kingsville), where he was a standout, but even that program never offered Green a scholarship.

Still, this man was impressive enough to be drafted with the final pick in the first round (28^th overall) in the 1983 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins.

In today’s college football world, it’s likely Green and his enormous talent and speed would have kept elevating to bigger programs and garnered NIL and revenue-sharing riches. But none of that existed during his time. All he had was the $20 his mother sent him to school with, and his coach had to confiscate it in order to prevent him from buying a one-way bus ticket back to Houston.

What happened once Green reached the NFL, of course, was more mind-boggling than his journey to get there.

• Played 20 seasons for only one franchise.
• Played in 295 games.
• Finished his career as arguably the best cornerback to do it.
• Ran a 4.43 seconds in the 40-yard dash on the record, but rumors persist of a 4.06 time in 1986 at the Redskins training camp.
• A 10-time All-Pro.
• Made the 100^th Anniversary All-Decade Team.
• The Commanders (formerly the Redskins) retired his No. 28 jersey.

Those are just some highlights of an enduring career that lasted well into his 40s when he was still locking down receivers half his age.

But for Green, this was all about God’s plan.

“There ain’t no Darrell Green without my faith,” said Green, now 66. “I’m not going to stay faithful to this girl if I ain’t right. Ain’t no way. Not from where I came from, the way I used to be. No way.

“My faith is everything. My kids, and everything they’ve got; it ain’t got nothing to do with football. It’s because I became a born-again Christian. That’s their victory, that’s my victory because I knew God.”

Green found his way over to TSU’s campus recently to help out with a football camp and to meet with the Tigers’ players on the strength of his relationship with coach Cris Dishman. The two played together in the Redskins secondary from 1997 to 1998.

A strong bond and friendship were formed, and as a result, brought him to the campus across the street that probably once seemed miles away.

“It’s always a pleasure being in the presence of Darrell Green, not just as a football player but as a person, a Christian man, a family man,” Dishman said. “He’s a guy you look up to and say, `When I get older, that’s the person I want to be.’”

Green gives all the credit to God for ordering his steps and guiding his life.

“The blessing part of my life is I never drank, I’m a Hall of Famer, I’ve played in more games than any player in NFL history has, I won Super Bowls, I won the world’s fastest athlete against Carl Lewis,” he said. “I did all of these things, but they were all against competition in games. But what do they afford you? They afford you access and admiration. They afford you resources and influence relationships that you might not have had. They afford you many things, and it’s really up to you how you manage those things.”