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Good read on Lorenzo Mauldin

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The morning after his first N.F.L. game, Lorenzo Mauldin IV woke up in a Manhattan hospital wondering how he had gotten there. He remembered chasing the quarterback and diving to make a tackle. After that, nothing.

He did not remember the hit that left him motionless on the MetLife Stadium turf on Sept. 13. Or the two wobbly steps he took before falling forward, unconscious. Or the backboard dispatched to immobilize him, the cart that escorted him toward an ambulance, the blaring sirens of the police escort or the frightened looks on the faces of his Jets teammates and coaches, who worried he had sustained an injury to his neck or spine, or worse.

Their concern melted away when doctors said he had a concussion. He left the hospital that day and missed one game.

“I’m just thinking, like, O.K., this is something I’ve got to overcome,” Mauldin, 23, said. “Just like I have with everything else in my life.”

So much of Mauldin’s life just happened to him. He was not a willing participant. He had no control over the “everything else.”

His mother, Akima Lauderdale, an alcoholic with a penchant for selling cocaine, has been in and out of prison in Georgia. His father, Lorenzo Mauldin III, served nearly 12 years in a California prison. He and his four siblings shuffled between relatives and foster homes.

So many foster families. A dozen, maybe more. Faces, he recalls. Names, he does not.

Every day, he regulated and managed crises. Scrounging for food. Absorbing taunts for wearing the same clothes. Being yanked out of class by the police because Lauderdale had been arrested again, then thrust back into the care of the state. In college, he was rushed to the hospital after hurting his neck at practice, and again after a car hit him while he was riding his moped.

“I’m telling you,” said Maurice Hart, his position coach at Maynard H. Jackson High School in Atlanta. “That’s the toughest man I’ve ever met in my life.”

Mauldin says he loves his mother, who, after a brief time away from prison, was sent back in 2014 for charges including aggravated assault and voluntary manslaughter. Her problems, he can reconcile. She did not know any other way to provide for her family, he believes. He remembers the cake and ice cream she would supply for birthdays as much as the loneliness.

Outside linebacker Lorenzo Mauldin IV (55) was drafted by the Jets in the third round in May.Preston Gannaway for The New York Times 

At least she was there, sometimes. His father went to prison when Mauldin was 2. There were letters and phone calls, and later text messages and a few visits, but the absence defined his formative years. It jolted his relationships with, and perceptions of, male authority figures and created wells of mistrust and resentment that lasted deep into adolescence.

“I can’t say I missed him,” Mauldin said, “because I never really knew anything about him.”

In his parents’ stead, a network of advisers, coaches and teachers enveloped him, creating a surrogate family — the choir teacher he called Mama, the house parents he called Grandma and Auntie and Uncle, the football coach he called Pops.

With their help, Mauldin defied expectations. According to a 2012 presentation from the Georgia school superintendent’s office, 15 percent of students in foster care nationwide earn a high school diploma, and 2 percent earn a bachelor’s degree.

He obtained both, receiving a scholarship to play football at Louisville, where his prowess as a speedy pass rusher compelled the Jets to draft him in the third round in May.

Monique Gooden, one of his former foster parents, said she once asked him: “How do you keep doing this? How do you keep bouncing back?”

He is fueled by what one mentor, Bart Hester, described as “optimism almost beyond reason” — the desire to make everything right, or as right as it can be.

“I’ve realized I’m on this earth to protect and provide instead of hinder or destroy,” Mauldin said. “I feel as if I have a purpose when it comes to a family.”

He speaks to his mother regularly, but he knows he cannot get her out of prison. Her maximum possible release date is July 31, 2023.

A network of mentors, coaches and teachers became a surrogate family for Mauldin in Atlanta. Clockwise from top left: Donna Cunningham, called Auntie, was a house parent at the Cherokee group home. Maurice Hart was Mauldin's position coach at Maynard H. Jackson High School. Monique Gooden was only 26 when she served as Mauldin's foster mother for the first of two stints. Lydia Williams was Mauldin's high school choral instructor. Bart Hester was the point person for Mauldin's college recruiting. Tiffany Mingo was Mauldin's dance instructor in high school. Photos by Melissa Golden for The New York Times 

But his father is now free, living in Sacramento. For a while, Mauldin did not talk about his namesake much; Hart, for one, presumed he was dead. But Mauldin has spent the last eight years, ever since his father was released from prison, edging toward reconciliation.

Mauldin III watched his son’s college games on television and flaunted his big hits on Instagram, but he had seen him only three times in the past 20 years. He had never watched him play in person. It would be nice, Mauldin thought, if someday he did.

Born Into Turmoil

The way Lorenzo Mauldin III remembers it, he was at a party in south Sacramento in July 1995 when an altercation involving a member of his crew, who served as a bodyguard, broke out. Someone took out a gun, he said, and as Mauldin III tried wresting it away, it fired. A woman died.

In this life he had chosen — selling cocaine, surrounded by shady characters, yearning for instant gratification — Mauldin III had endured short stints in jail before. One resulting from the woman’s death, he knew, would be longer.

Debating whether to flee or turn himself in, Mauldin III dashed to an apartment in another part of his complex, where his son, then 2, lay sleeping. He caressed his son’s head. He kissed him goodbye.

“I’m sorry, man,” Mauldin III said he told his son. “I love you.”

He told this story outside a Starbucks in Pittsburg, Calif., last week in a 90-minute interview in which he shared his version of the events — before, during and after the 11 years 8 months he served for manslaughter — that sent his son’s childhood spiraling into disarray.

Growing up poor in Sacramento with an absentee father, Mauldin III grew tired of wearing secondhand clothes. He saw men driving around his neighborhood in flashy cars and wanted that for himself. He got good at selling cocaine.

“I went to jail for a short time, so I wasn’t that good,” he said, laughing. “But when you go for a short time, all you’re doing is figuring out how you can be an even slicker criminal.”

Through selling, he met Lauderdale, who became pregnant in 1992. On Oct. 1, less than 10 days after court records show she was arrested on a cocaine charge, she went into labor. Still in police custody, she was taken to a hospital, where Lorenzo Mauldin IV was born.

When his father visited that day, he was overcome by joy but also incredulity. She was selling drugs? While pregnant? He went to Lauderdale’s room, where a guard stood outside. He refused to let Mauldin III enter, but he agreed to open the door long enough for him to notice that the mother of his child lay handcuffed to the bed.

According to Mauldin III, Lauderdale was released on her own recognizance by mistake. To dodge the police, she moved among apartments. For a while, Mauldin IV stayed with his father.

At some point, Lauderdale left for Georgia, where her son, still a toddler, joined her. He went from Sacramento to Atlanta and back a few times. While his father was incarcerated, Mauldin stayed with his aunt, Laraye, for a spell. Then he returned to Georgia, living with Lauderdale’s mother.

Mauldin does not know when he entered the foster system in Georgia — he was 4, perhaps. Maybe 5, or 6. His memories are incomplete. An older woman. A Jamaican man. An Asian lady and her black husband.

Mauldin had an older sister, Tashia, and a younger brother, Taiwan. Two more sisters, born to different fathers, would soon arrive: Sakia and Miracle.

 
A tattoo on Mauldin's chest reads:
I’ll never give up, never give in
Never let a ray of doubt slip in And if I fall, 
I’ll never fail, I’ll just get back up, and try again.
Whatever it takes, I’ll never quit. I’ll never go
down. I’ll make sure they remember my name
A hundred years from now.Chad Batka for The New York Times 

When Lauderdale was not imprisoned, the children lived with her in the Bankhead section of Atlanta. Mauldin does not recall her leaving the family unattended for long stretches, but when she returned, he or Tashia would often find her passed out drunk. Emboldened by alcohol, she would sometimes command her children to make better choices.

Her addiction was compounded by a pugnacious streak. Guarding her territory, she would beat up interlopers. Mauldin watched her fight others “plenty of times.” He and his siblings knew she had lapsed if the police came to their classrooms.

“The first time, it’s like: ‘Oh, what happened to Mom? Will she be all right?’ ” Mauldin said in a recent interview at Jets headquarters. “After it started happening more and more, it became a routine thing. I wouldn’t say we were comfortable with it. It just became a thing. First, it was tears. Then it was sad faces. Then it’s like, O.K.”

Lauderdale could not be reached for comment. The Georgia Department of Corrections, in most cases, prohibits inmates from speaking to the news media.

To get money for food, Mauldin and Taiwan would take neighbors’ trash to a Dumpster. By the time Mauldin was 13, he had been to seven foster homes. Some parents treated him well. Others pocketed the state-issued stipend, he said, and declined to reinvest it in him. He went to school wearing the same underwear, clothing and shoes. Students teased him. His anger smoldered.

“We’re not eating as much as we’re supposed to, so where’s that money going?” Mauldin said. “Either you’re taking it or you’re saving it for something. That’s what caused so many problems.”

Inside, he seethed. Outside, he raged — at any man in a position of authority. If a teacher asked him to pull up his sagging pants, he would lash out. If someone tried to discipline him, he would shut down.

During his freshman year, Mauldin arrived at the Cherokee group home in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta. “If I never would have gone to Cherokee, I wouldn’t have been playing football in high school.” he said. Melissa Golden for The New York Times 

Into this turmoil stepped Gooden, then 26, who took in Mauldin and Taiwan. Asked for her preference by the foster agency, she requested girls 10 years old or younger. She got two boys, 12 and 13.

“I was like, ‘Are you crazy?’ ” Gooden recalled in an interview last month in College Park, Ga. “But you can’t turn it down.”

For a week, Gooden said, it was calm while they felt out one another. Then the skirmishes began. The boys resolved conflicts with fists, not words. When she took them to the supermarket, they rammed shopping carts into each other. She spent as much time in the principal’s office as they did.

During one argument with his brother, Taiwan grabbed a knife. He had seen his mother do it, so he did it, too. The boys were separated — Mauldin heading to another home or two before being reunited with Gooden when he was 14.

Split up, he and his siblings would see one another every month or so. Their bouncing around made it difficult for Mauldin III, in prison, to keep track of his sons. In letters, he would draw an MC logo, for “Mauldin Crew,” and apologize for being gone. He never explained why he was gone. Many letters were returned, but some reached his sons, who drew pictures and said they loved him.

Their responses sustained Mauldin III, who got a job with the California Department of Transportation after prison, working on the sides of highways. He cleaned up the Sacramento Kings’ arena after games and studied to become a drug and alcohol counselor.

When a hefty tax return arrived two weeks before Mauldin’s graduation, Mauldin III paid for airfare to attend. He stayed in Atlanta a week, treasuring the time with his sons, before he left again.

So did Mauldin, off to play the sport that saved him.

A Young Man Flourishes

As a boy, Lorenzo Mauldin IV had so much energy, he said, that people thought he had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He was always moving, running, playing outside.

But his first foray into organized sports did not come until before his freshman year of high school, when he funneled all that vigor and fury into recreational football.

At a tryout, coaches grouped him with receivers. Matched up against an older boy at cornerback, Mauldin juked him on the first route, then fooled him again.

“He didn’t catch the ball because the guy was pulling him down,” said Gooden, whom he was living with at the time. “People were going bananas, like, ‘We got a LeBron James out there.’ He had never really had any formal training.”

She tried cultivating that talent. They threw footballs in the backyard and practiced the routes he had to run. To improve his hand-eye coordination, she would bounce two tennis balls for him to catch.

Two photos, bottom right, of Mauldin are shown at Maynard H. Jackson High School in Atlanta.Melissa Golden for The New York Times 

He wanted to remain a receiver at Jackson High School, but coaches, enthralled by his size and speed, moved him to defense.

Mauldin played outside linebacker before a shortage of linemen prompted a switch to defensive end. The first five games, he fumed so much about the change that Hart, his position coach, told Coach Eric Williams that he could not work with Mauldin anymore. Then, in the sixth game, Hart said, he began to flourish.

“I started to play for myself, I started to play for my family, and it felt so good,” Mauldin said. “I would just pack in all the stress, and when Saturdays or Friday nights came, I just released it all.”

Away from football, his life had stabilized. His rage, ever so slightly, began to abate after he arrived at the Cherokee group home during his freshman year.

“He didn’t walk in the door saying he was going to be an N.F.L. athlete,” said Michael Foust, a licensed clinical social worker who oversaw a mentoring program at the family-service agency Families First. “He walked in the door trying to survive.”

Integral in that process were Martha Whitehead and Donna Cunningham, who served as house mothers. When Mauldin went to bed, they were there. When he woke up, they were there. He called Whitehead “Grandma.” He called Cunningham “Auntie.”

Mauldin became less distant and more engaged. If he misbehaved, depressed by his situation or by others touching his possessions, Cunningham would center him with these words: This is what a man would do.

“If I never would have gone to Cherokee, I wouldn’t have been playing football in high school,” Mauldin said. “I would have been on the streets. I would have ended up like my mom.”

Whitehead and Cunningham went to his games and drove him to appointments. He enforced their rules: no drugs, no alcohol, no cursing, no nonsense.

“He told the new boys how this house is ran,” Whitehead said.

Lorenzo Mauldin Dances at Maynard Jackson High School Video by Maynard Jackson High School Theater Company

Mauldin complemented his aggression on the field with an interest in the arts. In choir, he sang baritone and gravitated to songs of survival and persistence. A staple was “It’s the Hard Knock Life.” He took dance. In a class of about 10, he was the only boy. The next semester, the instructor, Tiffany Mingo, had a class full of them.

“The football coach was like, ‘If Lorenzo can do it, then all you guys can do it, too,’ ” she said. “He started the movement.”

Before his senior year, Mauldin committed to play at the University of South Carolina. But the day before he thought he would sign his letter of intent, the Gamecocks faxed a letter saying they had rescinded their offer.

He had yet to achieve the minimum SAT score, and they wanted him to delay his admission by a semester. South Carolina also had signed Jadeveon Clowney, a star recruit at the same position.

A big ceremony was scheduled, though. Mauldin’s mother, just out of prison, would be there.

“I had to sign a blank piece of paper,” Mauldin said. “I had to fake it. Trust me, at the end of the day, I cried. A lot.”

A moment of happenstance renewed his spirit. A mentor, Justin Berman, introduced himself to Charlie Strong, then the Louisville coach, at the airport in Memphis and explained his relationship with Mauldin. Strong said he wanted to get in touch.

Hester, one of Mauldin’s other mentors, became the point person for his recruiting, arranging a visit and explaining his options. After dismissing military school because he did not want to cut his dreadlocks, Mauldin chose Louisville. All he had to do was qualify. A tutor helped Mauldin raise his scores.

At Louisville, the biggest adjustment was not leaving his support system. By then, he was used to that. It was handling more demanding coaches.

“I got these grown men yelling at me, and I’d shut down,” Mauldin said.

In high school, Mauldin relied on his athleticism. The first time he got into a three-point stance at a Louisville practice, he did not know how to position his legs.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had a more raw football player,” said Clint Hurtt, his position coach at Louisville for three years. “Talk about building a player from the ground up.”

Mauldin with then Louisville Coach Charlie Strong after the Cardinals' 33-23 win over Florida in the 2013 Sugar Bowl. Dave Martin/Associated Press 

Hurtt knew little about Mauldin’s background until Strong, sharing some details, urged him to nurture a relationship.

“It doesn’t mean I babied him,” Hurtt said, “but I really spent time with him.”

As their bond strengthened, Mauldin started to blossom. By his junior year, he would tutor the freshmen, teaching them pass-rushing moves and how to shed blocks. He spent hours every month speaking at foster homes, nursing homes and schools.

“He understood he had a platform,” said Chris Morgan, the team’s chaplain and director of player development. “He never said no to me.”

At Louisville’s commencement last December, all of the students who were the first in their families to graduate were asked to rise. Up popped Mauldin. His siblings came. So did Hart and Hester and Gooden. The guests filled up a sports bar afterward and toasted him.

Mauldin’s father did not attend the celebration, but he called. He called again for the next milestone, four and a half months later, when the Jets drafted him with the 82nd pick. Mauldin sobbed when General Manager Mike Maccagnan called to congratulate him. He cried again during a conference call with reporters.

“This is my chance,” Mauldin said that night. “This is my chance to show everybody.”

Across the country, his father listened to the interview. He broke down, too.

“It kind of eats me up a little bit right now even thinking about it,” Mauldin III said. “That was something. I just looked up and said, Thank you. He’s been through so much — mom, me, growing up. I just said, Thank you.”

Lorenzo Mauldin III, right, bought 20 tickets for the Raiders’ game against the Jets last Sunday at O.co Coliseum in Oakland. It was the first time he saw his son, center, play in person.Preston Gannaway for The New York Times 

Family, Reunited

Within the last few months, Lorenzo Mauldin III made two notable purchases. First, he ordered a green Jets jersey with No. 55 and “Mauldin” on the back. Then he bought 20 tickets for the Raiders’ game last Sunday at O.co Coliseum in Oakland.

They were playing against his son.

The resemblance between them is striking: same prominent cheekbones and soft eyes and broad shoulders, their faces framed by dreadlocks.

Unable to afford trips to Louisville on his $11-an-hour salary, Mauldin III held viewing parties when the college team played on television. In a game against Kentucky, Mauldin delivered a powerful hit in punt coverage. Watching along with Mauldin III, some relatives gasped. You used to hit like that in Pop Warner, they said.

“It’s in the blood,” Mauldin III said, “but it’s all him.”

About three and a half hours before kickoff last Sunday, Mauldin III and friends and family, extended and immediate, were encamped in the D Lot for a proper tailgate. The sun’s rays blasted through a nearby canopy as hot links, chicken and carne asada sizzled on the grill. In the ocean of silver and black, Mauldin III spotted two Jets fans wandering past. He waved them over.

“That’s my son,” he said, pointing to his jersey. “Lorenzo. Lorenzo Mauldin. He got hurt in the first game.”

Nodding in recognition, they smiled and high-fived Mauldin III, who demanded they take a photo together.

Eventually, everyone headed to the seats in Section 247, where they watched Mauldin play 17 snaps across defense and special teams in the Jets’ 34-20 loss. He contributed one tackle, hit the quarterback once and was called for a penalty. It was not his worst game. It was not his best game. It did not matter.

“We came out with a loss,” Mauldin said, “but I got something good out of visiting Oakland.”

Standing by the team buses afterward, Mauldin III just grinned.

“Man,” he said. “That was awesome.”

All around him, the family mingled. In the middle of the bunch stood Mauldin. Even when Cunningham or Hester or others attended his games in high school or college, Mauldin was aware of his otherness, how his teammates would meet with their families while he would not.

 
Mauldin hugged his father goodbye after the Jets’ game against the Raiders. “We came out with a loss,” he said, “but I got something good out of visiting Oakland.”Preston Gannaway for The New York Times 

And now, look. Here was his aunt Jewell Smith, who gushed not over Mauldin’s football success but his college diploma. Over there, his uncle Eric Mauldin, who hedged his allegiances by wearing a Raiders T-shirt with “Mauldin” on the back. His half sister, LoRen, scampered around. Taiwan, who flew in from Atlanta. Tashia, who drove in from Sacramento.

They were afforded only 30 or so minutes together, which would have been far too little time had they not spent much of Saturday reconnecting at the Jets’ hotel in Santa Clara. They laughed. They played Heads Up! on their phones. They took loads of photos.

At one point, the two Lorenzo Mauldins stole away to excavate some family history: the story of the son’s birth, for one. The father told the son to answer the phone more. The son said he would. They made tentative plans to spend New Year’s Eve together out east.

“It was healing,” Smith said.

Mauldin said: “I’ve learned to forgive my dad. People make mistakes.”

He has thought a lot about his family, about heritage and legacy. Since his senior season at Louisville, the back of his jersey has read Mauldin IV, not just Mauldin. It respects those who came before him. And, perhaps, those still to come.

Chatting with his father Saturday, Mauldin mentioned a recent conversation with his girlfriend. They decided that if they ever have a son, they will name him Lorenzo Mauldin V.

“It’s a name I want to keep going,” Mauldin said.

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