Holman Edwards

Michael Coats Jr. was good at football as a kid. Everyone around Louisville, Mississippi, knew the little running back tearing up Pop Warner games. Then in ninth grade, he quit. Football, and every other sport. "I just didn't have a drive for it," Coats said. "I can't tell you why. I just honestly didn't have a drive for it." He never played a single down of high school football. Instead of practice, he worked the 5 PM to 1 AM shift at an arcade, selling tokens. He graduated high school and kept doing exactly that. At some point, standing behind that counter, something clicked. "I realized that that wasn't something I wanted to do with my life." Here's the part that sounds made up. Coats was scrolling Facebook when he saw an advertisement for open tryouts at East Central Community College, a JUCO program in Mississippi. His friends who played college ball would come home in the summer and run 7-on-7 with him, and he'd kept up with all of them. So he went to the tryout. Off a Facebook flyer. Having not played organized football since he was 14. He made the team. Three years at JUCO. Then two seasons at Nevada. Then a transfer to West Virginia for his final year, where he started all 12 games and became one of the top cover corners in the Big 12, giving up just 17 catches and one touchdown all season. At his Pro Day, the 5-foot-9 corner ran a 4.39 forty, faster than everybody else there. He was never invited to the NFL Combine. That time would have finished third among all cornerbacks who were. He went undrafted in April. The Browns signed him as a free agent anyway. Today, Cleveland put him on their 53 man roster. Coats has thought about the years he stepped away, and he doesn't regret them. "I'm a big believer in God, and it was a journey, and maybe it wasn't meant for me to play then. Maybe that time that I worked hard and stepped away gave me an advantage because I'm still fresh right now, not banged up knees and bruises. Everything happened for a reason." A kid who quit the game at 14, spent his nights in an arcade, and found his way back through a Facebook ad is now in the NFL.