The young man who often heard loud pops of gunfire as a boy listened to the sweet sound of a dream come true while NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell hugged him and spoke into his right ear.
“Congratulations. I’m really proud of you, baby,” Goodell told wide receiver Corey Coleman immediately after the Browns drafted him 15th overall on April 28. “You go pick that team up right by yourself. All right?”
Surrounded by violence, gangs and drugs as a child in an impoverished area of Dallas, Coleman rose from an abyss to earn the right to join Goodell on stage at Roosevelt University’s Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. The moment reminded the former Baylor University standout whose father is in prison of everything he has overcome.
“It kind of gave me chills,” Coleman told the Beacon Journal last month. “It’s so unreal.”
Now Coleman is on the verge of beginning his first NFL training camp. He and the other rookies reported to Browns headquarters Monday along with first-year players, quarterbacks and injured veterans. The rest of the players will do the same Thursday. The team will launch its first camp under coach Hue Jackson on Friday.
The Browns expect Coleman to become an alpha receiver after leading the NCAA with 20 touchdown catches last season as a junior. And Coleman intends to fulfill Goodell’s request by sparking an elusive turnaround for the long-suffering franchise, no matter how low outsiders’ expectations may be for the Browns coming off a 3-13 record and years of futility.
“It doesn’t matter what they think. They don’t got the shoulder pads. They’re not a Cleveland Brown,” Coleman said. “One thing, I’m not going to fold under pressure. I’m just going to stay calm and stay poised, and when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”
Coleman’s confidence stems from his upbringing. He’s not intimidated by adversity because he has survived hell on earth.
The strength to forgive
Coleman, 22, planned to visit his father, Melvin Coleman, in Texarkana Federal Correctional Institution while the Browns were on summer vacation. He had visited once before and called the face-to-face meeting a good experience.
Melvin Coleman was arrested in 2011 and eventually convicted of conspiracy to distribute or possess with intent to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine. He was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 120 months in prison and is scheduled to be released Nov. 26, 2021. He’s been in and out of the system, in and out of his children’s lives, since Corey Coleman was born.
Meanwhile, Cassandra Jones was a single mother who rode the bus to her two jobs and raised Coleman and his older sisters, Kenosha Jones, 28, and Ashley Coleman, 23, by herself.
“Sometimes when I think about it, it hurts me,” said Coleman, who also keeps in touch with two half brothers he didn’t grow up with.
Despite the pain, Coleman said he’s forgiven his father. They speak regularly on the phone, and Coleman envisions maintaining a relationship with Melvin after his release from prison, provided he doesn’t become a disruptive force.
“It’s a good thing for him to forgive his dad. That gives him peace,” Cassandra Jones said in a recent phone interview. “I think people make mistakes, and sometimes you have to pay for them. I think Corey can look at that and say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to be like my father, but I still love him,’ and just move on from there.”
Living in fear
It can be difficult to forgive, impossible to forget.
Without a father at home, growing up in the Highland Hills section of Dallas’ Oak Cliff neighborhood was especially terrifying for Coleman, his mother and sisters.
He began playing tackle football in the streets when he was about 4 years old. Those games, however, were usually interrupted by nearby gun violence.
“I saw some crazy things,” Coleman said. “I’ve seen people shooting over there, but that was an everyday thing. They would start shooting. Mom would tell us, ‘Come in the house.’ ”
Coleman got into many fights as a boy being raised in the projects. It could have been worse.
“A lot of people get caught up with a lot of other stuff — gangs, selling dope, dropping out of school and doing a lot of bad stuff,” Coleman said. “It’s easy to get caught up in that. It was real dangerous over there. I wouldn’t want to raise my kids over there.”
Jones felt the same way. She and her kids lived in fear and became determined to flee.
“I said, ‘You know what? My kids deserve better, and it’s my job to get them out of here,’ ” she explained. “So I packed up, and we moved.”
And they kept moving. Coleman went to four or five elementary schools in or around Dallas. Each of the moves from Oak Cliff to Garland to Irving improved the family’s situation. By the time he was in sixth grade, they lived in Richardson, where they felt safe and where Coleman would become a football sensation at Pearce High School.
“It was a different world, but the people there, they took care of me,” Coleman said. “It was probably the best move my mom made.”
Invaluable guidance
The mentoring of former NFL cornerback Ray Crockett changed Coleman as well. He was about 7 when a family friend introduced him to Crockett, whom Coleman calls his godfather. He became best friends with one of Crockett’s three children, Ray II. They ran track and played basketball and football together. The elder Crockett coached them.
Crockett also grew up witnessing drug deals and guns being pulled in Highland Hills, so he sees himself in Coleman. When Coleman was about 8, he spent a year living with the Crockett family in Southlake. Suddenly Coleman slept in a 10,000-square-foot mansion with a movie theater, elevator, game room, swimming pool and indoor and outdoor basketball courts. He knew a better life, even a luxurious one, could be attained by someone with his roots.
“Our stories and our backgrounds were so similar that it was almost like looking in a mirror,” Crockett, who spent 14 years in the NFL and retired after the 2002 season, said recently by phone. “It was like, here’s a guy that all he wants is an opportunity. All he needs is a chance. All he needs to know is that somebody cares and that the possibilities are out there.
“That’s kind of what I was showing him by allowing him to stay in my house, by allowing him to come see you can make it out of your situation if you’re willing to pray hard, if you’re willing to work hard and if you’re willing to have faith.”
Capitalizing on talent
Armed with Crockett’s message, an innate competitive fire and elite speed, Coleman made a name for himself after he was promoted to Pearce’s varsity football team as a sophomore. He compiled 3,864 all-purpose yards and 61 touchdowns in his final three prep seasons.
A receiver, running back, Wildcat quarterback and defensive back, Coleman would beg his coaches for the ball and ask to cover the opponent’s top offensive weapon in crunch time.
“He always wanted to be the guy with the pressure squarely on his shoulders and never shied away from that,” Randy Robertson, Coleman’s high school coach, said by phone.
Of equal importance, Robertson said Coleman didn’t have any major disciplinary issues at Pearce. The frequent fighting no longer followed him.
“Will he make mistakes? Yes. Will they be major mistakes that you really have to worry about his character and call his character into question? No,” Robertson said. “That’s one of the things I’m really proud about for him. When I was talking to college coaches about him, I could say with absolute certainty that he would represent the program well.”
After redshirting at Baylor in 2012, Coleman’s production spiked each year. He earned the Biletnikoff Award, given to the nation’s top receiver, plus unanimous All-America and first-team All-Big 12 honors last season.
The Browns made him the first receiver drafted this year, and they’re counting on him to provide an immediate impact.
The love of his mother and sisters and the drive to create a better life for them kept Coleman, 5 feet 10⅝ and 194 pounds, on track during his inspirational journey to his first training camp in Berea. He’s starting to reap the benefits, as evidenced by recent Mercedes-Benz purchases for his mom and sister Ashley. A house for Jones in Texas is in the works, too.
“There’s kids in the same situation that I’m in, maybe in worse situations, and it gives them hope for them to read that Corey Coleman, he comes from the projects, he comes from the roughest part of Dallas, and somehow, some way, he ended up in the NFL,” Coleman said. “A lot of people who are from that place, you would count them out. You wouldn’t even think that it’s possible to make it out of the situation that I was put in.”
You’d be wrong, though, and Coleman would be ready to show you.
Nate Ulrich can be reached at nulrich@thebeaconjournal.com. Read the Browns blog at www.ohio.com/browns. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NateUlrichABJ and on Facebook www.facebook.com/abj.sports.