Before Noah Spence there was the Honey Badger.
Back in 2013, Tyrann Mathieu was the same dilemma for NFL coaches and general managers as Spence will be in next week’s NFL draft: a gifted safety who had once starred at an elite football college, LSU, only to be kicked off the team following reports of failed drug tests. He stumbled into that spring’s draft as a first-round talent too toxic to take until the third round. His claims of sobriety brought rolls of eyes and skeptical chuckles. He was, like Spence today, the great, dangerous risk.
Three years later, Mathieu is one of the greatest things to happen to the Arizona Cardinals. He renounced his Honey Badger nickname and stripped away all the flamboyance and arrogance that went with it. He became one of the best defensive backs in the NFL, playing for one of the best defenses in the league. He turned into a strong voice on social issues including animal cruelty and violence in New Orleans. He has become everything the NFL worried he couldn’t.
And whenever Noah Spence, the great, dangerous risk, of this draft searches for an example to prove that failed drug tests at Ohio State and an exile to FCS school Eastern Kentucky will not define his football narrative, he thinks of Mathieu.
“It’s pretty much the same story,” Spence says. “I look up to him a lot.”
They know each other, these two great dangerous risks of two drafts just three years apart. In 2012 Spence and Mathieu stayed in the same hotel for a football banquet. They become friendly. They still talk today. Mathieu’s name is the one Noah’s father Greg and mother Helen repeat again and again when they discuss their son. Mathieu pulled himself from the darkness, rebuilt himself, and made himself into a role model. Noah, they say, can do that too.
And when they talk about Mathieu they repeat the same word. “Inspiration.” Tyrann Mathieu stopped being the Honey Badger and became an inspiration. They said this to Noah as he spiraled out of the Big Ten and into the unknown. Let Tyrann Mathieu be your inspiration. They say it to him now as he sweats through the murmurs that wonder if Noah is worth drafting after he has seemingly put his life back together.
“We told him: ‘This is the inspiration that he can go through college, that he can say: ‘I can take it someplace and go change my mindset and I can still have a successful life,’” Greg Spence says. “We truly hope [Noah’s] story can be an inspiration for other young people.”
Noah Spence is the answer to a number of NFL teams’ primary need. He is a defensive end who specializes in the rushing quarterbacks. On talent alone he might be the best pass-rusher in the draft at a time when a third of the NFL is desperate for a great pass-rusher. “With the skills he’s shown, he was going to be someone who is a top five pick if he didn’t have the trouble,” says Chuck Smith, a former NFL player who now trains defensive linemen and has worked with Spence.
But Spence did have the trouble. By now, the facts have been memorized in every NFL draft meeting room. He tested positive for ecstasy between his sophomore and junior years at Ohio State and was banned by the Big Ten. He went to drug rehabilitation and then transferred to Eastern Kentucky in an attempt to build back his reputation. Then, early in his time at Eastern Kentucky, he tried to toss an empty wine bottle in a public trash can after drinking with friends. He missed. The bottle broke near a police officer, who arrested him.
These are the items that give teams pause. Scouts and team executives have questioned him endlessly about his past. He told the same story. He told them how he loved the high ecstasy gave him, how he failed the drug tests trying to claim the first was the result of someone slipping ecstasy into a drink, only to have to confront the truth after his second positive test. He said he has been tested repeatedly, that he is clean, that he has made stupid mistakes, and that he will not repeat them again.
“I knew coming into it this was going into it this would be my draft process – talking about my issues,” Noah says. “I mean, shoot, I try to put my best foot forward and tell them that I’ve changed and I’m a different person. I’m looking at this chance as a blessing.”
He only hopes they believe him.
“I look at the questions as welcoming,” he adds. “I tell them they are going to get someone who is a great pass-rusher, a relentless pass-rusher. Someone who is going to work hard day in and day out.”
Greg Spence never imagined this moment. He never dreamed that in the days before his son was to be chosen in the NFL draft he would talking to a journalist about Noah and drugs. Everything he had done the last two and a half decades was to prevent this from happening. Years ago, he was a high school football star in Philadelphia who played for a time at North Carolina State before earning a degree in criminal justice and moving home where he and Helen became probation officers, helping children to change their lives.
They moved two hours west to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to protect their kids from the trouble they saw in their jobs. They built a Christian family and taught the values of faith and hard work. They were the example of how to do things right. The worst trouble Noah ever gave them came when he was 18 and asked to get a tattoo. Greg was not happy. A tattoo? On his son? Eventually he relented after making Noah promise that the tattoo wouldn’t be one he wouldn’t regret when he was 70. Noah chose a Bible verse that Greg’s mother would repeat to him in his own hard times. Romans 8:28.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
“You ever heard of PKs?” Greg Spence says. “You know, preacher’s kids? PKs tend to [get into trouble]. It’s certainly not like they weren’t raised with values. Those issues Noah got caught up with, the drugs and the partying? It happens.”
Sometimes raising your children to do everything right only forces them to choose the wrong thing. Could he and his wife have created too safe an environment? Was the temptation to break free too much for Noah? Perhaps. But what was a parent supposed to do?
Greg does not believe it is an accident he and Helen have had careers that allowed them to handle Noah’s troubles when he left Ohio State. He is certain God put him in this position, giving them the strength and the skills to help their son. Given the opportunity to fix his life they worked hard to rebuild him. They talked to him about being mature and turning into an adult. They prayed and they told Noah to visualize success.
Visualization is important to Greg. It’s a technique he uses with many of the kids he sees at work, the ones who have given up, who find an escape in drugs or drinking. He worries that many of them have lost hope, seeing themselves as worthless, without dreams or goals to push them forward. He told Noah that Eastern Kentucky was an opportunity and not a curse. He told him not to obsess over a fractured reputation but to work every day on rebuilding himself until he could see a light at the end of the darkness.
“He loves himself, but not in an arrogant way,” Greg says. “You have to realize your purpose and your goal. You have to have a strong identity, not to be arrogant but to draw the line.”
This past fall, Noah had eleven and a half sacks and 63 tackles at Eastern Kentucky. The NFL’s scouts and executives came and asked questions, which must have seemed like a burden but at the same time meant a chance, a hope he can be the next Tyrann Mathieu and become a solution to an NFL team’s biggest need.
His son is a nice kid, Greg says, the one who helped coach youth football teams and volunteered to work at Special Olympics. He has a natural charm, something that probably hurt him at Ohio State. He was too easy for the hangers-on to distract, luring him out on Saturday nights, providing the fizzing pills he dropped in his drink to feel as high as the parties swirling around him. He is sure the NFL people will see this side of his son, and they will understand that he is a good kid who made some very dumb choices, only to grow up from them.
“I will tell you this: that dad and that mom and [Noah’s family] supported him,” Smith says. “That dad is a special man. Noah was held accountable. No, understand this, he was held accountable. I don’t think it was [Greg’s] training as a probation officer. It’s love. If Noah doesn’t make it in the NFL his dad will still love him. I think he has a compassionate family. He has a good support system and that makes a difference.”
Smith pauses.
“Isn’t everybody who is drafted a calculated risk?” he asks. “At one time people considered Ryan Leaf to be a better quarterback prospect than Peyton Manning.”
Noah Spence will not have a big draft party. During next Thursday’s first round in which he should be drafted based on talent but might not because of everything else, he will be at home with his family and a small handful of family friends, watching to see if the NFL no longer deems him the great, dangerous risk.
He has purged his phone of most old accomplices, sifting out those who were enthralled with Noah Spence the football player and not Noah Spence the person.
“You learn about people and you learn how people are,” he says. The ones who are left are those he believes to be true friends. It’s a part of growing up, he explains, a part of nearly squandering his immense talent over a silly Saturday night high. Just as Tyrann Mathieu went from the Honey Badger to NFL star, he can be that next great story. The pieces are there, he has made it this far.
“I think Noah has earned his shot,” Smith says.
The rest is up to him.
