At the moment this wild journey began, the boy lying behind his mother on the tan couch in apartment A1-1 in a small Mississippi town may have been the least likely future NFL cornerback in the entire state. His mother would have thought so.
Dedrick Johnson was an assistant coach at McComb High and had just come in to drop off Charvoun Ward after practice one day. Johnson saw Charvoun’s younger but bigger brother and asked if he might want to play ball.
Tanya Ward looked behind her at her second son, Charvarius, and laughed.
“Coach, he ain’t going to play no football,” Johnson remembered her saying.