Where is odell thurman now

I had tried to push him away at first, I thought I should deal with it on my own, but that was the wrong thing to do. I was really just hiding. I may have made some mistakes but I made them at a miles per hour. As a rookie on the field, I could be a tiny, half step out of alignment and coach Lewis would jump down my throat. That was the kind of small stuff he stayed on my back about and that's why I had a great rookie season on the field. If I'm two minutes late for a meeting, he's gonna get on me.

If I'm not dressed properly for practice, he's gonna get on me. All the small stuff, he's gonna get on me. And I appreciate having someone in my life like that and I know I need it. Being young and being in the situation I'm in right now, I can't make any more mistakes, not one more slipup. Like, it's time to get focused again.

I've got goals set higher than just being in the NFL. I really do feel like I can be one of the best. But I can honestly say, too, that I haven't worked like that. I haven't worked like I'm the best. I lift weights. I do this. I do that. I run. But there are times when I slip and I don't want to work out and I'm just being young and irresponsible. I've always had that in the back of my mind: that I'm the best, I'm the greatest.

What I found out was everyone thinks that. But not everyone prepares to be the greatest. I gotta work. I can't slip. I can't falter.

All I have to do is make sure I don't hang myself. I gotta live my life more organized. I gotta plan ahead. And I gotta see the big picture of my life, which is football has gotten me everything I have. That's the main reason for where I'm at: football. Like at Georgia. I got suspended, I messed up and I knew that if I made another mistake I was out of there. And I went straight. Now I messed up in the league at an early point in my career.

I have no more errors I can make. So now I have to make this a year run -- at least. I don't think everyone out there truly understands where I came from. The way I grew up, I had an elbow in the back of my neck my whole life. Like, 'you're gonna do right, you're gonna be the one who makes it. Basically I came from nothing: I mean 15, 16, 17 people in a four-bedroom house, sharing clothes with my cousins, four people in a bed, man if you came home late you had trouble finding a spot to sleep.

I'm serious. We were rich with love, though, we were rich with love. Being at such a young age when she died [in a car wreck when Odell was in the fourth grade] I kinda didn't really understand it.

It hurt but I didn't understand it. When my father died [of liver and kidney failure three years ago] it came at a key point in my life -- when I really needed him he was gone. I was 20, had just had a kid of my own [Odalyus, now 4] and it was the week before my first college game. At that point I didn't have a parent to support me.

I had uncles and family and my grandma but there's nothing like having your parents behind you. I had a good game. We celebrated. Three or four days later my auntie calls and says, 'You need to come see your daddy. A few days earlier he had been complaining about a stomachache. But it was kidney failure, they said. He was dying from kidney failure from drinking too much. But he wasn't a drunk. He went to work, sober, every day for eight, nine years.

His body just couldn't take it any more. And he said to me: 'If he makes it through the night. I caught that. I remember that. My family was hiding from me how bad it was. But I remember that word: if. I left the hospital and drove back to campus and in the hour it took me to get back to Athens, he died. He left me too early. That's what I think. I played that week. I didn't start. But I played a good game. I needed to get back around my teammates.

It's gonna be a long month, I'm not gonna lie about it. But I think I'll be alright. Watching games, being close but not being able to get in there with my teammates, that's the worst punishment right there.

Not playing, I've been looking at this team like this: Damn, they're good, but now imagine if they had me too? What if I was out there? I really do believe that I play a key role on this team. You should remember that the league was addressing personal conduct policies and used Thurman, as well as Chris Henry , as examples -- this is around the time that we called Roger Goodell "The Chancellor".

In early June , Thurman and his brother were accused of assaulting two men but the charges were dropped due to conflicting statements from witnesses.

Not even a month later, the Bengals waived Thurman due to another failed drug test, which prompted the league to suspend Thurman indefinitely. Thurman has since resurfaced in the United Football League. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Stories Schedule Roster Stats. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. You can use your smarts and instincts to make a lot of plays. I didn't have enough opportunity to prove that, but I have complete and total faith in Marvin Lewis and I think he would have helped me and whatever staff came in. I think it would have been very successful. This is why that first year was tough, his first season dropping three or four steps and reading more than he was rushing:.

You're playing cover two against a certain formation," Pollack says. Well, they line up and you play cover two thinking what you have to do and then they go in motion and its quick. You're like, 'What just happened? What happened on the last play? Nothing of note, Pollack recalls.

It wasn't a textbook heads-up tackle, but like he says, it also wasn't on a tape of what not to do. And he'd been hit much harder in his career.

We'll never really know if the switch would have worked. But the Pollack experience has been noted in the draft process. If you project a guy, he better have the brains and the intangibles first. It's why he loves his current gig, which has him plastered all over the country during the college football season.

He's on the road Tuesday through Sundays and in the run-up to the playoffs he wedges in a Tu. To be preparing for something where you watch tape and be a part of what's going on, that runs through my veins. He won't rule out coaching, but right now he's having too much fun during the season with the game and during the offseason with his wife Lindsey and his two children at their home just outside Athens, Ga.

With Nicholas, 6, in school this week, Leah, 4, had big afternoons planned in the gym where she would run around with her dad while her mom works with her stable of clients as a personal trainer. But coaching pulls at him and, in a way, some of it is because of that connection with Thurman. Pollack says football isn't war, but Thurman is a guy he wants in a foxhole of trust and dependability.

Odell is the perfect example," Pollack says. That would be a heck of a lot of fun…That would be the best part of coaching. Thurman is hard to find these days. At the moment, you can only reach him through a cousin in his hometown of Monticello, Ga. He says he has a son in middle school playing football and enjoys going to his games.

Pollack has seen him off and on at Georgia working on his degree at the behest of head coach Mark Richt and Thurman says he's "back and forth. Sometimes you can't," Pollack says. But when he showed up, he played. When he was there, it was time to hit somebody.

He just flipped that switch and was just a hyper competitive guy. I loved being around him, loved him as a teammate. I wish he could have kept his nose clean and stayed off the stuff that got him into trouble. That dude could have been an all-timer.

He would have been talked about for all-time as a year guy making Pro Bowls every year. He was quick, he was fast, he was strong. He would run through you. He had some nastiness. He had what you wanted in the middle of your defense for 10 years. That decade would have been up last season, a decade where the Bengals wrestled with character issues in the draft and have seemingly concluded to stay away from the red flags.

Thurman and Henry had some of the biggest question marks coming out of that draft, but they were fine until late in the season. News of Henry's marijuana arrest broke as the team left its Christmas party, starting a string of incidents that eventually got him suspended.

After Lewis lunched with Thurman at the Super Bowl that year, where Thurman appeared as the Rookie of the Year finalist, Lewis says "he began to go sideways.

If you can do that, get them through, they're usually going to be OK. Thurman couldn't overcome his personal problems, but the Bengals tried mightily to help him before releasing him in the spring of Henry did get his life together with the help of the club and teammates before his death.