Sometimes one phone call can change your life.
For Martin Tevaseu, he placed that call in the spring of 2007 to Lenny Wagner, the defensive coordinator at Santa Rosa (Calif.) Junior College. Tevaseu had played defensive tackle for Wagner two years earlier before transferring to Arizona State. Things did not work out with the Sun Devils, and now Tevaseu was back in his hometown of San Lorenzo, Calif., facing a dilemma.
The night before, someone broke into his cousin Isaac’s house and shot him. Isaac died, and now Tevaseu’s friends and family were turning to him to lead the posse that would get revenge.
At this point, football seemed like a memory. He had ballooned up to over 400 pounds. He was running with a bad crowd. And now, they were all telling him to avenge his cousin’s death.
Something in Tevaseu told him to call Wagner first and ask his advice.
“You need to leave now,” Wagner told him, “or you’re going to end up the same way.”
Four years later, Tevaseu stands on a practice field at the Jets’ headquarters, remembering that conversation with Wagner.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Tevaseu said.
Where Tevaseu is right now is on the Jets for the second straight year, this time with a good chance of making the team. Last year, he spent the entire season on the practice squad until the AFC Championship Game when he was activated.
The Jets coaches are high on Tevaseu. The 23-year-old started Sunday night against the Bengals, with regular nose tackle Sione Pouha (knee) out. It was telling that Tevaseu got the start over third-round pick Kenrick Ellis.
“He played really well,” Jets coach Rex Ryan said. “He is really coming. There’s a guy that’s going to be hard to push off this roster.”
If Tevaseu sticks with the Jets, it won’t be the first time he’s overcome the odds against him.
He grew up in San Lorenzo with his father in prison and violence around him. His older brother, Logo, was arrested at 14 but was spared jail when a group home in Boonville, Calif., agreed to take him in.
A few years later, Logo brought Martin to the group home to escape San Lorenzo. Tevaseu began playing football at Anderson Valley High School, a school out in the country of about 300 kids where there were no more than 15 players on the team. They played on a field used for rodeos, and coaches turned on their headlights when it got dark during practice.
His brother had gone on to Santa Rosa Junior College, where Wagner is the defensive coordinator. Martin began hanging around the school at 15.
“He looked like he was 25 when he was 15,” Wagner said. “He was hard not to have on the radar.”
Tevaseu followed his brother to Santa Rosa, and then went to Arizona State. A leg injury and coaching change led to him leaving school and slipping back into the San Lorenzo street life.
After Wagner convinced him to return to Santa Rosa, he transferred to UNLV after losing over 100 pounds he had gained. He was a two-year starter for the Running Rebels.
Tevaseu went undrafted in 2010, and then signed with the Browns, who released him a month later. He returned to California and began coaching at Mendocino College when his agent called and said he had a tryout with the Jets a day later.
He impressed the coaches when he never missed a practice after breaking his left hand on the third day of training camp. He spent the year on the practice squad before getting his chance against the Steelers in the AFC title game when the Jets needed some depth on the D-line.
The Wednesday before the game, Ryan informed the team that Tevaseu would be active. The room began to applaud.
“It meant a lot,” Tevaseu said. “It meant that they trusted me. If everyone was like, ‘Uh oh, I don’t know’ my confidence would have went down.”
Friday, Tevaseu was lining up to play on the scout-team offense. He shouted “I’ve got left tackle.”
Defensive coordinator Mike Pettine told him to get with the starting defense instead.
After practice, he placed another phone call to Wagner — this one to tell him he would be starting for the Jets.