By CARROLL ROGERS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/04/04
In the hours after he suffered a stroke three Novembers ago, David Jacobs was conscious, but he couldn't move the right side of his body.
He looked well enough to his grandmother when she first walked into his St. Mary's Hospital room in Athens, but then a doctor asked him to identify her.
"Mmmamma," he slurred.
Fighting back tears, Vera Jacobs read confusion in his eyes. One minute he had been practicing football for the University of Georgia; the next he was here. The 22-year-old, 6-foot-4, 265-pound star defensive tackle lay in a hospital bed, staring around a room at doctors and nurses he didn't know, who couldn't understand what he was saying.
He was airlifted to Emory. There, doctors told Jacobs' grandparents the next 48 hours would be critical.
The stroke, which had been triggered by a hit in practice, was obstructing blood supply to his brain. If that supply was cut off completely, he could die. Surgery was too complicated. Blood thinners could help. All they could do was wait.
"You want to see a miracle? You keep walking into that room," Vera Jacobs told the neurologist. "David is going to be OK."
She prayed through the night. Staring up at the dark sky outside Emory's intensive care unit, she saw a bright star and a smaller, dimmer one next to it, twinkling on and off.
"God talked to me; he told me 'Don't you see I'm fixing him?' " Vera Jacobs said.
Jacobs' talent for football was undeniable, even as a 10-year-old playing in a south Atlanta apartment community's version of kill-the-man-with-the-ball. He didn't play organized football until he was 12, but once he started at Sandtown Park, Jacobs never missed a game. The same went for Westlake High, where coach Dallas Allen made Jacobs a captain his ninth-grade year. As a senior, he made 34 sacks to catch the attention of Georgia, Tennessee, Florida State and Notre Dame.
Jacobs played backup defensive line for Georgia for two years before his breakthrough season in 2001. He had 10 tackles for loss in eight starts. Defensive line coach Rodney Garner was talking All-America. Jacobs thought he might have a future in the NFL.
"He was having an unbelievable year," Garner said.
Four days after Georgia lost to Auburn, in a Wednesday practice, Jacobs was blocked by a scout team center. He left practice with tingling in his right arm but thought it was a harmless "stinger" football players get. He expected the feeling to come right back. In the training room, though, he began suffering the effects of a stroke, with a severe headache and then seizures. He was taken by ambulance to St. Mary's.
Nine days later, his teammates were visiting him at Emory Hospital the night before the Georgia Tech game in Atlanta.
"I used to be walking into the room, just like them," Jacobs said. "That is what I was supposed to be doing, not laying up in some hospital."
Whether he would play football again was a topic his doctors didn't broach and a question he never asked.
"It was self-explanatory," Jacobs said. "My whole right side was paralyzed."
Victory was wiggling his toes, or hopping on his left foot to the bathroom, despite the doctor's handwritten "don't get out of bed" warning on the board in his room.
He had to relearn how to walk, talk and write.
By the time he was released after a three-week hospital stay, he was walking with a cane.
He spent six weeks in Emory's rehabilitation center. He practiced putting a peg into a hole on a board or spreading open a hand of cards.
Finally back in Athens, Jacobs returned to class, with some help from note-takers.
While a degree still seemed possible, Jacobs knew he would never play football again.
In June, Jacobs received the Wilma Rudolph award, a national award for college athletes who overcome long odds. Coach Garner was there for his acceptance speech.
"I thought, 'He could really help change lives,' " Garner said. "He'd probably be an awesome coach."
But first he had to say his goodbyes.
At the 2002 season-opener against Clemson, he watched his teammates get taped for the game.
"It was, 'Man, I used to do that,' " Jacobs said. "I had to walk it off."
He led the Bulldogs onto the field that night, and his friend Tony Gilbert, a linebacker, wore his No. 99 jersey for the game.
"After that game, it was over; it was time to start working with kids," he said.
Jacobs started his first coaching job at Clarke Middle School, born out of a conversation he had with Clarke Central High's defensive coordinator in Georgia's weight room.
"It was a way I could get on the field, living through these kids," Jacobs said.
He volunteered for one season at Clarke Middle School and another at Clarke Central. Then he wanted to go back to his high school. He moved to Suwanee, so he could finish taking classes at Georgia and split the distance to Westlake in south Atlanta.
That drive seemed like too much to Allen, his former Westlake coach. A few phone calls later, coach Cecil Flowe was trying to talk Jacobs into a volunteer coaching position at Parkview.
"You don't want someone like David landing anywhere else," Flowe said. "David is so valuable to these kids."
Parkview players instantly respected the former Georgia standout, who still weighed 268 pounds and looked like he could suit up. At only 25 years old, they could also relate to him.
"He's easy to talk to, like a friend or a brother," Parkview tackle Jarvis Hines said. "He's gone through the same thing I have, being a foster kid. He lived with his grandmother. I live with my aunt. He said, 'Stay on it. Stick through. Don't give up.' "
In his first few months at Parkview, Jacobs earned a reputation for working players hard in conditioning drills.
"A lot of people were talking, 'This guy is crazy, he's trying to kill us,' " Hines said.
Jacobs made no apologies.
"I believe in 'Do it right or do it again,' " he said.
He believes in going full-speed every play, game or practice. There are no reset buttons in life, he'll say. Go hard. Have fun.
"I've seen myself on ESPN Classic; I'd be getting mad on the couch, going 'get your butt to the ball,' " Jacobs said. "I try to tell the kids, you don't want to be sitting on the couch, looking at an old game, wishing you went a little bit harder."
Jacobs substitute teaches at Parkview and coaches defensive ends. That means college prospect Stephen Gowland gets plenty of one-on-one attention, after nearly every play in practice.
After one mediocre performance in a game, Gowland remembers Jacobs saying: "If that was the last game you ever play, would you be satisfied?"
Coming from any other coach, it wouldn't mean as much.
Play like it's your last
Parkview lost its season-opener to defending state champion Camden County before facing Colquitt County in its first home game. In the fieldhouse before the game, with tears in his eyes, Jacobs stood up and spoke just before the pregame prayer.
"Go out and play this game like it's your last," Hines remembers him saying.
Parkview won its next nine games. The third-ranked Panthers face Roswell in the first round of the playoffs tonight.
Jacobs still lifts weights and runs. Sometimes he'll play basketball, running the floor and rebounding, just not taking any shots. He doesn't jump as high as Gowland on their celebratory chest bumps, and his right leg gets sore standing for long practices. His grandmother sees him favoring his right arm sometimes on the sideline during games.
But Jacobs didn't hesitate to help four other Parkview coaches drive a tackling sled across the practice field to pump the Panthers up for rival Brookwood.
Sometimes in practice he'll "shoot his hands" into Gowland's chest to make a point about technique.
Sometimes he'll put on a helmet.
"I probably wouldn't be like I used to, but I'll line up and look you in the eye," Jacobs said, smiling.
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