Platform and power can be diabolical things. Josh Norman has hunted each from high school to Carolina. Now, his complication is achievement. He wonders what’s next in football? What’s next outside of football? The new Redskins cornerback had spent time chipping away in order to rise, though it feels like his fame came more by way of cannon shot, launched by his all-pro season in 2015. Before that, he was a rookie starter who was eventually benched, a backup inactive almost as often as he played, then third string on the first Carolina depth chart of 2014. His play came together in the second half of his third season. The uptick put him in this place where his words have enough scatter shot stickiness that they are parsed across the country when he speaks.
“I’m not so much the underdog anymore,” Norman says. “Everybody is … I’m something else. I’m something different. I am now THE dog. I’m the standard to where everybody wants to take a shot. Take a hit. Because they feel like it’s newsworthy or something. For me, just maintain what I’ve always been doing. I still have that same fire, desire in me. I just keep that feeling under wraps because I haven’t stepped on that field yet and let it all hang out. But, I’m crying inside to get it out. You have no idea.”
Norman is about as dialed down as he can be, half laying on a couch with one leg up and wondering what there is to eat in the players’ cafeteria at Redskins Park. About an hour earlier, he was doing extra post-practice work, per usual, in the unrelenting Ashburn sun. A day earlier, he was answering for what he said three months prior. There’s power in his language and presence now in a way there never was before. But, he insists, there will be no change in workload even as complacency chases him in the way it always tracks the well off.
In Norman’s second NFL world, the one with a Redskins franchise that stunned the league, him and his new teammates by making him the richest cornerback in football history, Norman is the lightning bolt in an otherwise surprisingly staid Redskins preseason. Usually, there’s plenty of rumbling, finger-pointing, rumor and grousing during this time, a lustful open period well before the season has begun. Not this season. At least not yet. Norman’s presence and words are providing the only low level of external wave-making.
Things had been quiet. Norman was left to his extensive post-practice work, which consists in part of drills he made up. In Richmond, he signed autographs for the sun-fatigued crowd that incrementally moved forward into the yellow restraining rope until it bowed and the man in charge of keeping the masses at bay asked all to step back. Norman wrote his name over and over, a quick indecipherable scribble on footballs, body parts and jerseys. Then, he had to go.
“Josh! Come back!”
The engine behind the bravado
Circling as if their heads are conjoined, Norman and Jeremy Harris wait for the word. The crowns of their helmets are touching while they take synchronized steps clockwise. In a moment, a Redskins staffer will throw the football into the air and simply shout, “Ball!” Harris and Norman will look up, then jump, reaching for the ball while jabbing each other. It’s best of three.
Norman says he made up the drill during his third season in Carolina. It defines a situation he is always harping on: At some point in a game, a play will dissolve to the defender, the receiver and the ball. What happens next is a singular fight you have to win. The extra drills anchor his core, the engine behind the bravado and media push provided by Norman’s personal marketing team. The 28-year-old stays after practice every day for more work. Doing so has caught the attention of everyone in the organization. It made Harris, who was cut not long after, realize Norman embraced teammates, even ones on the fringe of the roster. It did not take left tackle Trent Williams by surprise.
“You don’t get to be that good by just doing what’s asked of you,” Williams says.
Norman feels his ascension is grounded in swift corrections and the extra work. During the time he was not “the standard” as he likes to refer to himself, Norman pulled in fresh information year by year to the point his adaptation is almost automatic now.
“I see it and I correct it,” Norman says. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve grown from. Even if I make a play or somebody get a play on me, I come back that second time and it’s [snaps his fingers] corrected. Because I’ve seen it before and I know, actually know, what steps I took to not be in a good position. That second time, I just do the same thing, but maybe I change something up here or tweak something there and that’s a different outcome for me. To see that, I think I’ve grown in that aspect sooooo far, so advanced. Route combinations and different things on the field I see so much quicker now. The game has slowwwwwwed way down.”
These elements of football wildly intrigue Norman. That’s why at training camp, his answer about defending new teammate DeSean Jackson in practice was filled with anguish and depth instead of flippant. He explained considerations for hand placement, how to work his feet, the difference between Jackson’s darting routes and the more burly receivers he was accustomed to in the NFC South. Though, that doesn’t mean he can help himself when talking about these things. He starts to smile during explanations, an acknowledgement that he enjoys playing the philosophical football maniac.
“For me, it’s knowing who my opponent is and dissecting them like a Secret Service member or something,” Norman says. “Like a spyyy. Trying to dissect a play, dissect this player and go out and complete this mission or task that I set for myself. First it starts with respect. Got to respect the opponents you’re facing. You don’t, that opponent will beat you no matter who or what it is.
“Then I start to look at the other components of my opponent. When I see that, OK, what he’s good at, what he’s not so good at, what can cause him problems, what can cause big problems if I do this. Last is when it all starts to build that case on this receiver. Like, I’ve got this book here and I’m watching the film and I’m seeing the quarterbacks and his mechanics as well; I’m not just keying on the wide receiver. I’m putting the quarterback as well into that. For me, it’s 2-on-1. It’s always a 2-on-1 game. So if I can get in the receiver’s list of what he’s going to do and the things which I see … I’m far, light years away from where I used to be with that.”
A kinship in swagger
Suddenly, Norman didn’t want to talk about it. He was hemmed in by reporters at his locker the day after an ESPN the Magazine cover story about him popped onto the internet. He said some things. A lot of things. They included jabbing the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, the head of the NFL players’ union, DeMaurice Smith, and others.
His comments roared around the internet. They were plucked in various markets to produce a flood of “Norman said” headlines. This is what happens to men on the come up. The media cycle can kick into a whirling gear that cannot be stopped. Norman seemed to have lost control of his words, ones he expressed to the ESPN writer three months prior when the sting from his Carolina departure still felt like fresh sweat in his eye.
“You know, I’ve been very good at that,” Norman said a day later. “I really have been good at it, using as a platform for when I want to reach out and send messages in the light I want it to be and not what a reporter wants it to be for them. Sometimes when you go off places and, you know, you experience a time in which you’re not there anymore and you break up something that you’ve always been your whole entire life, it’s kind of like, man. Start to think about some things.
“Maybe those things was something of that time then, to where now when you look back at on it, you kind of laugh at it. Because, well, sheesh, I was thinking about that then. I was really in that space and time then. And now I’m coming to this new, fresh team and new light and energy. And you’re in a different space, man. You’re in a different time zone and everything you do it’s like on a different level where you want to help, man. You don’t want to bring nobody down. You want to do things where you help others and benefit them. And win! That’s it, man. You want to see a different light.
“I think when you’re on a platform where I am now, some would say the standard in a way, how would you want to shed your light? Do you want to be known as a philosopher, a warrior, a tyrant? Who do you want to be known as? It’s setting that legacy. I feel like that legacy for me is something greater than getting out on people and coming after them because I once was that. And I’ve grown past that.”
Four lockers down from Norman is DeAngelo Hall, who is now a safety semi-retired from rabble-rousing. Hall has grappled with passion before. Well before Norman and Odell Beckham Jr. clashed, Hall was a Pro Bowl cornerback in Atlanta exchanging words and actions with then-Carolina wide receiver Steve Smith. Hall says he didn’t know much about Norman before his arrival in Washington, but the two have found a sort of kinship in swagger. The legacy of cornerbacks is not constructed on meek personalities. It was former Raiders cornerback Lester Hayes who called himself the “only true Jedi.” Deion Sanders was nicknamed “Primetime.” Like the men they are trying to stop, they live on an egoists’ island.
Hall is already seeing the repercussions of Norman’s words and contract. In the Redskins’ second preseason game, the Buffalo Bills were prodding Norman from the start. They blocked him extra after plays. Stormed at him with high hands. Talked to him. Following the lunacy of Norman’s rumble with Beckham last season, a 60-minute fantastical embarrassment, there was something familiar going on here. Not at the same level. Not with the same people. And not with similar stakes. But, still, something seemed off to Hall. He went out to end it with a mental surge from the past, drawing a first-quarter personal foul when he zoomed in to clobber a receiver engaged with Norman after the whistle.
“I told [coach] Jay [Gruden] kind of what happened to make me even want to tee off on the guy,” Hall says. “They were tussling with Josh, felt like they were going to get under his skin and I was just there to let them know it ain’t going to happen today.”
Taking it all in
If anything fascinates Norman more than the intricacies of stopping another man from catching a football, it could well be the concepts of platform and legacy. He often gestures to the painted wall outside the Redskins’ locker room when explaining he has not accomplished what he wants to. The timeline on the wall shows the Redskins’ heyday, all Gibbs, Hogs, Fun Bunch and Lombardi Trophies.
“Haven’t got the ultimate,” Norman says as he points at the wall. “I haven’t got the baby I can just cradle in my arms and call it a night. Haven’t got that. For me, I’m empty. I feel like I’m empty.”
He was close last season. Carolina made it to the Super Bowl, expanding his exposure, giving him a chance to become entrenched there. Instead, they lost and he left. Then Redskins general manager Scot McCloughan made Norman his largest gamble yet when Washington guaranteed him $50 million based off a year-and-a-half of excellence.
This all excites Norman, who punctuates what he believes is stone-cold fact with a puff of air through his mouth after he speaks. It is part scoff, part satisfactory exhale, usually followed by a slight pull back of his head and a chuckle. When it comes, his eyelids widen a bit, appearing to be pulled apart by the incredulous thoughts running through his bones. Ask him if he’s changed to hear it.
“I’m still going to be that guy you saw in Carolina,” Norman says. “Nothing’s going to change and I’ll probably amplify that a little bit more now. Nothing is going to drop off from that aspect for me personally.”
He believes “breaking that ice” during his rise was more difficult than staying on top will be. Considering he left high school with no scholarship offers, had to first walk-on at Coastal Carolina, that he was just a fifth-round pick, and someone benched by the Panthers, he may be right. There’s also another danger that comes with moving to the top: The distance to fall is much greater.
“For me, it’s just an awesome experience to really see because you sit back and you look and you hear and it’s like, all this, but in a sense you still found peace because you know this storm came because of you,” Norman says. “You look at it like wow, once before, none of this happened. And now, the 180, the 360, however you want to call it to this? Yikes! Now you know you’re stepping in some big territory.”
He exhales, then laughs at the wonder of it all.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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