LeBeaux Cooper can only giggle this week of 2017 NFL Draft.
The fact this particular 6-foot, 185-pound cornerback from New Orleans' Third Ward could even be considered for the NFL's annual talent harvest goes about seven miles beyond a miracle.
That's because LeBeaux Cooper figures he should be dead.
"I can hear the arrows coming past me," said the prospect from Mayville State of the NAIA.
That particular episode -- there are more -- occurred in 2013 at Eastern Arizona College, a JUCO in Thatcher, Arizona. Until that point, Cooper wasn't unlike the typical young adult football player.
He considered himself indestructible. Coming out of Port Allen High School in Louisiana, Cooper was a stud corner and national-class sprinter (22.21 seconds in the 200 meters). LSU recruited him. Nebraska wanted him for track and football. Washington showed interest.
But an academic failing in a foreign language class plagued him in transferring from inner city New Orleans to Port Allen and put Cooper on the junior college track.
Three schools and a death threat later, this week he lives on the periphery of the draft. His story is part of a sub-culture of the 2017 draft class that will barely be mentioned this week.
Cooper's agent, Markeeth Taylor, has a raft of those periphery guys. He refers to them as a sort of an "island of misfit boys." If their journeys to draft week were a competition it'd be a photo finish.
Where or whether they're drafted is less an issue than just getting into a camp somewhere, somehow. Their effort just to be considered by NFL talent evaluators is really the thing. Cooper wouldn't be here had he not outrun a crazy roommate back in Thatcher who swung a sword at him.
"You're going to die now," Cooper remembers the roommate saying. Cooper's sin? Rapping too hard on a window when the roommate wouldn't answer a locked door.
"This sword was [big enough to be] from Mel Gibson, 'Braveheart,'" Cooper continued. "He's chasing me with it. I said, 'Put the sword down and fight me like a man. I thought you were crazy, but if you weren't crazy, you'd put the sword down and you'd fight me. '"
"He says, 'Oh, I don't need the sword.' He goes to his car and gets a bow and arrow. The arrows are metal tip, sharp, triple edge. They were huge. He said, 'These aren't even legal to kill an animal with.'"
Cooper took off running, hearing those arrows whiz past his body.
"I finally get my distance where I don't hear the arrows anymore," he said. "The cops finally come. They see me. 'Are you OK?' Then they look at my knee. 'Dude, your leg is covered with blood. You're not OK.'"
The sword had gotten him. Any police report that existed cannot be found by the Thatcher Police Department these days. No one can seem to remember the crazy roommate's name. But something really bad happened. Scars don't lie.
"I do remember what he is referring to," Eastern Arizona softball coach Kate McCluskey wrote in an email.
But that's as far as it goes. McCluskey was the former coach of Cooper's girlfriend.
Cooper sprinkles the story with those periodic giggles. They seem out of place, but maybe they're just a coping mechanism.
This is a 24-year-old man with a girlfriend (Candice Whetton) who has stayed with him since Eastern Arizona. This is a resilient soul who has survived Hurricane Katrina and a horrific stay in a dirty, overpopulated Superdome. (His great grandparents did not.)
This is a guy who won't give up. Three weeks ago, he stepped onto the track at Port Allen High and ran a 4.43 40-yard dash in regular Nike tennis shoes for a handful of NFL scouts.
"That type of determination will get you so far," a Seahawks scout said. "There's no reason why you can't play on the next level."
There is enough hope in that sentence to add purpose to his life, his studies, his girlfriend, and providing for his eight-year old daughter, Layla, back in New Orleans.
"I'm going to be here in North Dakota, watching television and doing homework and praying," Cooper said by phone of his draft plans.
Cooper -- this son of the Delta -- had no idea how his life would change. From Port Allen, he ventured to Thatcher, a remote desert town of 5,000, 160 miles east of Phoenix. After playing a year for the Gila Monsters -- yes, the Gila Monsters -- the coaching staff told Cooper there was no more scholarship money.
This was after he had lost his wallet at the airport and found himself out of money. Out of desperation, Cooper stayed in Whetton's dorm room. And then, after being discovered by campus officials, began sleeping in her friend's car.
"I'm working out and then, when I'm done, sneaking into the dorms to take a shower, then sneak[ing] back out to the car," Cooper said. "My girlfriend is sneaking me meals out of the cafeteria."
Cooper was eventually cited for trespassing and thrown in jail -- for a week. A judge finally needed an address to set a court date.
"I don't know my address because my last address was on campus," Cooper recalled. "I have no identification, no money, no job, no nothing. I'm homeless."
Before we get back to Cooper, it must be mentioned his story is not uncommon to his agent. Taylor, a 41-year-old former West Chester University defensive back, has been NFL rep for 13 years.
Somehow, a bunch of these hard case clients have come to him this draft season.
Defensive linemen Whitney Richardson had issues with math requirements coming out of Booker T. Washington High School in Pensacola, Florida.
That led him to JUCOs in Kansas and Arizona before Richardson sat out in 2014 and 2015. In 2016, he showed up at Division II Lane College near Memphis, played 10 games and posted 32.5 tackles for loss to go along with 17.5 sacks. He was named the Division II Defensive Player of the Year.
"I feel like my life is a movie," Richardson said. "If I can make it, anybody can make it. I was a lost soul at one time."
Former Baylor defensive lineman Jeremy Faulk is the player college football forgot. The first player kicked out of the program in the wake of the sexual assault scandal believes he has been wronged.
Meanwhile, he's blown up at workouts, including posting 33 reps on the bench during a pro day last month.
Georgia Tech defensive lineman Francis Callon is a Brit, a native of London who came this country favoring soccer and basketball. Now 23, he's been playing football for only five years. He also has a wingspan of almost seven feet. The 6-foot-5, 300-pounder can broad jump almost 10 feet.
"There's not a lot of [guys his size] walking the Earth, but there's even fewer who can move like that," Taylor said.
South Alabama safety Kalen Jackson transferred when Alabama-Birmingham shuttered its program two years ago. His athleticism is so apparent that a San Diego Padres scout turned up at his pro day.
Linebacker Jordan Harris has been the leading tackler at two programs -- Copiah-Lincoln Community College in 2013 and Louisiana Tech as a graduate transfer in 2016. In between, he started for Iowa State in 2015.
Harris' brother, former Mississippi State safety Darren Williams, was shot and killed in 2006.
Willie Mays III (no relation) "wasn't even a reject" after his junior season at Division II Tiffin University, according to Taylor. Then he gained 34 pounds to weigh in at 246, grew to 6-foot-4 and posted 14.5 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks.
Say hey!
"I ain't [necessarily] looking for those guys," Taylor said of his current stable of clients. "They came up on me."
For every Drew Rosenhaus and Leigh Steinberg, there are ordinary (agent) Joes casting on the edges of talent-filled waters.
Taylor, based out of Jackson, Mississippi, is one of those. He has to have a 33 percent hit rate on his clients (signing with an NFL or CFL team) to make a living. Currently, he has three players in the NFL, two in the CFL.
He says Faulk, Callon and Richardson have the best chances to get drafted.
"My wife is about to kick me out," Taylor said, half-kidding. "She says, 'Are you going to take us to the edge of bankruptcy?'"
No, he says. "I'm going to take us to the edge and come back."
That would fit a running narrative on the island of misfit boys. When Cooper finally got his phone back from his jailers in 2013, it was filled with voicemails from coaches at Nebraska-Kearney. The Division II school desperately wanted him.
For the 2014 season, Cooper traveled north and played well (18 tackles, three for loss, two pass breakups) for a team that went 3-8. And then?
"The entire coaching staff gets fired after our last game," Cooper recalled. "They had eight hours to clean out their desks. The new coaches came in. They were like, 'We're going to weed out the bad.' Spring ball was like boot camp."
Frustrated, Cooper took stock of his life and sat out 2015. Mayville State called with a full scholarship in 2016. Cooper made 20 tackles, intercepted a pass and had a glimmer of hope in his professional and personal life.
Whetton indeed had stayed with him since Eastern Arizona.
"She definitely loves me," Cooper said. "It's cold. It's freezing cold."
Mayville is also a home base for a future. Cooper is on track to graduate in May with a degree in universal studies. It's been a long time since he said advisors at Eastern Arizona enrolled him in nothing but physical education classes.
Cooper definitely has scouts' attention. That scorching 40 was run earlier this month after he didn't eat all day due to a scheduling snafu.
Fortunately, Taylor has a sweet tooth. He always carries Sweet Tarts and Twizzlers in the car.
"I think I had 200 pieces," Cooper said.
Having driven the 60 miles from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Lafayette, officials wouldn't let Cooper work out. Cooper then drove from Lafayette back to Port Allen in the late afternoon where his high school coach on short notice provided cones, a tape measure, even balls.
Desperation doesn't begin to describe the plight of the misfit boys.
"I knew it was in me …," said Richardson, a 6-foot-5, 258-pound rocket off the edge. "The things I couldn't do in the streets --because I knew it would get me in trouble -- I took it to the football field.
"There were no rules. If I took it my way and did it on the streets, I'd probably be in jail or dead right now."
While chasing his football dream, Richardson hasn't seen his family in Pensacola since graduating in 2011.
"I've never been back," Richardson said. "Parents give you tough love, but hey, you're a grown man. They're going to let me find my way on my own."
NFL free agent and former Alabama star Trent Richardson is a cousin, also from Pensacola.
"He told me, 'Don't come back home,'" Whitney said. "These people don't have the same goals. You're going to be hanging around average people. Love home, appreciate home … but this is not where you need to be.' "
For two years, Richardson attended Arizona Christian, an NAIA school in Phoenix, without playing football. At times he was homeless. He did odd jobs to get by.
During an interview earlier this month in Phoenix, Richardson seemed at peace working out with a personal trainer Taylor had arranged for him.
"I feel like my life is a movie," he said. "If I can make it, anybody can make it. I was a lost soul at one time."
This week of the misfit boys-to-men, he is not alone.
