It Took a Village to Propel Heyer

Told this, Glenda Heyer laughed. She said she's heard it before: from the neighbors down the street, the coaches at the high school, the coaches at Maryland. People have always fallen in love with her son. They want to help him. They want him to do well.

She still remembers the time she heard from Maryland Athletic Director Debbie Yow. Someone had been on a plane next to Heyer. He began talking to the impossibly large football player next to him -- by then 6 feet 6 and 325 pounds -- and Heyer charmed him so much that he just had to write the school president and athletic director at the young man's college.

"I can walk into a room with people I never met before and people will come up to me and say, 'I want to meet the mother of the nicest kid I ever met,' " Glenda said, without the slightest hint of boasting.

She laughed again. "He's such a likable kid, I always tell him 'just be Stephon.' "

And it works.

Take the case of Redskins right guard Randy Thomas. When Heyer arrived at Redskins Park in the spring, Thomas hardly was impressed. Nobody much was. Heyer, who had to sit out the 2005 season at Maryland with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, was still slow and out of sync. But when the spring practices were over and it was time for individual workouts, Heyer kept showing up. The team's trainers offered to put together a plan for him, but he was taken by the ferocity of Thomas's conditioning program.

Could he tag along, Heyer asked. Thomas, eight years older, with eight seasons in the NFL, didn't say no. And so Heyer came every day. Whatever Thomas did, he did. And the kid was so nice, always smiling, asking questions. And he got better and better. So when Heyer finally made the Redskins and travel arrangements for the season were being finalized, Thomas had a request: he wanted to waive his veteran right to a room by himself on the road. He wanted a roommate.

He wanted Stephon Heyer.

"Ah, I'm a social person," Thomas grumbled the other day, glancing dismissively at the rookie dressing across the Redskins locker room. "I don't like to be alone so I let him run errands for me."

He hardly seemed convincing.

On a recent afternoon, in the greatest football week of his life, Heyer sat on a stool in front of his locker and marveled at the wonder of it all. In a way, he still was awed that he is even in the NFL, especially after no one else seemed interested in drafting him or even signing him once the draft was over. He played with a flop of braided hair and explained patiently the challenge of having to step into his first NFL game at a position he hadn't played in more than 10 years.

A left tackle by training, he had been thrust into Jansen's right tackle position and now came the hard part: trying to adjust. Left tackles move to their left when blocking, and their left foot slides back. Do it long enough, it becomes instinct. But last Sunday against the Miami Dolphins, he had to do everything in reverse. It would be hard enough to do this in a practice, let alone a professional football game -- and a first professional football game, at that.