Posts Tagged ‘vernon davis’
Vontae Davis Says Coach Locksley’s DC Pipeline Will Reach Albuquerque
When I spoke with the NFL's Davis brothers, Vernon and Vontae, before last weekend's youth football camp at their alma mater, Dunbar, they confirmed that they decided where to go to college because of Mike Locksley. He's the DC native and former Maryland and Illinois assistant coach who gained renown by developing a pipeline of gridiron talent from DC to whatever school employed him.
His powers will now face their greatest test: Locksley just took the head coaching job at New Mexico. Shortly after taking the job, Locksley landed two of the top prospects in DC's prep class of 2009: Coolidge’s heralded quarterback Emmanuel Yeager and the city's top receiver, also from Coolidge, Derrell Person. (However, Yeager, who went to three different high schools here and whose recruitment was marked by questions about his transcript, recently dropped off the New Mexico squad, citing family issues back in DC.)
So I ask Vontae, who was lured to Illinois by Locksley and thrived there, the question that every rival recruiter in college football has been wondering for years: What's Locksley's secret?
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Vernon and Vontae Davis, DC’s Best Brother Act, Come Home for Football Camp
There's been a change in the sports pecking order around here, for those who haven't noticed. "DC was a basketball town," says Vernon Davis "It's a football town now."
You gonna argue with him?
Davis, a 6'3", 253-pound former University of Maryland star and now tight end with the San Francisco 49ers, has done his share to speed the city's transition away from hoop-centricity and toward the gridiron.
He and his little brother Vontae, a University of Illinois defensive back and recent first round pick of the Miami Dolphins in the 2009 NFL draft, grew up on Emerson Street in Petworth, and can now make a claim on being the best sibling athletes ever to come out of DC. Vernon, 25, and Vontae, 21, are only the third pair of brothers, behind the Mannings and the McDougles, ever to be chosen in the first round in NFL.
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Football’s Davis Brothers Put on a Clinic
DC's own Vernon and Vontae Davis, the 3rd set of brothers ever to be drafted #1 in the NFL, will come home to put on a free youth football clinic this Saturday at their alma mater, Dunbar.
Along with being Exhibit A on how much gridiron talent can be found within the underappreciated DCIAA, the Davis brothers tale shows how valuable a great recruiter can be to a college program.
Both were wooed out of high school by Mike Locksley, a Ballou alum who for the last decade has controlled the flow of DC-area football talent the way the Corleone family once did olive oil.
