He had been through so much already.

A hit to the stomach his senior year of high school ruptured Dede Westbrook's small intestines; doctors told him he wouldn’t play football again. He healed, but his grades didn’t allow him to go Division 1. He succeeded at Blinn College as a freshman, yet a leg injury ended his season early.

All the while, his children needed him.

“It was a lot,” Westbrook told 247Sports on the phone this week. “I was 45 minutes from home. That’s not far. But it was so much. “My kid’s mother saying it was hard for her and she couldn’t do it alone was making me feel bad as a person, and that I got her in that situation. You know what I mean?

“It was a lot for me, I was only 18, 19 years old at the time. I had to step away for a little bit.”

That's right. Oklahoma's star wideout, a potential Heisman Trophy finalist — and near lock for the Biletnikoff Award — walked away from football less than four years ago.

His children, Vincent and Destiny, were the priority. He was done.

Never mind that everyone, including his “brokenhearted" mom, advised him against it. Westbrook voluntarily left Blinn and a once-promising football future to return home and be a dad.

“Blinn had offered him a full ride,” said Crystal Montgomery, Westbrook’s mother. “It’s just something you don’t pass up.”

Flash forward, and Westbrook is the subject of one of the most perplexing questions of the 2016 season: How did a good receiver suddenly blossom into college football’s best? And there’s little doubt Westbrook is. Over Westbrook’s last seven games he’s totaled 51 catches for 1,100 yards and 14 touchdowns, while averaging a staggering 21.6 yards per reception. Those yardage and touchdown numbers alone would rank in the Top 10 nationally for the season.

That magical stretch, during which the Sooners are unbeaten, places Westbrook firmly in contention for a Heisman Trophy finalist spot in New York City – Fox Sports ranks Westbrook third, CBS fourth and ESPN fourth in their Heisman projections.

Yet those proclamations of greatness from around the country lead to an even more confounding inquiry: How the hell did a JUCO kid with suspect grades from the small town of Cameron, Texas, find his way into this position?

That story is considerably more complicated.

“It’s crazy,” Westbrook said. “I wasn’t too sure football was going to work out for me.”

***

We'll concede, at least, that Westbrook's early beginnings set up a path to his stardom. Front-yard games during Westbrook’s childhood in Cameron started at five and he quickly graduated to pee-wee football. He led his teams to three straight Super Bowls as the quarterback from age seven to nine.

Westbrook ruined Cameron Yoe’s scrimmage script in his first varsity appearance as a sophomore. Rick Rhoades, then Yoe’s head coach, put Westbrook in as the backup quarterback and placed the ball on the 30 – he took it 70 yards. The ball got placed at the 30 on the opposite end of the field – Westbrook took it 70 yards. Then Rhoades flipped the field back to its original spot– he went 70 again.

“He did it three times in a row,” Rhoades said still in awe. “Back-to-back-to-back 70-yard runs.”

There were certainly flashes of what Westbrook would become – he was Yoe’s leading wide receiver during its run to the 2010 state title game – but grades and location would prove crippling to his Division 1 hopes. Cameron, almost smack in the middle between Austin and Waco, is a town of 5,428 people. Even in Texas, it’s not easy for a small-town star to receive big-school attention, especially with grades like Westbrook’s.

As a freshman and sophomore in high school, Westbrook didn’t take school seriously. It put him so far behind schedule that Westbrook couldn’t catch up when D1 programs started to call.

Then the injury occurred.

It happened against McGregor High School, the first district game of Westbrook’s senior year. Playing defense, Westbrook trailed a receiver and leapt with him as the wideout came down with the ball. As the receiver fell, his knee went up to brace his landing. Westbrook’s body slammed into the raised knee, rupturing his small intestines. Doctors told him another hit to the stomach could be fatal. They advised he never play football again.

“Of course I didn’t listen,” Westbrook said.

After sitting out the rest of football, all of basketball and most of track, Westbrook returned to the doctor for a physical before heading off to Blinn. A six-inch scar remained, but he had healed.

Westbrook’s first season at Blinn went well until another, more minor, injury. His first three games Westbrook combined for 236 yards and three touchdowns. But things piled up after he got hurt. Class didn’t much matter without football, his kids were young and he felt like a poor father being away during their infancy.

Rhoades said Westbrook stopped showing up to things: class, practice, lifting sessions. “He just kind of dropped out.”

He just wanted to be a dad.

“I was never really part of their lives because I was always so busy with football or whatever sport it was at the time,” Westbrook said. “At that point I wanted to be a father.”

***

Keith Thomas understood.

Blinn’s new head coach, Thomas saw Westbrook sitting in the stands during the team’s blue and white scrimmage in the spring of 2014. Westbrook spent time with his kids – their activity was football. To understand how shocking a decision Westbrook stepping away from the game was, you first have to comprehend what the sport means to him.

He started playing at five, but it wasn’t just him. His entire family participates.

Westbrook followed cousins in his front yard and at grandma’s house. He’d stand and run as a child while his cousins chased on their knees. Even now when Westbrook returns home the first thing he does is call his friends and ask them to come play ball. It’ll happen in the yard or at the school. Even mom participates. It’s what Westbrook does.

Thomas saw that passion.

He told Westbrook: “You’re coming back out.”

Thomas also made concessions. He would allow Westbrook to show up 20 minutes late to practice on days when he picked up the kids. Westbrook finished class, made the hour drive to Cameron to grab Vincent and Destiny and drove back. During practice the kids would ride in the golf cart with the trainers at play while daddy worked. During each timeout or water break Westbrook would check on his children. When practice finished Westbrook piled them into his old Lincoln Continental and took them to McDonald’s.

“He had kids, which is a legit deal,” Thomas said. “I knew if he didn’t ever do anything it would be a wasted kid that had a chance to make something out of himself.”

That time wasn’t easy for Westbrook either, but football made the trial worth it. Mom cried when Westbrook told her he would go back. She saw his talent wasting away: “He didn’t have anything going for himself.”

“I was hungry for it,” Westbrook said. “I came back and tried to make history.”

If Westbrook is dominant at Oklahoma, his efforts at Blinn as a sophomore were transcendent. He led the JUCO ranks with 1,487 yards and 13 touchdowns in just eight games. He averaged 186 yards a contest and totaled 370 yards one evening against Tyler Junior College.

Once a two-star recruit from a small town with toxic grades, Westbrook exploded.

The No. 14 JUCO player in the country per the 247Sports Composite had his pick of almost every school in the Big 12, but Westbrook chose Oklahoma. He visited the Sooners on his birthday. They baked him a giant cake – sold. It took him until the last day with plenty of online classes to qualify, but Westbrook made it to Oklahoma as a mid-year enrollee in 2015.

“I’m glad he didn’t (go straight to D1),” Montgomery said. “When he was at junior college it really matured him a lot. He wouldn’t be in this situation if he hadn’t been to junior college. It broke him down and built him back up.”

***

Westbrook did anything possible to avoid the weight room early in his career. He would skip sessions at Cameron or beg off. At Blinn, Thomas said if he ordered three sets of eight on the bench press, Westbrook would cheat and do seven. Rhoades speculates that’s why he got hurt so seriously his senior year of high school and first season at Blinn.

Westbrook skimmed in the weight room early in his Oklahoma career, too. He admits as much. Westbrook felt strength had nothing to do with the game.

Then he experienced the physicality of the Big 12 and that thought shifted. He also observed Sterling Shepard. Westbrook formed a bond with Oklahoma’s second all-time leading receiver. He saw the way Shepard, now with the New York Giants, carried himself.

Then he mimicked.

“I saw how his success was and I wanted to be exactly like that,” Westbrook said. “I just embraced everything. So I’ve been working like crazy in the weight room to get more physical.”

Which brings us back to the original question: Where the heck has this DeDe Westbrook come from?

Asked this week during the Big 12 coaches teleconference, Bob Stoops answered the inquiry so simply he all but dismissed it.

“He wasn’t fully healthy,” Stoops said. “I’ve covered that a lot, but maybe you haven’t heard.”

For Westbrook, it’s all about health. The 6-footer transformed his body since arriving in Norman, packing on muscle to jump from 170 to 176 pounds. But a pulled muscle hampered him through fall camp, and a hamstring injury plagued him during Oklahoma’s three-game non-conference schedule. Westbrook, a senior, expected to elevate to the No. 1 role in place of Shepard. Instead, he totaled 154 yards in Oklahoma’s first three games.

The hamstring worried Westbrook so much he called his mom in a panic.

“Mama, just pray,” Westbrook told her. “My leg is messed up real bad.”

Following Oklahoma’s bye week against TCU, Westbrook showed flashes of himself with a 7-catch, 158-yard performance. But the explosion occurred against Texas when he caught 10 balls for an Oklahoma single-game record 232 yards and three touchdowns.

In the crowd, Montgomery told Westbrook’s brother, Iverson, “God had worked it out.” When Iverson asked what she meant, she said: “Look at him all the way down field. He well.”

That he is.

Westbrook’s 1,254 yards (fourth) and 14 touchdowns (third) are among the nation's best this season. With 368 yards and two more touchdowns over Oklahoma’s final three (or possibly four) games, he’d break the school’s single-season record for both.

After Westbrook saw Fox Sports’ Heisman article on Sunday he called Thomas to say: “Coach, you see that?”

He can’t believe it either.

“I still haven’t wrapped my head around it,” Westbrook said. “When I leave the field everybody is chanting, ‘DeDe!’ It’s unbelievable."

Westbrook and Shepard are still close. They don’t talk every day, but Shepard still calls frequently after Sooners games to give his protégée tips. Lately, it’s been less of that and more “I’m proud of you.” Westbrook is yet to see Shepard play in the NFL, but he expects that to change soon.

“Hopefully here soon I can sneak out to watch him play,” Westbrook said.

The Giants' next home game on a weekend the Sooners are off lands on Dec. 11, against the Dallas Cowboys.

As it happens, the Heisman Trophy ceremony will occur in New York City the night before. It's a pretty quick trip from Manhattan to East Rutherford.

“Crazy,” Westbrook said.

It's something.