Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

Colts at Browns%2C 1 p.m. Sunday%2C Fox

On Sunday Jonathan Newsome will play football in the stadium he was too poor to step foot in as a child.

Well, it's not that Newsome was poor – Kimberly Newsome made do just fine for her two children, raising them alone on a nurse's salary in suburban Cleveland. But Browns tickets? Those weren't cheap, and she had more important things to pay for than seats at a pro football game, no matter how much her young son loved the sport.

"He's lived and breathed the game since he was seven years old," she says.

That son of hers on Sunday will play against the team he grew up rooting for, the team he dreamt of one day playing for, the one he lobbied to be drafted by. He wanted Cleveland, wanted Cleveland badly – "I'd play my heart out for them, I want us to win so bad," he said before the draft – but, problem was, Cleveland didn't want him back.

The Browns owned six picks in April's draft with Newsome's name still on the board. They never called it.

The Indianapolis Colts did. They took the former Ball State Cardinal with the 166th pick in the fifth round, moved the him from the defensive line to a rush linebacker spot and told him to chase down quarterbacks every Sunday.

So he has. This week, Newsome will play football in his hometown for the first time since his high school days, tasked with chasing down Brian Hoyer or Johnny Manziel or whomever Cleveland employs at quarterback. Ask Newsome if it makes any difference to him and he shakes his head. Couldn't care less. New week, same mission.

"They could put LeBron back there," he boasts. "Whoever's back there, we have to get the job done."

Newsome speaks with an air of confidence, especially for a rookie. There is a part of him that is content with his landing spot, despite all the detours he took along the way. He was the hotshot who was humbled, the kid who had to navigate a new route after what seemed a preordained path to the NFL veered offcourse.

The maturation of Jonathan Newsome was anything but smooth.

"I had to make a decision," he says. "Do I climb out of a hole, and get a fresh start? I'd seen guys from my high school who should've been in the NFL, but were on the same path I was on and never had a chance to climb out of that hole. They were buried so deep, they were forgotten about. I didn't want that to be me."

The decision he speaks of – departing perennial power Ohio State in football-mad Columbus, Ohio for middling Ball State in Muncie in 2010 – was what salvaged his football career.

To that point he'd been on the track he'd set out for since he was a freshman in high school, when he told his coach, Ted Ginn, Sr., that he wanted two things out of his future: a scholarship to Ohio State and a spot in the NFL.

"Show up every day, and I can get you there," Ginn Sr. told him.

Yet in Columbus, a popular landing spot for former Glenville High School players like Newsome, he dug himself into that hole. Too much partying. Not enough schoolwork. His ego swelled while his priorities slipped.

"Being young, I didn't know how to handle that," Newsome said. "I wasn't taking classes as seriously as I should have. I wasn't even going to some classes. I was partying, staying out late, even sometimes showing up at the facility after staying out all night."

While Newsome's play on the field was never an issue – the Buckeyes, sensing his talent, stripped his redshirt three games into his freshman season and threw him in at strong side linebacker – everything else was. By his sophomore season, he'd been ruled academically ineligible for two consecutive spring semesters.

Talking with a few former teammates who played at Ball State, Newsome joked then, "If I keep getting in trouble, I'll probably end up with you guys."

Then his prophecy came to fruition: Fed up with his immaturity, the Ohio State coaches slid him down the depth chart to third string. Newsome bolted.

"They basically let me know they didn't need me," he said. "So I said, 'I don't need you at all.' I just transferred, got a fresh start and did it my way."

His way was not without one last headache: Newsome was arrested for marijuana possession shortly after landing at Ball State. But his slate has been clean since, littered only with exploits on the football field: He collected 116 tackles and 16.5 sacks in two seasons with the Cardinals, became a star and established himself as a viable pass-rushing talent heading into last spring's NFL draft.

"Finally, for two years I got out of my own way," he said.

The Colts and their 3-4 scheme have proven a perfect fit. In mostly spare-time duty – he's played only 270 of the defense's 778 snaps this year – Newsome has recorded 4.5 sacks, second on the team and third among all rookies in the NFL. He's just the third player in Colts' history to record multiple-sack games as a rookie, and the first to do so since Dwight Freeney in 2002.

Most impressive, perhaps, is the havoc Newsome has wrought late in the season. He had two sacks and a forced fumble against the Giants in Week 9, then added a sack and a half plus another forced fumble vs. the Redskins on Sunday.

What of that famed rookie wall, the hindrance most first-year players stumble upon this time of year?

Newsome scoffs. What wall?

"I just hold myself to a higher standard, that's all," he explained. "A lot of people just get complacent. For me, I just want to come out here and get better every day, work hard, show the coaches that they made the right choice in choosing me in the draft and show these fans that I'm here to stay."

His impact has ballooned as the season has progressed – a telling sign that Newsome could be General Manager Ryan Grigson's latest gem unearthed late in the draft. He has outperformed 2013 first-round pick Bjoern Werner as a rookie (Werner had 2.5 sacks and no forced fumbles last season) and may have staked an early claim as the Colts' next great pass rusher.

"Jon's a guy that's working really hard at his craft, working really hard at being the best player that he can be," Colts coach Chuck Pagano said. "As he continues to get more comfortable in the scheme, he's not thinking about the defensive calls the way he was a month, two months ago. It's enabling him to go out there and play fast."

So maybe Cleveland wasn't the franchise Newsome was destined to play for. Maybe, as it turns out, his path was supposed to lead him from Northeast Ohio to Columbus to Muncie to, finally, Indianapolis, those detours along the way a necessary roadblock as his maturity met his talent.

His mother certainly believes so. She may even have some proof.

It was four years ago Kimberly Newsome first heard her son's future and didn't believe it. It was during a night out with friends, on a ski trip one winter in the Tennessee mountains, when she strolled into a palm-reading shop on a whim and had her fortune told.

The psychic asked Kimberly a few questions. Are you into sports? Do you have a son or daughter who is?

"My son plays college football," she said.

There was one last thing the psychic saw, one thing she kept coming back to, something that Kimberly Newsome couldn't figure out that night but could four years later after hearing her son's name called in the NFL draft.

It was a horseshoe.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.