Demario Davis

Demario Davis was brought in this offseason to start at middle linebacker.

(Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com)

BEREA, Ohio -- Tell anyone who knows Browns middle linebacker Demario Davis that he's teaching himself to play the piano and you'll get the same reaction.

"That's Demario," Steve Roberts, his coach for four of his five years in college said. "He may learn to play the piano his own way for a while, but that's a neat deal."

"It doesn't surprise me..." said Davis' friend and mentor Chuck McElroy. "...the fact that he would take up the piano doesn't surprise me at all."

That's the Demario they know now, though. That's not the Demario they knew when he first got to Arkansas State -- the Demario who found himself sitting in a jail cell 400 miles from home, wondering if his football career was over.

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Davis was born and grew up in Mississippi. The son of Sue Magee and Steven Davis, his home life resembled that of many kids who grew up in what he termed an "urban environment."

"My mom had me when she was 16 but she fought, worked two and three jobs my whole life," Davis said.

His father, meanwhile, was in the Army and Davis described watching his life from afar as his dad moved from place to place.

Naturally athletic, Davis played multiple sports in high school and played wide receiver on the football team before moving to linebacker. He described himself as a pothead by ninth grade and said that he was "into all the wrong stuff."

He described in a video posted to his Facebook page getting in trouble for trying to steal another student's wallet, and cutting his arm breaking into cars.

"The only thing positive really going on in my life was sports," he said. "I was really good at sports and I did decent in school and that kind of carried over into college."

The trouble carried over to college, too, during his redshirt freshman year. Roberts, now the athletic director of the Cabot School District in Arkansas, said Davis would miss breakfast checks and was late to class. His punishment for each transgression involved running hills at the northeast end of what was then known as ASU Stadium.

All of that was nothing, though, compared to finally ending up in jail for three days, the result of stealing groceries from Walmart. Davis was left to think about his future, or what could have been his future.

"Here you are thinking, I done lost my scholarship," he said. "I'm in Arkansas. I'm a long way from home. ... I'm about to lose my scholarship and head back home and my career is going to be over before it even started.

"My mom had to come because she had to go to court with me," he said. "She was a nervous wreck because I was making bad decisions on top of bad decisions and she was like, 'Here my child is. I taught him right. He knows what right vs. wrong is but he's making all the bad decisions.' "

Roberts described his initial conversation with Davis following the arrest as "probably (not) a real friendly conversation."

That didn't mean he was ready to move on from Davis. In the end, he ended up with a suspension and was able to remain on the team. Roberts said his decision had nothing to do with talent and winning games.

"It had more to do with the potential that he had as a person," Roberts said. "Demario is a natural leader that made a bad decision and was being led instead of leading."

Davis had another chance, but not before he spent some more time on that hill.

"I think I was out there running hills for about five, six hours," Davis said.

"I was doing the discipline myself," Roberts said. "I took care of that. It was me and him."

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It doesn't take long to find out that Davis' faith is important to him. He credits his relationship with McElroy, the team chaplain at Arkansas State at the time, with helping him get his life in order.

"My life was spiraling out of control, he kind of saw me and spent time with me," Davis said, "and introduced me to the Lord and that was a life change."

"I think that arrest kind of got his attention and he started thinking about his life," McElroy said, "and that's when I really started helping him. We were meeting together weekly, then spending more time together. He got a lot more serious about his faith and the direction of his life after that."

Davis said that McElroy showed him something he had never seen growing up.

"I'll forever be indebted to (McElroy) because it was more than him just spending time with me. It was what I saw from his life. He would take me around his wife, take me around his children."

Davis met his wife, Tamela, in college -- together they have two children with a third due in September -- and quickly ascended up the ranks of NFL prospects.

"I started my sophomore year," Davis said. "The guy in front of me got hurt my redshirt sophomore year and I played the entire season, led the team in tackles, made all-conference."

Davis said someone showed him linebacker rankings on a draft website that had him listed at No. 9. "That's when I knew I had a chance (at the NFL)."

The Jets picked him 77th overall in the 2012 draft.

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"He reminds me of Ray."

That's what Rex Ryan told Mike Tannenbaum when they were together in New York after meeting with Davis during a predraft visit, according to a 2012 article on NJ.com.

That's Ray as in Ray Lewis, the future Hall of Fame linebacker known for his fiery demeanor and sideline-to-sideline dominance.

It's not that Ryan thought Davis would become the next Lewis on the field, necessarily. No, somewhere between stealing groceries as a redshirt freshman and helping Arkansas State win 10 games and go undefeated in conference his senior year, Davis had developed into a leader.

"It wasn't like an overnight, boom, now I'm a leader type of guy," Roberts said. "It was a learning process for Demario -- learning the potential that he had, not just in football but in life to be successful."

The problem with getting compared to Ray Lewis, though, is that the comparison sticks, whether you're ready or not.

"I knew my coaches knew that I could lead and so it made me feel like I needed to lead faster than I wanted to," Davis said. "It made me go about things in an accelerated pace versus at my own pace. We had great leaders on the team."

In hindsight, Davis realizes his taking on a leadership role needed to be more organic.

"If I look back on it," he said, "I feel like I was moreso trying to lead because I feel like the coaches wanted me to lead, even though I felt like in the locker room it wasn't time for me to lead versus winning my locker room first."

In four years with the Jets, Davis appeared in 64 games, but last year saw his playing time fall off in the season's second half. He is part of a 2012 Jets draft class in which none of the picks remain on the roster.

Asked about what happened last season and Davis isn't shy to point the finger at himself.

"I feel like I could have played better as a player," he said. ". . . As far as me, I didn't accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish. I don't think as a team we accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. That always starts with you. I feel like I could have done better."

Browns teammates and coaches are already raving about the leadership Demario Davis brings to the team.

Davis arrives in Cleveland amid talk of culture change and enters a locker room that got significantly younger during the offseason. Ask him about leading here and he defers to the likes of cornerbacks Joe Haden and Tramon Williams and linebacker Paul Kruger.

"My job as middle linebacker is to do the same thing I do as when I call plays," he said. "I've got to keep the structural balance. I've got to make sure that this thing holds together and keeps going forward. Everybody goes in the same direction. That's my job."

Ask anyone else on the team about Davis' leadership, though?

"He's a relentless leader and we're glad to have him," Browns inside linebackers coach Johnny Holland said.

"Demario's a great leader," said rookie linebacker Joe Schobert. "He's new to the program but everybody respects him so you can tell his work ethic has rubbed off on people."

"Growing up, I was a big Ray Lewis fan," second-year linebacker Nate Orchard said, "and to have Demario on the team, he reminds me a lot of him."

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Faith. Family. Football. That's how Davis says he prioritizes his life.

"When it comes to family, I think raising your children up, that's where your most important leadership is. That's where your most important impact in society is," he said.

When he's not doing that, he's going to Twitter and, using the hashtag #coffeetime, passing on sometimes thoughtful, sometimes motivational -- and sometimes both -- nuggets to his followers that he's come across in whatever he's reading.

And then there's the piano. Davis chose football over piano lessons as a kid. It was something he regretted once he got to the NFL.

"Every time we'd go on road trips or somewhere you'd hear somebody playing piano in the lobby and you'd just wish you could do it." he said.

"Nowadays, it's so easy to learn something. Just go on YouTube and somebody who's mastered it is teaching and so that's what I do when I'm at home," Davis explained. "I spend 30 minutes a day just listening to lessons and teaching myself how to play. Now I'm playing about three-and-a-half songs pretty good and it's just a little hobby of mine."

"Demario pushes himself to the limit in everything he does," Holland said. "I'm sure if he teaches himself how to play the piano, he'll teach himself very well."

McElroy says there's a little renaissance man in his good friend. "He sees the world from 50,000 feet."

"It's very easy for anybody to just put somebody in a box and say that's who they are," Davis said. "That's what (people) do."

It was three days in a box that made Davis confront his future -- one that was on the verge of being lost. Now Davis has discovered the freedom to find out just how good he can be -- in life, on the football field and, yes, on the piano.

"I may not be the next Mozart," he says, "but I can get really good at it just by nurturing the skills."

That's Demario.

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