NEWARK — Bernadine Smith raised eight children here, five boys and three girls, 13 years separating the oldest from the youngest. Her boys were inseparable, and she tried to keep them together, keep them home, with board games and cooking lessons and movie nights. “If I could have kept my kids in a bubble,” she said, “I would have.”

Instead, she has already buried the two oldest. One burned to death in 2004 at age 22 in a murder that remains unsolved. The other shot himself in 2009 at 30 as the police burst into his hotel room.

Tajiddin, once third, is now her oldest, and the tattoos that decorate his skin show he has not forgotten two brothers swallowed by these streets. His five N.F.L. games with the Indianapolis Colts last season — after three itinerant years as an undrafted free agent — are also evidence he could get out of and beyond Newark, perhaps taking his family with him.

Smith, then, needs football, needs more than five games, needs a real career. In three N.F.L. seasons, spent mostly on the practice squad of the Colts, Smith banked little of his earnings. He helped his family, paid rent in Indianapolis and bought some 70 pairs of sneakers. His mother has had health problems, and his car windows need repairs.