But Freeze met Jarboe in Mississippi. He drove there with an assistant and the university chancellor. Freeze said it was the most emotional recruiting interview he had ever conducted.

“It was one of those moments in recruiting where you’re convinced after a kid looks at you and says, ‘Coach, please give me a chance to rewrite my story,’ ” Freeze said. “I grilled him pretty hard. It wasn’t me having to draw stuff out of him. He went through the whole story. He didn’t try to cover up.”

Freeze added: “Thank God I took the time to hear his heart. I had the history of Michael Oher behind me, and they were so much alike. Sometimes you should take chances.”

Fighting for a Future

Pro day in Jonesboro wound down. Jarboe finished his sprints and slipped into the blue sweats he got in January at an all-star game in Montgomery, Ala., where scouts interviewed him continually. Some of those scouts now tugged at their jackets at Liberty Bank Stadium. They were a grizzled, gimlet-eyed bunch, but Jarboe was used to the scrutiny.

“I been doing this all my life,” he said. “Every team I played for, I had to do it for them all over again. They’d say: ‘We heard about you. Can you do it?’ ”

He was back in Atlanta the next day, spending most of it watching his sister, a sophomore at Clark Atlanta University, compete at an outdoor track meet. He sat in the stands for hours with his mother, his father and two of his high school coaches.

“I told him you just got to recreate yourself,” said Dudley, who hates tattoos, hates rap, but loves her son. “I’m always going to be in his grill.”