Standing inside Memorial Stadium on a sun-splashed day a year ago, D.J. Reader found himself in a fog despite the blue skies overlooking the Clemson campus.

Reader was hurting, but this wasn't from an injury. His heart was broken.

His emotions remained raw despite the loving support of family and friends. Surrounded by his teammates and coaches at football practice, Reader still felt alone.

When Reader looked up in the stands, his father was no longer there cheering him on.

It had been a year since David Vernon Reader Sr., who was a fixture at Clemson games and practices and known for his bluntly honest critiques of his son and teammates' performances, had died from kidney failure on June 30, 2014 after dealing with rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. He was only 51 years old.

Slowly over the next year, a realization overcame the massive defensive tackle that he wasn't handling everything quite as well as everyone thought he was.

A little over a year after his father's death, Reader decided he needed professional assistance. The Texans' rookie nose tackle took a leave of absence from the football team last August while remaining enrolled in classes.

"I could tell something was going on," Felicia Reader said. "He just said, 'Mama, I can't do this.' He was trying so hard to be the man and follow what his father had instilled in him. He wanted to be so strong. His dad and I have always been strong people. D.J. could probably count on one hand the amount of times he actually saw me cry. I'm just built differently.

"Somebody has to be strong to encourage the others. D.J. said he looked up in the stands and saw me cheering and thought everything was great. Two-a-day practices were wonderful, but he woke up one morning and said: 'I have to get some help. If I don't get help, I can't help anyone else. I'm useless to this team if I'm not well.'"

The death of his father had made Reader stoic for a long time. Ultimately, though, Reader saw that he was holding in his emotions. Bottling up his feelings was taking a heavy toll on him.

"I was dealing with so much stress and grief, and I wasn't dealing with it the right way," said Reader, a fifth-round draft pick. "I tried to be too tough. As a man, you're taught that you're not supposed to show emotions. Growing up as men, we have that stigma about that.

"It's completely the opposite. You've got to deal with your emotions and feel them and let them out. It doesn't show that you're weak. It's strong to understand and show your feelings."

Reader accepted that it was best for him to step away from the game he loved to learn how to tackle the grieving process. He received private counseling in nearby Greenville, S.C., and missed six games before returning for Clemson's run-up to the national title game. He later played in the Senior Bowl All-Star game.

Reader, 21, said he was careful to avoid drowning his sorrows in alcohol to block out the pain.

"That didn't get to be a thing," he said. "I was shutting people off, and that wasn't the right way to go about it.

"It took a full year for me to figure that out, but during that time I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to talk to my mom. I knew by last spring that I was going through some problems. In August, I was just down. I felt like it was all too hard for me.

"You have to keep people around you who are going to keep it positive. It's better to deal with a problem up front. Opening up, that's a big step. It really helps if you get everything off your chest. You don't want to keep it locked inside."

Although Reader stayed in shape by working out on his own along with a graduate assistant coach, he spent most of his time focused on his individual counseling sessions along with talking with others in a group setting. In that group session, people were dealing with devastating losses like Reader or other personal issues.

"I felt like I needed to remove him from the campus area, so he could be in a group that could support him and give him the help he needed," said Felicia Reader, an American Express employee and a former North Carolina A&T softball player who also went to counseling in the family's hometown of Greensboro, N.C. "In those sessions, you hear a different perspective and you can support and encourage one another. Before he went to counseling, I would ask D.J., if he was OK, and he would say, 'Mom I got it.'

"His grades weren't slipping, and I knew he had an awesome spring and summer camp. So, there weren't a lot of indications that something was wrong with him for a while. It was right after summer camp where I could see him hitting the wall."

A family bond

Fifteen years of battling rheumatoid arthritis overcame David Reader one day before his son's 20th birthday. He had been on dialysis for his failing kidneys. It was unclear to doctors if a transplant would have been successful, but his son offered to donate his. So did Felicia Reader and several others.

David Reader wouldn't accept their offers, though, only from an anonymous donor. That never materialized. He died a few weeks after starting dialysis treatment.

"I offered to give him one of my kidneys, but he wasn't having it," Reader said. "My dad was firm about that. I would have gladly done it."

The telephone call from his mother with the bad news was jarring, a surreal moment for Reader. He was just 19 years old at the time.

"I woke up and realized he was struggling and I tried to help him," Felicia Reader said. "I did CPR. I called 911, but he couldn't be saved. I remember my last night with him. He told me how much he loved me and we both went to sleep.

"I knew I needed to get to D.J. and tell him before someone else reached out. You get the call that your dad passed away, and I can only imagine the emotions he went through and what I had to go through. I told him my blessing in all of this is: 'God took your dad home and he could have taken him home on your birthday.'"

Although his parents came from large families and anticipated raising several of their own children, D.J. was their only son.

He was home-schooled during his elementary years by his father, a school teacher who held a master's degree in supervision.

Growing up in North Carolina, Reader played on travel baseball and basketball teams and was active in his church. His parents made it a special point to take care of children who needed help in the community, whether that involved providing encouragement, food or school supplies.

"I'm an only child, but it never felt that way to me," Reader said. "It was like I had several brothers. My dad was like the neighborhood dad.

"My dad was so supportive. He never missed any of my games. He came to everything. I couldn't have asked for a better father."

In a photograph taken years before his passing, David Reader is standing on the right of his son wearing a T-shirt that says 'Clemson Dad.' Felicia Reader is wearing a 'Clemson Mom' shirt, posing with her son wearing his Clemson baseball uniform.

Under his parents' watchful eyes, Reader emerged as one of the top linemen in the country at Grimsley High School, where he was a SuperPrep All-America defensive lineman and guard. He was the starting center on the basketball team. And he was a standout baseball player as a pitcher who threw 90 mph and batted .529 as a junior.

Sports ran in the family. Reader's uncle, Glenn Ford, played football at Tennessee. His grandfather, Ervin Ford, played baseball in the Negro Leagues for the Indianapolis Clowns.

"We've always loved sports, whether it was swinging a bat or playing football," Felicia Reader said. "D.J. didn't fall far from the tree. He loves to compete."

Back to football

When he rejoined the Clemson football team last fall, Reader said of his late father: "I finally nailed that back up to the cross. I've accepted it."

Reader played nine games for the Tigers, who beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl before falling to Alabama in the College Football Playoff championship title game. He finished with 13 tackles, including three in the title game.

As a sophomore, he had 43 tackles and three sacks. As a junior, he had 27 tackles and 11/2 sacks.

An athletic interior lineman, Reader ran the 40-yard dash in 5.28 seconds and bench pressed 225 pounds 30 times at the NFL scouting combine in February.

"The big nose is a really good scheme fit, high-character young man, a really aggressive player," Texans general manager Rick Smith said of Reader, who visited the Texans, Tennessee Titans, San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants prior to the draft. "If you watch those last few games this year, he really has the ability to dominate and really play at a high level."

With the Texans, Reader hopes to lean on his new teammates and coaches, including fellow defensive linemen Vince Wilfork and J.J. Watt and defensive line coach Anthony Weaver, and prove himself on and off the field.

Reader (6-3, 333) will be groomed to play behind Wilfork, a five-time Pro Bowl nose tackle. Reader has an outgoing, friendly personality and wore a big smile during rookie minicamp. He wants to be a quick study.

"D.J. is rough and tough on the field, but he's my gentle bear," Felicia Reader said. "He's real caring like his father. I'm the nurturer, but D.J. is the emotional one in the family."

Reader is enjoying his responsibilities as a newly minted Texans draft pick. Signed to a four-year, $2.55 million contract that included a $215,380 signing bonus, the fifth-round selection was full of energy all weekend.

"It's really surreal, going through my past and overcoming it and finally getting here," Reader said. "I've still got a long way to go, but it's just exciting to get to where I wanted to go since I was a little kid. I'm glad to have a fresh start."

He missed being with his mom on Mother's Day, which has always been a special day for the Reader family.

"That's fine because he has dreams and planned for this time for so long, and now it's here and he has to do what he needs to do," Felicia Reader said. "I'm in a good place, so that's a Mother's Day gift already. D.J. graduated from college. He got drafted. They won the Orange Bowl.

"They went to the national championship, and he had a great game there and in the Senior Bowl and he had a great showing at the combine. I told him, 'This is what you planned for, so you can't let that go and think about Mom.' We'll be together soon. I'm good."

And D.J. Reader doesn't feel alone anymore.

He has learned how to cope and deal with his emotions. They never truly leave him, but neither do his rich memories of a loving, proud father who took so much joy from watching his son perform on the football field.

"It's never going to get easier, but you're going to grow every day," Reader said. "It was really hard for me, and I still get emotional to this day. I know he would want me to finish up and do what I need to.

"I know he's looking down on me now. I dedicate everything to him for my education, for finishing out my college degree, for him giving me the tools to be successful as a young man. I thank him every day, and I give him everything I have to always make him proud of me."