For all the folks who really know Darian Stewart, he goes by “Smooth.” He picked up the nickname his first day on the University of South Carolina campus in Columbia, and it’s stuck to him like the blistering sun on a July afternoon. If you hear his deep Southern drawl and experience his laid-back flavor, it’s easy to see why.

It didn’t always appear the hard-hitting Broncos safety was going to be an NFL star.

If it were up to Stewart, he would have stopped playing football after his junior year in high school. He had hoop dreams, with plans of being a point guard at the University of Memphis.

But his mother, Janice, didn’t give him a choice. In a way that only she could, Janice gave a stern look and barked out a few words that made Darian conclude he had better keep lacing up his cleats.

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Eleven years later, Stewart has a six-year NFL career and a Super Bowl title ring. Mama knew best.

Winning and whoopings

Stewart’s story starts in Huntsville, Ala. The resources weren’t always plentiful, but Stewart and his older brother, Jared, rarely lacked for entertainment.

Darian is the youngest of six children, but his four older sisters had left the house by the time he hit grade school, leaving him and Jared living with his single mother. Darian and Jared would get in enough mischief for eight kids while Janice was working late as a contractor for NASA.

A particularly memorable day ended with Darian and Jared accidentally driving Janice’s car into a fence. One of their sisters, babysitting that day, came out of the house yelling. Jared quickly slammed the door on Darian, who got all the blame.

“Man, my sister tore me up,” Darian said, shaking his head. Related Articles Kiszla: After Broncos lose to Pittsburgh and begin another NFL season 0-2, veteran Shelby Harris sounds warning: “We’ve got to change the culture”

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“He got a lot of whoopings because of me,” Jared said, laughing.

They were known around the city more as a duo rather than individuals. Their competitive nature to better each other motivated them.

“My brother is my best friend. I was always the big little brother,” Darian said. “If I beat him in anything we would have to fight.”

Jared was a year older, but he got left back in the sixth grade, setting up him and Darian to be just as inseparable in school as they were at home. Jared promised he didn’t do poorly in the classroom on mistake, but it was the best mistake he ever made.

Once they hit the field together at Lee High School, Jared was the quarterback and Darian was the receiver.

“We didn’t have a lot of male support in the house. We just had each other,” Jared said. “So I knew I had to be tough on him.”

Family comes first

Darian looks away, tenses up a bit, and his voice decreases to the level of a loud whisper when he talks about his father.

“He was real distant — not into the fam,” Darian said. “It was cool, though, because moms played both parts, and I had coaches that helped us out.”

His Amateur Athletic Union basketball coach, Bill Harris, would drive him from basketball practice. His high school football coach, David O’Connor, made sure he got to camps and received attention from colleges.

“He never really cared about the glory that came his way, and he had plenty,” said O’Connor, who now coaches at Giles County (Tenn.). “In Darian’s mind, he was a soccer player and a basketball player. That was the hardest part, selling him on football.”

Another coach chatted with Janice at one of Darian’s basketball games during his junior year when word began to spread that he was planning to give up football to focus on basketball. That coaches’ message was that Darian had an NFL future. Darian’s plans to quit football ended that night.

The lack of a father in the house strengthened Darian’s commitment to being a father when he became an adult.

Darian and his wife, Whitley, welcomed their now 7-month-old girl, Hayden, last November. They sweated out arrival dates, hoping it wouldn’t fall on a Sunday game day. She delivered in the middle of the week, between games with the Bears on Nov. 22 and the Patriots on Nov. 29.

“It was a different type of love instantly,” Darian said. “You realize how strong women are, seeing them give birth to a child. You just love them that much more.”

The Stewart family resides in Charlotte, N.C., Whitley’s hometown. Despite daily FaceTime chats, the toughest part of Darian’s past year was being in Denver for offseason workouts and missing Hayden’s first crawl. He won’t miss her first steps, though. They’ll all be in Denver soon.

If you don’t know who he is, Darian will never tell you he’s an NFL player. Family and former coaches say Darian is among the least likely players to go broke. It took him six years in the NFL to get a chain, his brother joked. He even budgeted for that.

“He’s my little brother, but I look up to him,” Jared said. “I never met somebody that wrote down all his goals and achieved every last one of them. Well, except the NBA.”

Huntsville’s hero

Coach Stewart has a nice ring to it. Sometime after his NFL career is over, Darian sees himself coaching high school football, likely in Charlotte or in Huntsville.

He completed his third annual Stewart Standouts youth football camp in Huntsville last month with about 500 children in attendance. The camp has become one of the highlights of Darian’s year, as he helps mentor and teach kids in a way that many of his high school coaches did for him.

“That would be a no-brainer for him,” O’Connor said. “He’s such an even-keeled person. He would star as a coach too.”

More than anything, Darian wants to make a lasting impact on the city that helped make him. As far as Darian knows, he’s the only player from Huntsville to win a Super Bowl. He is the city’s champion, recently elected to the town’s Hall of Fame.

He lights up when recalling his favorite moment of the year — besides Super Bowl 50 — when he went back to Lee High after the Super Bowl to be honored. He chatted and shook hands with the kids and all of a sudden one screamed out, “I’m never washing this hand again.”