Joe McKnight celebrates a touchdown against Stanford during a game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on November 14, 2009. (Getty Images)

Joe arrived in Los Angeles with much fanfare. He was part of the "backfield of dreams" filled with prized recruits, but he was the jewel. When a Los Angeles Times reporter asked him if he was indeed the second coming of Reggie Bush, he said: "That's what they say. If you go off what other people say, it might destroy you."

He was reserved around campus, and his fashion was outdated. He wore Coogi sweaters, and his teammates called him "Yo." "Because his accent was so strong, he pronounced 'Joe' with a 'Y,'" teammate Stafon Johnson said.

Early on, he tried too hard to live up to the expectations. "He had struggles of relaxing," Johnson said. But he settled down, and at the Rose Bowl his freshman year, Joe McKnight was electric, gaining 206 all-purpose yards. After the game, then-USC head coach Pete Carroll said: "You have to be excited about Joe. This is what we thought he could become."

With his star in Hollywood rising, Joe found his muse. At a party after his freshman year, he met Michelle, a vibrant L.A. native. She was one of the few people on campus who didn't know his name, and he liked that. For his 20th birthday, she surprised him and invited most of the USC team to the Roosevelt Hotel for a party. He smiled throughout the night, then pulled her close and whispered, "I've never met anyone like you."

Within months, she was pregnant, and she worried what to tell Joe. "I'm not here to make your life any harder," she said. But Joe was ecstatic. When Jaiden was born, that's all he wanted to talk about. His college career, though, was stuttering. Injuries affected him, and he split time with three other backs. His fears would ooze out. "I gotta make it," he'd say to his girlfriend. When he finally had his opportunity his junior year, he rushed for more than 1,000 yards—the first USC player to do so in four years—but all fans saw was that he wasn't Reggie Bush.

Joe McKnight with his son Jaiden. (Courtesy of Michelle Beltran)

Before the Emerald Bowl his junior year, a Los Angeles Times reporter spotted him driving a Land Rover around campus, and it triggered an NCAA investigation. Carroll came into the locker room after practice and told Joe, "We'll get through this." Except they didn't. Joe was suspended for the Emerald Bowl and applied for the NFL draft. That was it. His USC career was over.

But Joe's talent was still undeniable. He ran a 4.47-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine, and there was talk he could creep into the second round. At Joe's draft party, at his great-grandmother's house in Kenner, his friends and old coaches piled tightly together on April 23, 2010, to watch the second and third rounds. But Joe's name was never called. After his friends left, he sulked back to a bedroom and went to sleep. The next day, when the Jets called to say they'd traded up to draft him in the fourth round, he was still sleeping.

It was an ominous start. He signed a four-year, $2.29 million deal and moved with Michelle and Jaiden to New Jersey. On the first day of training camp, the Jets handed him the only number available for his position, 25—Reggie Bush's number with the Saints. It was almost too cruel, and Joe scoffed. "I thought I was trying to leave something, but evidently, I'm still in the spotlight, and I'm in the shadow again," he told reporters.

At the time, the Jets were part of the new HBO show Hard Knocks, which followed the team through training camp. Unwittingly, Joe played the role of bumbling rookie. During his first practice, nervous and out of shape, he vomited during drills, then got down on all fours, as trainers applied wet towels to his neck. It was broadcast across the country.

After that practice, head coach Rex Ryan joked: "The thing that I appreciate about him is that he's trying to fight through it. Albeit on one knee."

Joe McKnight returns a kick against the New England Patriots at MetLife Stadium on November 22, 2012. (Getty Images)

Joe was embarrassed, but it didn't get much better. He fumbled in three straight preseason games, and opportunites his rookie year were rare. Ryan was never sure what to do with Joe's talent, so he threw him onto special teams as a returner. Suddenly, Joe's magic reappeared. He led the league in yards per kickoff return in 2011 and was selected to the All-Pro team.

Meanwhile his relationship with Michelle was deteriorating. He was anxious and struggling to sleep. He mostly stayed away from New Orleans and stopped calling his friends.

"He was like, 'I'm doing this for the people.' He wasn't playing for himself," his childhood friend Robby Green Jr. says. "That was the anxiety: 'Do they love me? Do I love myself?'"

A few months before the 2013 season, they broke up and Michelle returned to California for good. "I wanted to protect him, but I couldn't," she says. Joe spiraled. He was pulled over and arrested for unpaid parking tickets. He failed a conditioning test and got into Twitter beefs with fans. He missed the first three games of the preseason with a head injury. When a reporter asked him if he was worried about being cut, he said, "I'm OK." Then he was cut. And all the wounds he kept dressed and hidden burst open.

He returned to New Orleans and waited for another chance, but September became October, then November. It never came. He moved to his friend Mott's country home in Montz, 30 miles from the city, as if escaping the ghost of who he should have been.

One evening, he called Tucker and asked to meet for dinner. They'd had a falling out after he signed with the Jets. Joe had started to believe that Tucker was out to get something from him, and they left on bad terms. But now, sitting across from Tucker at Houston's on St. Charles Avenue, Joe was repentant. He ordered steak, medium-rare. After a couple of drinks, he looked Tucker in the eyes.

"I let everyone down," he told him. "I failed."

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