HE IS CLOSEST to his family, but it's complicated. Everything with Suh is complicated.

Even his mom, Bernadette, doesn't always understand what makes him tick. She was at the Packers-Lions game three years ago when he made the infamous stomp. She taught elementary school for more than 30 years and has plenty of experience with young men acting out. But she had no idea how to broach this.

Bernadette tried to talk to her son after the game, to ask him why he'd done it. He didn't want to talk about it. She's found that there are certain places she can't go with him. Besides, Suh is busy all the time now, and sometimes, she says, half-jokingly, she feels as if she has to set up an appointment just to see him. "He knows better," she says about the incident. "It was just an impulsive decision."

Bernadette keeps all the certificates her son earned as a kid, from being an excellent swimmer to a good citizen. She has pictures of him in varying stages of childhood, only many of them look as if a giant, serious Suh head has been attached to a smaller body.

Ndamukong weighed 10 pounds when he was born. His mom had to buy him adult clothes when he was a kid. She insists he'd be even larger now if he hadn't started buying his own snacks when he was in middle school. The cappuccinos and junk food stunted his growth.

"I would like people to see me through a lens that is unbiased, unfiltered and true." - Ndamukong Suh

Suh's father, Michael, is the one who keeps the trophies. He has the Outland and the Rookie of the Year awards in his house near the Portland, Oregon, airport. Michael, a mechanical contractor, stands 5-foot-8 and has a gentle face and a laugh that's almost a giggle. He looks half the size of Ndamukong.

He and Bernadette split up when Ndamukong was 2, but they remain amicable. As a kid, Suh would pedal his bike a mile and a half through back roads, from his mom's to his dad's. He was raised in a strict and protective environment, where the only people you could trust, really, were your family members.

Michael paints a picture of a young man who was something of a loner. While most of the kids were doing silly kid stuff, Suh was often by himself, ripping appliances apart and then putting them back together, studying things to see how they worked. He studied people too and wound up content with the insular world that revolved around his family. Suh now has a coach and an agent and a bank account with numerous digits, but he appears still to be rooted in this world. His sister, Ngum, is his manager.

"Even today, I tell him you've got to be very careful who you trust," Michael says. "Not everyone is honest with you."

Michael grew up in Cameroon, where a young man talked to grown-ups only if he had something to say. His father was a large man who had a stuttering problem, so he hardly spoke. Ndamukong reminds Michael of his father. America is a tough place, Michael would tell his kids. Nothing comes without work and focus.

He knows he sounds biased, but here goes: Ndamukong, he says, has been singled out ever since he was a little boy. Because he was never really little, he generally got blamed when anything went wrong -- by the teachers who pointed fingers at him whenever a smaller kid was crying, and by the soccer parents who were convinced he was 15, not 8.

Throughout his life, strangers have been afraid of Suh. He quit soccer because he was tired of being penalized for things he didn't do. The football field was the one place where he was rewarded and loved for who he was. The joy Suh felt when he started football is still fresh in Michael's mind. "He said, 'Dad, you know what? Now I can hit people and not get blamed for it.'"

In some ways, Michael feels as if his son is back on those soccer fields in Portland, getting red-carded again. He believes Suh's hits look more vicious because he is so fast and strong. He texts Suh before every game and reminds him to watch out for the opponents who'll try to distract him because that's the only way they can beat him. "Watch out for the crazies," Michael texts, oblivious to the fact that most of the world sees Suh as one of the crazies.