Denver Broncos linebacker Paris Lenon remembers two things from his 12-day stay with the Seattle Seahawks in 2001: veteran Levon Kirkland once gave him a ride to his hotel, and he paid $10 for a hamburger.
“I thought that was absurd, especially being from Virginia,” said Lenon, whose income to that point was a $1,500 bonus from the Carolina Panthers after going undrafted out of Richmond and the $4,500 a week he got for one season with the short-lived XFL’s Memphis Maniax.
The Panthers cut him before training camp in 2000. So did the Green Bay Packers in 2001, leading to that brief stint with the Seahawks – Lenon’s last NFL stop before returning to the Packers and launching a 12-year career that’s headed to Super Bowl XLVIII with the Broncos.
He’s 36 years old now, the second-oldest player in the title game behind teammate Peyton Manning. And if Lenon needs a reminder about how far he came to get here, he can look at the Seahawks’ sideline and see his old XFL coach, Kippy Brown, who coaches Seattle’s receivers.
“I got talking to Kippy, and he was like, ‘This is the guy,’” said agent Marc Lillibridge, who scouted for the Packers from 2000 to 2005. “Shoot, I still have my report that I wrote up on Paris from when he was in the XFL. I thought this guy’s got a shot to be a special teams player.”
He was a little stiff. He lacked strength at the point of attack. He didn’t play with leverage. “But he is young and worth a look,” Lillibridge’s report on Lenon read.
Lenon had cover skills, instincts, range and speed. He began working on everything else using whatever training methods he could find: pilates, yoga, several forms of martial arts.
“I’m probably in better shape than a lot of guys that are quite a bit younger, that’s for sure,” Lenon said. “I remind them of that every day when I take my shirt off.”
After a season with the Amsterdam Admirals in another defunct league, NFL Europe, Lenon made the Packers’ roster in 2002. He spent three years mostly on special teams and then got his break in 2005 under coordinator Jim Bates, who gave him a chance to start at age 27.
That led to Lenon’s first multi-year contract in 2006 with the Detroit Lions. He spent three years there, got cut by the New England Patriots at the end of camp in 2009, took a minimum deal with the St. Louis Rams and parlayed that into a three-year contract with the Arizona Cardinals.
“I guess I never felt (comfortable) really, and I still don’t,” Lenon said. “I always approach it like they’re trying to get rid of me.”
The Broncos are his eighth NFL team, and he’s on his 13th contract, not including the one Lenon signed with the XFL, from which he’s the only active alumnus remaining. Not only has he never been to a Super Bowl, Lenon hadn’t been to the playoffs since 2004 with Green Bay.
He was a logical fit with a Denver team that wanted to amass veteran depth around Manning. Signed to a one-year, $940,000 deal, plus $600,000 in incentives, Lenon replaced Wesley Woodyard as the starting middle linebacker in Week 14 and hasn’t given back the job.
“Everyone’s got different paths and different experiences. We’ve just been pleased to have him,” Broncos’ head coach John Fox said. “He’s been a productive player, a good teammate and good for the rest of the team.”
Lenon said he’s not sure if a Super Bowl ring would prompt him to walk away, but he doesn’t sound eager to do so. After all, this job is what he was born to do.
Long before he was getting sticker shock from lunch in Seattle or cashing a $1.8-million bonus check on that deal from the Lions, he was a young kid back in Lynchburg, Va., walking around the house all day cradling a football.
“For some odd reason, just that sport, that ball – it got me,” Lenon said. “My mother used to get a little annoyed, and I’ll never forget one time (she said), ‘Get out of here with that ball.’ And I remember my father saying – ‘Leave him alone. That ball might come in handy one day.’
“I was little, and I was like, man, this is just like heaven. I liked the football, man. Years later, it really came true. It did come in handy.”
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