By Conor Orr | Published April 23, 2015
He sat alone in his room, walled inside a brick bunker of a freshman dorm called Canaday Hall, just trying to make sense of what his world had become.
It was during a slow rot of a first year at Harvard, and Zack Hodges, a punishing pass rusher who could wind up being the highest-drafted player in school history, was fending off the sweet release that comes with giving up.
Who would blame him? His father, Tony, wasn't there. He'd passed away of a brain tumor when Zack was 18 months old, living on only in the advice he'd left behind, relayed to the child by family members. Zack remembers bits and pieces about using a straight razor on his face while he shaved (to protect his skin), and why he should live on the low floor of a building in case of a fire.
His mother, Barbara, wasn't there, either. She'd passed away after suffering a massive stroke during Zack's junior year of high school in North Carolina. Zack played football the night of her funeral, dropped everything and transferred after the season. She always let him think for himself, and he loved that about her. But what would she think of this?
That freshman year, Hodges says, a university adviser told him to start taking prescription medication to combat what school reps believed was a burgeoning case of depression. Hodges declined. (Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.) Hodges was pulling three all-night library sessions per week to stop a slow bleed on his grade point average. He was in danger of failing three classes and had never felt so academically helpless. He was also in recovery from his first serious medical procedure, a shoulder surgery, which he worried would cloud the future he was carefully laying out for himself.
And his coaches had just told him that if he didn't plan on staying the summer, he wasn't going to be a good football player. No escape. Three more months until a summer break that was never coming -- and it wouldn't stop snowing.
"I just wanted to go home," Hodges said.
One of Hodges' former high school coaches, Kenneth Miller, said he knew from the moment he met Hodges that he would be president of the United States. Ask other mentors, friends and assistants around the Harvard football program, and the theme continues. He'd be a lawyer, a mediator, a reformer of some kind in social work. Some career where Hodges is face to face with people. Interacting and changing lives. Being the gentleman his mother, his aunt Lorraine and his grandmother Lurline raised him to be.
Eventually, the sun came out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hodges dug himself out the hard way. He still didn't sleep, but he spent more time in the gym. He gained 20 pounds one offseason -- and was just as quick on the field as he was before. He got his first "A" his second year. He built a foundation, and he could have had the business and political world laid out for him. Instead, he chose a path that would enable him to reward and thank his network of family supporters by virtue of a relatively lucrative salary -- the size of which is dependent on how much scouts, coaches and executives value him when draft cards start flying at the end of the month.
No one is saying Hodges will be a Day 1 pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. Some believe he has elite explosion and talent that, if molded properly, could make him one of the more dangerous pass rushers in the league, worthy of a third-round pick -- which would indeed top the current standard-bearer for Harvard football draftees: Isaiah Kacyvenski, a linebacker who was taken in the fourth round of the 2000 NFL Draft. But there are some, including a few experts at NFL Media, who say Hodges won't be drafted at all.
At Harvard, he used to spend reunion weekends as a 6-foot-3 bellhop for alumni functions and drove some of the wealthiest, most powerful men and women in the country to and from the airport. He made connections and impressions. They always left knowing who Zack Hodges was.
So why on earth is he still insisting on wearing a helmet to work every day?
Lurline, Zack's maternal grandmother, earned a living working in a chicken processing plant in New York, and his maternal grandfather, Millard, manned a station at a steel mill. Lorraine, his aunt, was the first member of Hodges' family to go to graduate school and became a social worker. His mother, Barbara, had been the first to attend college.
He beams with pride when he talks about his roots. He still speaks with his aunt and grandmother almost every day. In the walk-up to the draft, he's trying to spend as much time with them as possible, in case he gets selected by a team stationed far away from the Atlanta area where they live.
An outgrowth of that pride is a sense of protectiveness. Hodges tries to keep Lorraine and Lurline out of the media spotlight; they are his refuge in a life that is about to change again. Because they see Zack as an extension of themselves, they're more than happy to let him be the family spokesman and don't speak with reporters.
"Who you met is an honest representation of himself and our family," Lorraine said in an email. "He perseveres because of his faith, love of family and a commitment to be his best. The adversity he experiences only strengthens these values, which he first learned from his mother and were reinforced by us (his grandparents and myself). So, you should know, when you meet Zachary, you meet us."
Their path helps explain a certain endearing stubbornness about Hodges, who never understood the rolled eyes that met his ambitions. Having a conversation with him is often like playing a board game -- one in which he's several moves ahead.
On his first day at Tri-Cities High School in East Point, Georgia -- the school he transferred to after the death of his mother, based on its location near his aunt's home -- he told Miller, who's still the team's head coach, that he only wanted to play for two schools.
"Yale," he said. "Or Clemson."
One of the best academic schools in the country. Or one of the premier football programs in the South. He wanted to do that and be the president of the United States. Why can't he have everything?
"When he was going through the process, he was getting interest from Alabama, and he had an offer from Stanford," said Obum Obukwelu, Hodges' roommate at Harvard. "He could have done anything he wanted. He knew where he came from, and he knew exactly where he wanted to get to."
Hodges said he eventually chose Harvard because it was the only place that never once told him no. Maybe he wanted to study abroad or work on the student Law Society. Maybe he wanted to be in Finance Club. He ended up doing most of that while he was in school.
Hodges also wanted to carve out time to work at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. Having endured some brief stints of his own in homeless services with his mother over the years, he felt comfortable there. He knew how to act in a way that provided comfort, not embarrassment. At Harvard, no one was going to tell him he couldn't stay there all night before an exam. So he went.
"He spent nights there. Not just a few hours. Nights," Obukwelu said. "He would be seating people, getting to know them, getting to know their stories. I, myself, I couldn't be doing that before an exam or a practice.
"He did it for a full semester."
There is a worn cliché among athletes about blocking negativity, separating oneself from sources of detraction before moving on.
With Hodges, it's more of a filtration process. He considers everything. He always listens. Then he decides he'll play in the NFL anyway, or enter the Law Society, or work with Harvard's prestigious Leadership Institute.
It's an exceptional blessing during a time when athletes are poked and prodded for months on end -- and Hodges is centered in the crosshairs.
During the Senior Bowl, clandestine chatter among scouts, agents and executives is often what poisons the pre-draft narrative accessible to fans. For example, several sources told NFL.com that Hodges came off as "odd" or "weird" during his initial meetings with clubs. Now, as the draft approaches, it's tape that is inspiring panic about the legitimacy of 41 tackles for loss and 26 sacks over 39 games played.
Nonetheless, Hodges was first-team All-Ivy each of his last three years. In 2014, he was the league's Co-Defensive Player of the Year. And on film, Hodges is unquestionably the Ivy League's most dominant force. Scott Larkee, the team's defensive coordinator, used to keep a scrolling notebook of everything opposing teams would do to stop him. Tim Murphy, the team's head coach, said he was the league's equivalent of J.J. Watt.
"We saw all the same things the guy from the Houston Texans had to face," Murphy said. "The bottom line is, I knew I was getting great one-on-one matchups for other guys, because you knew they were going to keep the tight end in to chip. You knew they were sliding their protections to him. You knew they were keeping a running back in to block."
For Murphy, it was gratifying to see Hodges develop into a more tactical pass rusher. In early practices, Murphy said, Hodges resembled a bowling ball flying aimlessly toward a set of pins. With significant advantages in size and speed, he was so disruptive and aggressive that he would occasionally be pulled from practice.
Toward the end of Hodges' time there, however, a polished product emerged, despite the fact that Hodges was still winning so many of his matchups with a quick burst to the outside or a relentless bull rush. The "motor," as scouts call it, is the one thing that is universally praised about his game. He never stops.
Some scouts say Hodges is a good player outshining inferior competition. Some say his first step and burst are better than those of almost any edge rusher in the draft. Some say there is no translatable strength, and that Hodges will need to spend years in the weight room to develop. Some say the transition to outside linebacker (he was almost exclusively a defensive end at Harvard) will be too much. Some say he has superior length and a frame begging to carry more weight. Some say he's a special teamer; some say he can start immediately on third downs.
"I remember in high school, people would whisper stuff, guys would make jokes about me wanting to play football and stuff like that," he said. "So I don't know, I try not to even worry about it. There's a lot of things about me that people make fun of now.
"But all I have is right now. All I have is today, so that's all I'm trying to worry about. Regardless of the draft, today my profession is professional athlete and football player. Regardless of what tomorrow will be, what a month will be, this is my profession today. Today, this is what I do, and I can only make the most of that."
So why is Hodges here?
During his junior year at Independence High School in Charlotte, Hodges went to a noon funeral service for his mother at University Park Baptist Church. The high school was trying to help him raise funds for all the expenses he'd have to handle. He was 16 years old.
Before the service, he was interviewed by a reporter from the Charlotte Observer and was asked about the game that night at 7 p.m.
"I just want to get through it and then go try to be with my teammates," Hodges -- again, at 16, and just before the funeral of his mother -- said. "They mean a lot to me, and I'll never forget how they've helped me."
Today, the reporter, Langston Wertz Jr., says, "We're supposed to stay neutral, but I'm pulling for the kid. I was pulling for him then and I'm pulling for him now." Wertz, who still works at the Charlotte Observer, now has a child of the same age that Hodges was during that wrenching afternoon, and he counts that assignment as one that will stick with him for life.
During his senior year at Tri-Cities High School, the team lost a game 7-6. Kenneth Miller didn't know how to approach a small sea of broken hearts, so he put the blame on himself. He told his players that he didn't call the right plays. He said he didn't prep them enough.
After the speech, Hodges, in the middle of his only season there, followed Miller back to his office and asked if he could have a second.
"He said, 'I don't mean to tell you how to do your job,' " Miller said. " 'But,' -- he says -- 'don't you ever take the blame for a loss again. You weren't out there hitting anyone. You weren't out there missing tackles. Don't ever do that again.' "
Today, Miller says, "he made me a better coach."
Hodges could pursue a career in politics if he wanted to, but that is not his calling. At least not now. If he's learned anything, it's that he can touch many lives through football. His reasoning, in full, came in three parts.
"Who I am and what I do, those are two different things, and I think that speaks to anyone and what they do," he said. "That being said, these are the reasons I decided to pursue this:
"One is that I realize I have influence on people close and afar when I play this game, and I try and always be open to the gifts that God gives me. This seems like one of them. This opportunity seems like one of them.
"The second is that I realize this will give my family some financial security. No one makes the amounts of money that anyone makes in this profession without the help of others. My name is the one that will be called on May 1 or May 2, but there's a lot of people who have helped me along the way. I want to be mindful of that.
"The third is that I always want to be No. 1. I always want to be dominating. I want you to know I'm beating you as I'm beating you. Even though I like being by myself a lot, being quiet, I always like to win."