FOXBORO — The young boy was tired and began to complain. Every time he did, his father explained that if he worked hard now, he’d reap the benefits later.
That’s why he was in his family’s backyard running cone drills. They drilled over and over and over again. When he wanted to quit, he wasn’t allowed to. You can’t quit if you’re going to the NFL. Stephon Gilmore was 8 years old and already had his life planned out.
“My dad (Steve) just always taught me. He always said, ‘Football will take you a long way.’ It always stuck with me. Just to work hard,” Gilmore said. “He used to have me out in the backyard – 8 years old, 9 years old – running cone drills. It hurt sometimes. I used to get mad. Get mad at him and be like, ‘why are you making me do this?’ There was a reason behind all that.”
There in that backyard in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a plan was hatched and set in motion. Gilmore was going to the NFL and never shied away from letting people know. The first time his future high school coach, Bobby Carroll, met him, he was 8 at a football camp.
“I went to high school with his dad. I said, ‘Hey, what are you going to be when you grow up?’ ” Carroll said. “He said, ‘I’m going to play in the National Football League.’ As an 8-year-old, he told me that. You know, he was short, and I kind of giggled about it. But after I coached him, there was no doubt in my mind that kid was going to be an NFL player.”
It’s one thing to be talented or ultra-athletic — Gilmore is both — but it’s another to have that drive and want. His work didn’t stop after those backyard sessions. Gilmore was calculated in every step of the way of his football journey.
Putting in the work
Following church, Carroll spent his Sunday afternoons cutting grass at his team’s practice fields in Rock Hill. One day, while in the middle of mowing, the South Pointe High School coach saw an old Chevrolet Caprice Classic with 22-inch rims roll up to the parking lot.
At this point, the football program was brand new. Gilmore’s first two seasons were the school’s first two years of existence. The team played with only underclassmen and lost plenty of games. Gilmore was Carroll’s gifted option quarterback. Following that first season, the underclassman wanted to get faster and stronger. Sick of losing, he decided to put in more work on the team’s off day.
“(That car) rolled up there, and he’d want to lift weights on Sunday afternoon,” Carroll said. “I’d say that’s fine, but you have to have someone in there with you, because I’m out here cutting grass. It kind of resonated (with everyone).”
Before long, Gilmore had a group of players with him every Sunday. Like his dad taught him, if you want to get better you have to put in the work. That South Pointe team went 3-8 Gilmore’s sophomore year. By the time he was a senior, they were 15-0 and state champions. Gilmore was an All-American, South Carolina’s Mr. Football and the top-rated recruit in the state.
Gilmore’s admittedly soft spoken. Carroll estimates he didn’t speak 500 words those four years in high school, but when presented with a challenge, he always pushed harder.
"We didn’t start out too good the first year,” recalled Gilmore, now 27. “Think we won’t three or four games. Taught me a big lesson. I had to get bigger, stronger and work harder. Get faster. You know, it taught me a lesson and the next year after that we won like eight games. The next year after that, we won the state championship. It really taught me how to work hard. No matter how athletic you are, you still have to work hard to be the best.”
Added Carroll: “Adversity for him, he builds on that. It motivates him to play better.”
A tough choice
Gilmore never lost sight of his ultimate goal. He was a successful high school quarterback, but knew he’d never play that position in the NFL. That’s why when college coaches came around, he and his coach made it known he wanted to play cornerback.
It came down to Alabama or South Carolina. Ellis Johnson was South Carolina’s defensive coordinator at the time, and Gilmore was his top target.
“Bobby, the head coach, told me, ‘Stephon is a unique kid and has a plan for everything. He’s very mature. He thinks his future for the next 10-to-15 years is a cornerback,’” Johnson said. “He said he doesn’t think he’d ever be an NFL wideout. He knows he’s not a quarterback. He sees himself as an NFL corner.”
Johnson knew convincing Gilmore to pick South Carolina over Nick Saban was going to be difficult. The coach, however, had several things in his favor. Although Alabama was loaded and set to win another championship, Saban couldn’t guarantee Gilmore immediate playing time at cornerback. Gilmore also made a list of South Carolina defensive backs who made it.
Gilmore picked South Carolina because he felt it would help him get to the NFL.
“Yeah. They had a lot of DBs from South Carolina that went to the league,” Gilmore said. “One of my mentors — Sheldon Brown. Jonathan Joseph, Dante Robinson, a lot of corners that were playing good ball in the league, and I always looked up to those guys and felt like I could go to South Carolina and do the same thing.”
Gilmore graduated high school early so he could join his team in the spring to work on becoming a defensive back. His mindset, as a teenager, was rare. Johnson called his work ethic “unbelievable” and added he had “30-year-old self-discipline habits at 17 years old.”
Of course, learning to play cornerback at a high-level program was difficult. Gilmore had his struggles, but it didn’t take long to prove himself.
“You could see enough to know the kid could play. When he got to South Carolina, he was still perfecting his craft,” Johnson said. “But Stephon was a starting corner before he got out of spring ball.”
Still hungry
Gilmore achieved his goal when the Buffalo Bills selected him 10th overall in the 2012 NFL Draft, but has never been comfortable. In high school, he challenged himself to get stronger and faster. In college, it was about learning a new position.
In the NFL, Gilmore’s remained hungry, but things have changed. When he signed with the Patriots in March, his wife gave birth to their daughter, Gisele Sienna, on the same day. Now a proud father of two, his family is his motivation.
After his son, Stephon Sebastian Jr., was born, Gilmore went to his trainer, Jeremy Boone, and told him he needed to work harder. His goal became to be the best cornerback in the NFL.
“You never want to get complacent. No matter how good you do,” Gilmore said. “I just want to keep getting better and try to do more. As you get older and older, you want to do more. You want to be smarter, but do more to be a better player.”
Gilmore came to the Patriots after his first Pro Bowl season. He has been challenged in his first season in Foxboro, but that’s made him push harder. He says having two kids at home does the same. Before he leaves his house every day, he makes sure to get one last look at his kids before departing to Gillette Stadium.
“It means a lot,” Gilmore said. “My wife (Gabrielle), I met her in college. She ran track at South Carolina. She’s helped me out a lot throughout my career. I never really doubted myself, but she always pushed me to be better or work harder. She’s pretty tough. She brings that out of me. She’s know I’m a little quiet, so she’s tries to get that out of me to work hard. My son, I’m the oldest of six kids, that drove me to be who I am today — my family and kids.
“You always dream of having kids when you grow up. To actually have them is the best thing ever. You want them to look back and say and see that their dad did something, and he worked hard.”
That’s never been a problem for Stephon Gilmore.