Saints' Hargrove weathered own storms to reach Super Bowl

Not all the survivors in New Orleans went through Hurricane Katrina.

Consider the case of Saints defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove. He probably should be dead by now, either by someone else's hand or his own. He could have wound up in a back alley with a bullet in his head, or simply slumped over in a darkened room with poison running through his veins.

"How easy it would have been for me to take a left-hand turn and (then) we're not having this conversation," he said Tuesday as part of the build-up to Sunday's Super Bowl game between the Saints and Indianapolis Colts.

Just a year ago, while Pittsburgh and Arizona played for the championship in Tampa, Hargrove was in the Transitions Recovery Program drug treatment facility in North Miami Beach. It's 8.9 miles from that place to Sun Life Stadium, site of this Sunday's game. There's no measuring the miles Hargrove has traveled to get there, though.

He was in rehab because the NFL suspended him for the 2009 season because he failed multiple tests. He spent 10 months there - he only had to spend three - because it felt safe. But that's just one leg of his journey.

When he was 6, the tenement he lived in with his mother and siblings in Brooklyn burned to the ground. Life became a series of homeless shelters and foster homes; his mother, Rosa, died of AIDS when he was 9. Hargrove wound up in Port Charlotte, where an aunt took him in. He was introduced to sports there - playing quarterback and defensive back for Port Charlotte High.

"When I went to Florida, they didn't have a public (transportation) system. They didn't have trains. Everything was more expensive in Florida. It was an eye-opener," he said. "And in New York, everything is much faster."

Maybe so, but he couldn't move fast enough to escape the time bombs that ticked inside him, just under the surface. There were problems with alcohol. There were problems with marijuana. There were problems with cocaine.

It finally got to be too much for the St. Louis Rams, who had taken him in the third round of the 2004 draft out of Georgia Tech. He wound up in Buffalo, which was a disaster. He got in a bar fight and was arrested. The year-long suspension followed.

After he was reinstated last February by the NFL, his agent put together a video tape and sent it to all 32 teams. The Saints were the only team to bite. Defensive line coach Bill Johnson remembered Hargrove from college, but he was struck by what he heard more than by what he saw.

"I didn't take him because of that tape," Johnson said. "Nine out of 10 times when people have those problems, they'll come in here and tell you, 'Oh, coach, I'll do better.' He told us how he was going to do better. He had a plan, and he was working it. He works every day to be a good person.

"I believe if 32 teams had sat down and listened to him, he'd have 32 opportunities. It's a good story - it's a damn good story. I sure hate to think of where we'd be without him."

He had five sacks this year, not an overwhelming total, but his story is about more than numbers. Just ask Brett Favre. Hargrove was one of the Saints who punished Favre with hard hits during New Orleans' overtime win over Minnesota in the NFC Championship Game.

Perhaps the best measure of his impact came two days before Christmas, though. Hargrove received the Saints' Ed Block Courage Award in recognition of how far he has come.

"It was a unanimous vote," Johnson said.

"It means ... everything," Hargrove said.

He'll be the first to tell you, though, that he isn't cured. It's a daily battle against temptation, weakness, and inner demons that never fully go away. The "plan" that Johnson alluded to means daily sobriety meetings, regular calls to his support network, and putting the needs of others ahead of his need for drugs.

This is a tough place for that, though. This is the city where running back Stanley Wilson of the Cincinnati Bengals took the streets in search of cocaine on the eve of Super Bowl XXIII, ruining a comeback and career that had taken years to rebuild.

Hargrove knows the story well. He has heard them all.

"Why have I been spared? Why have I been given this? I have no clue," he said. "Obviously there is something more to this."

He thinks about where he was just a year ago and where he'll be on Sunday. And his smile gets real wide and his eyes come alive with possibility and hope.

"If this is a dream," he said, "don't wake me."