Rashan Gary was home for a few days this summer, and the funny thing about being home is how it often makes you feel like you never left.
In the New Jersey time machine that is Gary’s living room, his mother has a collection of high school games on the DVR. There’s all of Gary’s senior season. There’s the Under Armour All-America game. There’s even earlier footage, back when Rashan was truly just Rashan, before the phone calls, letters and visits became all-consuming, before he committed to play at Michigan on national television, when he still lived at home and was not a young man on the cusp of a first-round draft pick and millions of dollars, but instead a teenager more concerned about algebra tests and playing football on Friday night.
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So, in reverence to the memories, Gary and his mother went through the games. There were plenty of sacks and big hits and the dominance that made Gary the country’s No. 1 recruit. But as he watched, he kept commenting.
Oh, I should have had that tackle.
Oh, I should have tipped that ball.
Oh, I didn’t even see that.
Some of this was a college player better understanding football.
Some of it, not so much.
Jennifer Coney-Shepherd is an active and involved parent. Starting in Gary’s junior year of high school, Coney-Shepherd agreed to make the 45-minute drive from his hometown of Plainfield so Gary could attend Paramus Catholic, a prestigious school with a powerhouse football program.
When Gary eventually moved away for college, the Amazon “All or Nothing” documentary on Michigan football showed the phone calls, when Coney-Shepherd asked an annoyed Rashan if he was wearing his retainer.
But there were some things Coney-Shepherd stopped harping on long ago.
Gary’s weakness on the football field was atop the list, maybe the lone flaw in the player The Athletic named the biggest freak in college football. Last season, Gary had six sacks as a sophomore. NFL scouts drooled over the 6-foot-5, 287-pound frame and agility numbers that would top every defensive lineman (and several running backs and receivers) from last year’s NFL combine.
Meanwhile, his mother kept a secret.
“I didn’t say, ‘Well, my son missed that tackle because he couldn’t see,’” Coney-Shepherd told The Athletic. “But it was probably true.”
Rashan started wearing glasses at 2 years old. When he started playing youth basketball, his mother bought him goggles. But on the football field, the rec-specs would fog up.
Chris Partridge, Gary’s head coach at Paramus and now a linebackers coach at Michigan, remembers Gary showing up wearing the goggles as a high school freshman. At a media session earlier this summer, Partridge made circles with his fingers and put his hands to his eyes, showing how goofy the kid looked.
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Gary ditched the goggles, and there was no way in hell would ever wear contacts. He fears anything being in or around his eyes.
“Trying to give Rashan an eye drop is like trying to pull teeth from a tiger,” Coney-Shepherd said.
Eventually, Mom relented. Gary was the biggest and fastest defensive end in the country. His vision was bad, but he seemed to be doing just fine.
Now in this living room, though, she gave her son one more prod.
“You can’t see?” Coney-Shepherd said. “Then why don’t you wear your goggles?”
“I’m not wearing goggles, Mom,” Rashan would say.
“Then why don’t you get contacts?”
They had been through this before. But this time, Gary paused rather than argued. He stopped and considered.
It was yet another example of the fact Rashan Gary is no longer a big kid with immense potential. He’s becoming a man, fast and ferocious on the field, more mature and thoughtful off it.
And as he enters the biggest season of his young life, he’s starting to see things in a whole new way.
It was early August, and here was Rashan Gary.
He carried himself with composure and confidence, speaking on Michigan’s high expectations and valued tradition, projecting the coolness that comes with a new season.
Gary looked leaner and stronger than ever, and he has always looked lean and strong.
As a baby, he weighed 7 pounds and 6 ounces. Perfectly normal. But he kept growing, and growing, and growing. By his first birthday, he was wearing clothes fit for a 3-year-old.
Michigan defensive tackle Michael Dwumfour got to know Gary in the sixth grade. Even then, Gary was massive. And fast.
“I never seen somebody that big at that age,” Dwumfour said. “He wasn’t normal. Everything he did was not normal for his size.”
Last offseason, Gary gave up ice cream and cut his body fat from 20 percent to 14.
Beyond the physical acumen that shapes Gary’s mythos, something else was a little different this August evening. Gary was rocking new glasses, sleek and stylish, with black frames.
As Gary talked with reporters, someone asked about the new look. The question got tied up, maybe confused on both ends.
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Gary ended up saying something far more interesting.
“I’m wearing contacts now,” he said. “So I’m able to see the field a lot better.”
Sure enough, after that film session with Mom, Gary decided he would try contact lenses.
He got an eye exam and new glasses before leaving home. When he arrived back at Michigan, he talked with his coaches and set up with an appointment at Michigan’s Kellogg Eye Center. There, he got tested and fitted with contacts. A doctor showed him how to put them in and take them out. For the first several days, trainers helped him before and after practice.
“I’ve been playing football since the seventh grade without glasses,” Gary said. “I know how to play football, but now it’s like a different vision. Now I can see how I see off the field. … It’s weird.”
Gary reported back to his mother. He told her he was glad he stepped out of his comfort zone. Mom, I wish I would have done this a long time ago.
In this recent session with the media, Gary talked about paying more attention to fundamentals and technique, doing everything possible to take his game to a higher level, to become the player everyone has always expected him to be.
Football and growing up and being able to see — it’s all related here.
“With contacts, I still don’t like them,” Gary said. “But it’s something I need to do to play how I want to play.”
There were a few other moments that stood out to Coney-Shepherd when her son was in New Jersey.
The other funny thing about returning home is the fact you are always measured against who you were and how you acted at 18.
Sometimes it would be quiet, or Coney-Shepherd would observe her son talking to someone else.
“I saw my son … like he’s not a teenager,” she said. “I actually saw my son as a young man.”
Some of the evidence is small, like the way Gary interacts with his younger nephews and his older sister. The way he engages in conversations. The way he carries himself, the way he walks, talks, dresses.
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Some of the examples are bigger and more tangible.
Gary has been a good student since high school, when he graduated with a 3.8 GPA. He was an Academic All-Big Ten honoree last season. The Amazon series portrayed him as intelligent, but also showed him as a college student still learning to apply himself, not fully attentive in meetings with his adviser, still figuring out how football and academics coexist with a busy schedule.
This year, it’s time for Gary to declare his major. He has talked about wanting to own gyms and make other investments. For a long time, he’s planned to major in business. That’s why Coney-Shepherd was surprised when Gary told her he wanted to major in general studies. It seemed like an easy out, maybe a way to do less schoolwork. It’s a common major for athletes.
Perhaps it was a good con, but Mom’s mind changed when she listened to her son explain.
“I want to be able to sit at the table and be able to talk about everything,” Gary said, per his mother. “I want to take economics, I want to take psychology. I want to take an art class. I want to take marketing and sales and administration. I want to take everything, and in order to do that I just have to take general studies, liberal arts.”
Gary also explained other ways this would open up his world. He’d get to explore more of Michigan’s vast campus, interact with people outside the cliques of football and the business school. He didn’t just tell his mother what he wanted. He explained why he wanted it and why it would be important for his future.
“I can see that he’s growing,” Coney-Shepherd said. “I can hear it, I can feel it. And it’s to his benefit.”
In a year or maybe two, Gary’s life will be even more different. He will likely make a lot of money as a professional football player. He’ll have the chance to hang around famous people in fancy places. His transformation from amateur to professional will be complete.
For a little longer, Gary must keep juggling. He has a notepad filled with private, personal goals. On his locker, he wrote his overarching team goal for this season in Sharpie. Best defensive line in the nation.
Gary has to be nearsighted, locked in on school and this season. But he is projected as an early first-round pick, and the far-off end game has to stay within his line of sight, too.
The first test is a big one, and another powerful reminder of how some things change, and how they stay the same.
When Michigan goes to Notre Dame on Saturday for a season-opener with big implications, Gary will face a familiar foe.
Notre Dame quarterback Brandon Wimbush is a year older than Gary. He played his final high school game with St. Peter’s Prep against Gary’s Paramus team in the 2014 New Jersey state title game at MetLife Stadium.
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It was a rematch from the previous year, when Paramus won in a back-and-forth thriller.
“Just battles, man,” said Partridge, who coached Paramus in both games.
The ties in the Wimbush-Gary game ran deep. There were numerous big names on the field, including 2018 first-round NFL pick Minkah Fitzpatrick, who played with Wimbush and went on to Alabama.
Coney-Shepherd is also close friends with Wimbush’s mother, Heather. In high school, Gary and Wimbush went to the same training facility, and as they worked out and pushed their bodies to their limits, the moms sat and talked.
Entering the state title game, New Jersey legend has it Wimbush had not been sacked all season. Gary moved around, even played some stand-up defensive end. He sacked Wimbush twice.
“I’ve known him since the seventh or eighth grade,” Wimbush said this summer. “He’s been a monster ever since.”
Wimbush was still the most explosive player on the field. He threw for 167 yards, ran for 158 and scored three total touchdowns. His team won 34-18.
Ask Gary about it today, and it’s still a sore spot.
“I know Brandon,” Gary deadpanned. “I played him in high school. He’s the reason why I don’t have a state championship. So … that’s what I’m gonna say.”
Coney-Shepherd said she will fly in to Ann Arbor later this week and travel to Notre Dame with other team parents. When she arrives in South Bend, she plans to meet up with Heather and get a tour of the campus. They will sit on opposite sides, but they will remain linked.
“Whatever happens in the game happens in the game,” Coney-Shepherd said. “It’s not like they haven’t played before.”
Gary is the one treating it like business. This is the year he and Michigan will have a chance to prove once and for all what they are really about. The goal is for all the hype and noise to become reality.
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Yes, Gary is seeing things a little differently these days. But what will that mean on the field? Will playing Wimbush provide a little extra incentive?
Gary looked toward the ground, face tense, body language serious. The opener is only a few days away, and everything is coming into focus.
“You’ll see Sept. 1,” Gary said. “I don’t want to talk about it too much.”
(Top photo: Lon Horwedel/Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
