It will be a text or a call that will arrive an hour or two before Jets rookie free agent defensive tackle Leonard Taylor III plays his first NFL game on the first Monday night of the season in San Francisco.
For the past two years, this self-proclaimed mama’s boy has received a motivational reminder from his mother, Chelita Smith.
“One quote that I always give him before his games is I always tell him, ‘The greatness of a man comes from within himself,’” she told The Post.
Just three months after he was spurned by the NFL draft, Taylor summoned his inner greatness in training camp and realized a boyhood dream that seemed inevitable as a five-star high school commit who stayed home to play at Miami (Fla.).
“I used to watch a lot of Lawrence Taylor growing up for real,” the Jets’ ”L.T.” told The Post. “Really ’cause me and him had the same number. When I was in Little League, I had No. 56. My stepdad [Rodney Frye], he told me one day to search up Lawrence Taylor and to watch how he played and all that. And then, I watched him play growing up and then just got glued to how he played and how he was able to move around and how fast he was able to get off the ball and all that … even though he was an outside linebacker, but he still was like disruptive in a lot of ways that I like. So try to tune in his game a little bit to mine.”
There is only one LT, of course. This L.T. is 6-foot-3, 305 pounds.
“I feel like I can bring explosiveness, live in the backfield,” he said. “I feel I’m a sack monster to be honest.”
The Giants’ LT was the ultimate sack monster.
“I feel like just how I get off the ball, I’m able to just revolve around the ball as much as possible,” Leonard Taylor said.
His mother likes to tell a story about a much different 8-year-old Leonard one day in Fort Lauderdale.
“When he first started playing football, I remember he got hit ’cause he wasn’t really paying attention to what’s going on, and I remember him trying to skip and take off all of his equipment and quit,” she said. “Then I walked over to him and I said to him, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘I don’t want to play this no more,’ he was crying. And I was like, ‘Boy I ain’t raising no quitters. If you don’t want them to hit you, better hit them first.’ ”
He began hitting enough people first to be projected as a first-round pick. She urged him to leave Miami and turn pro.
“You’re stuck,” she told him, “and there’s nothing else that these people can teach you. He would play, they would pull him, he would play, they would pull him.”
And then the phone never rang on draft night.
“I know he was disappointed because they overlooked him,” Smith said. “He didn’t get drafted and we couldn’t figure out why. Other than I heard that they were saying that he didn’t love football. It was just different little stuff going around.”
It will be easy to root for him.
“He’s just a big humble giant,” his mother said. “He didn’t like problems, he don’t like conflict. He’s always been like that and he’s still like that. That boy will give you the shirt off his back if he can give it to you.”
Just not when he’s hitting them before they can hit him.
“I feel like when he hits that turf, he turns into a total different person,” Smith said. “It’s like it’s game time, let’s go.”
She used to work three jobs to make ends meet for four boys, and he won’t ever forget it.
“Everybody back home know that I’m a mama’s boy,” Leonard Taylor said. “I could tell her anything to be honest, and she’ll always have the right advice to give me back to make sure I’m fine. So she played a real big part in that, ’cause when I wanted to quit and give up the most, she always told me to keep going. She worked three jobs growing and she had to keep going to provide for us, so if she did it, I could do it, too.”
Smith still works in hospice and now has her own business — Lee Lee’s Sweet Treats — driving an ice cream and food truck. Leonard is proud to be represented by Young Money APAA Sports Agency as his dream lives on after it appeared to be on life support. “God had a different door for me, so I just take it as that,” he said.
He kicked that door down. And Quinnen Williams is helping him continue to kick it. “I always tell him football’s not on him, it’s in him,” Smith said.
The mama’s boy and the mother shared a precious moment the day that Leonard learned that he was a New York Jet.
“I was screaming. He called me on FaceTime, and I was screaming,” Smith said.
Mother always knew best.
