A DRIVE TO SUCCEED
Rookie defensive tackle Lopez draws tenacity from his parents
There’s a kinship within the pen-filled pages of old notepads Veronica Gomez sometimes finds in her Phoenix home. Sure, her son scrawled X’s and O’s, not dates or descriptions or dialogue, but Roy Lopez, the Texans’ detail-oriented defensive tackle, always has been every bit as meticulous as his police detective mother.
Sometimes she’ll find Lopez’s old playbooks, too. He saved them all. Mesquite High School. New Mexico State. Arizona. He’d memorize them. But, to be certain, he’d still fill pages of notepads in a spotless bedroom. He was the cleanest of three kids. Gomez told him his space had to be clean to have a clear mind, and, after Friday night games, she’d find him there watching and rewatching plays only a few hours old, searching for clues for how he could’ve done better.
No dilly-dally. That was her father’s saying. Ron Gomez spent over two decades investigating organized crime for the Phoenix Police Department and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, oftentimes infiltrating and decimating drug cartels as an undercover agent. Veronica absorbed her father’s veracity. She’d lay on the sofa as he transcribed wiretap recordings. She’d listen to the tape recorder stop, rewind, stop, rewind.
Stop. Don’t follow my footsteps, her father said. Take an interest in your mother’s beauty salon. Work for the DEA or the FBI. Go to college. But even college didn’t deter Veronica from joining the Phoenix P.D., first as an adult probation officer, then, once Roy started kindergarten, as a patrol officer.
By then, Veronica’s brothers already had joined the police force. The eldest, Andrew, was a detective in his then-retired father’s old conspiracy squad unit. The youngest, Nick, also worked patrol. Veronica and Nick weren’t allowed to be in the same area. But when she’d click her radio in need of assistance, sometimes she’d look up and see Nick’s squad car.
“We are each other’s best friends,” Veronica said.
This was the family Roy Jacob Lopez III was born into. But if anyone hangs around the family long enough, they’ll have to get used to him being called Jacob. That’s what his father, Roy, named him. In scripture, Jacob wrestled an angel until daybreak and wouldn’t let go until the angel blessed him. It was the proper name for the son of a high school football and wrestling coach, a man who linked faith and sports with lessons learned from parents who carved out lives in the small Arizona mining towns of Superior and Kearney.
“You either worked your asses off or you fell behind and you don’t provide for your family,” Roy said.
No dilly-dally.
Well, maybe when Jacob was a baby. Maybe when his parents cooed cadences to their child until he’d shout “READY! SET!” and wobbled into a little football stance. Maybe when he chased his older sisters around their father’s high school weight room until his head clanged on low-hanging bench bars. Maybe when they’d make jungle gyms out of boxes and racks and sing Selena songs into jump-rope handles.
Maybe even when Jacob started wrestling and playing football on Saturdays and parents and uncles and cousins rolled six cars deep on road trips because they loved hanging out with each other. But that was family.
That’s when they had their best of times, Veronica said. That’s when all that was important merged. Like when Jacob played his first two seasons at Marcos de Niza High School, where his father was the head coach, Andrew coached offense and Nick coached defense.
Jacob was skilled enough to play both defensive tackle and offensive guard, and, after he transferred to Mesquite and was named firstteam All-State at both positions, he sided with Nick by choosing to play on the defensive line at New Mexico State.
“I’ve had to surrender to my brother that he made the right decision,” Andrew said.
More than that, Jacob made the decision with diligence. He scanned the roster and noticed he could become a starter as a freshman. He stacked classes and graduated early, a pre-emptive measure that allowed him to transfer to Arizona after gaining a medical redshirt for a senior season shortened by a leg hematoma. His All-Pac-12 honorable mention accolades in a pandemic-shortened season drew enough attention by May for the Texans to draft him in the sixth round.
Now, Jacob’s a 24-year-old rookie, a 6-2, 318-pound double-team splitting nose tackle who’s started in all but one game for the Texans (2-8), a promising laterounder on a rebuilding franchise who salsa dances when he sacks quarterbacks but has earned a reputation from coach David Culley as someone who “plays 100 miles an hour all the time.” No dilly-dally.
“There’s always time to have a good time, but there’s no time for big mistakes,” said Andrew, who retired from Phoenix P.D. after 27 years. “Take care of business, and then you can move forward from it.”
Dedication pays off
Quit … 30 … No, don’t quit … 29 … Just breathe … 28 … Breathe? … 27 … How?... 26 … Expand your lungs … 25 … Just expand your lungs … 24… They are! … 23 … Still gasping … 22 … like a fish … 21 … out of water over here! … 20 … You can do this … 19 … He’s just as tired as you … 18 … Take a big air … 17 … BIGGER … 16 … Overtime’s approaching … 15 … Don’t give up the two points … 14 … Stay persistent … 13 … Keep good position … 12 … Finish your moves … 11 … Be stronger than him … 10 … Break this guy … 9 … Break him like a horse … 8 … Don’t listen to the hurt … 7 … Or the ache … 6 … Fight the voice in your head … 5 … This is why we wrestle … 4 … Are you ready? … 3 … BREATHE …2…Ohmygod…1…Are you smiling?
That’s how a 30-second break in wrestling can be, Roy says, a soul-searching surcease that demands the absurd: that someone should ignore a desperate body’s pleas for rest and grapple again with another sweating, gasping person who’s on the brink of collapse.
There were other absurdities Roy’s son endured while winning two high school state championships. He cut weight. He skipped meals. He sweated in saunas until the final ounces of a 40-pound transformation dripped away. But the routine taught him discipline, and the series of grueling wrestling matches taught him to maintain technique amid exhaustion, a talent that gave him an advantage in the trenches as a defensive lineman.
Roy knew this himself. He’d won a state championship in wrestling, then played football at New Mexico Highlands. Lopez and his father shared the kind of love-hate relationship that’s common between a wrestler and the man who rations his food. They also teased each other. Lopez doesn’t have Roy listed as “Dad” in his phone. It reads “one-time state champ” when he calls. Pair his father’s training with his mother’s tenacity, and what resulted was a versatile lineman who had the capacity to master multiple positions — three-technique tackle, five-technique tackle, nose guard — and maintain the endurance required to battle blockers throughout a 60-minute football game.
“I got so confident in him there were times I’d ask him, ‘What do you think about this and what are you comfortable doing?’ ” said John
Mumford, Lopez’s defensive line coach at New Mexico State. “And I trusted his opinion because, A, he earned my trust, and, B, the game is important to him. I think all those attributes you learn from wrestling.”
Lopez earned trust with the Texans early in an intentionally crowded defensive line room that was cut down from 15 players to 10 during training camp. First-year general manager Nick Caserio added seven other linemen by trade or free agency to stimulate competition, and Lopez’s status as a lateround pick offered only slight protection on a rebuilding franchise that hasn’t shied away from making unconventional moves.
as helped a Slowly, pass-rushing him Lopez’s creep nose aptitude up guard the depth chart in three preseason games. A fourth-quarter sack in the exhibition opener against the Packers boosted his snap share the next game. Another sack against the Cowboys and a half-sack against the Buccaneers positioned him behind veteran Vincent Taylor in the rotation for the season opener against the Jaguars.
Then, when Taylor hit the injured reserve after undergoing ankle surgery, defensive coordinator Lovie Smith called on Lopez to start Week 2 against the Browns, and, in the nine starts since, he’s recorded 17 tackles, two tackles for loss and a sack while absorbing double teams that free up advantageous matchups for other defenders.
kind our “As expectations of a talked young about player, were what we for him early on, and you don’t really know with a rookie,” Smith said. “But he earned a spot then to start and to play, and we saw him giving us a little bit as a pass rusher at the nose guard position. But it’s about playing the run, staying in his gap, being disciplined with that. I think every rep he gets, he hasn’t missed anything since he’s been here.”
Lopez’s father has missed just one game this season.
Roy normally sits at about the 45, right behind where the defensive line gathers on the sideline. He admits he feels like he’ll be his son’s coach “the rest of his life,” but now he’s restricted to eye contact and hand motions: You doing good? C’mon, get your pad level down. week, on Sometimes Lopez’s state late champ” cell at night, phone. during will “onetime flash the “He’ll call me and tell me something about my film, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Lopez said. “He’ll have his film up right in front of him on a laptop, and I was like, ‘Why are you even thinking about my tape?’ He was like, ‘Well, it was just on my mind. I see this guy getting
reached, and I can’t let you get reached, so I’ve got to call you. It’s on my mind,’ and I’m like, ‘Man, bro, just relax. Just worry about your team.’ ”
‘We share the same drive’
A truckload of ice chests. A truckload of chairs. A truckload of canopies.
A people packer to taxi family to the tailgate at State Farm Stadium.
Andrew’s 18-pound pork shoulder smoldered in a smoker when people first started to arrive. First there were dozens. Then, they hit their first hundred. Andrew just put the word out that Jacob’s Texans were playing the Cardinals, that there’ll be a spot in a lot to party, and a fleet of family, friends and coworkers responded. Neighboring fans who smelled the smoke, sensed the energy, even walked over and asked, “You guys look like you’re having a great time. Can we hang out here?”
Two hundred. Three hundred.
Everyone wanted to talk about the tackle who danced the salsa. Stories were told and retold about the rookie who’s slowly revealing his personality, the kid who always wanted to be a man and came home from elementary school one day asking to be called Roy instead of Jacob because it sounded more adult, the son whose birthday is two days apart from his mother’s and sent her supportive text messages every day while she was on patrol.
Such stories fuel the surreality Lopez and his family sometimes feel when they think of how the journey already has shown what influence he now carries. Lopez said someone randomly sent him an Instagram message of a kid sacking a quarterback in little league. The kid started doing the salsa.
“I think, more than anything, he grasps the ability to create his own legacy,” Andrew said. “Jacob understands what a legacy looks like. But for somebody so young to be willing to overachieve the way he has is courageous in my eyes. We share the same blood. We share the same drive. We share the commitment to serve others. And I think Jacob grasps that if he’s serving anybody, it’s his family, and he’s just built with that seed that he doesn’t want to let anybody down.”