From geometry class to the Super Bowl
Pierre-Paul’s remarkable story started at Deerfield Beach High
The Super Bowl story began when Manny Martin walked through the Deerfield Beach High gym each day on his way to the cafeteria. He saw this tall, skinny, athletic 10th-grader playing basketball and did what football coaches do. He introduced himself. When they shook hands, the kid’s fingers went to Martin’s wrists.
“You need to play football,” Martin said.
“Nah, I’m a basketball player,” the kid said.
The next fall, the kid showed up in Martin’s geometry class. He was a junior now.
“Mr. Jason Pierre-Paul, the basketball player?” Martin said. “You know geometry is a core class. You need to pass this class. I need you out on the football field.”
And Martin says now, chuckling, “He said the same thing, ‘I’m a basketball player.’ And I said, ‘OK, bro, this is a core class — you’d better come out for football.’’
The next day, PierrePaul surprised the geometry teacher. He showed up for football practice — this long-bodied, raw-talented piece of clay that began to be molded.
“You can’t imagine how raw he was,” Martin said. “He had no football sense. But we’d come to practice and see him out there doing flips — back-flips — with
that big, long body. It was funny to see. And he could run fast, and you knew right then he had special athletic talent.”
Thus began one of the more remarkable careers of this Super Bowl, a Haitian-American football player whose father was blinded by a disease, who had no football background, who navigated junior colleges, who won a Super Bowl and then lost part of his hand in a fireworks accident in 2015, who broke his neck in a car accident in 2019 — and who is now a key component to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning Sunday’s Super Bowl because of what happened in geometry class nearly 20 years ago.
Maybe Pierre-Paul is the key component after quarterback Tom Brady. The defensive end made his third Pro Bowl this season, and he faces reserve Kansas City Chiefs tackle Mike Remmers — both starting Kansas City tackles protecting quarterback Patrick Mahomes are reserves, actually.
“I didn’t even know who that is,” Pierre-Paul said of Remmers. “Is that the backup you’re talking about? I don’t even care. I’m coming to play some great football this weekend, and they’ve got to figure it out.”
Amazing, isn’t it? How one man in one high school geometry class sent him on a course to athletic fame and riches. Martin was Deerfield Beach’s defensive coordinator and put PierrePaul at defensive end as a junior to let him learn in open space, compared to the interior line.
Learn is what PierrePaul did that first season, too. Oh, he covered kickoffs — “He was fast enough to run with all the smaller guys,” Martin said. But defensive line coach Dan Smith worked with him on techniques, Pierre-Paul developed some football sense and he was ready to play as a senior.
He went to a California junior college. That resulted in Martin getting a 2 a.m. call that fall. PierrePaul didn’t like the school — the situation wasn’t good. Martin made a few calls. One of them was the father of Pierre-Paul’s Tampa Bay teammate, receiver Antonio Brown. Eddie Brown just became coach of Fort Dodge (Kan.) Community College and took in Pierre-Paul.
A year later he was at the University of South Florida.
Two years later, he was the New York Giants’ firstround draft pick.
Twelve years later, he’s chasing his second Super Bowl ring.
“I’ve been through a lot,” he said. “The things I’ve gone through, I’ve just thought happy thoughts. My father being blinded at 31, he never quit and ‘til this day never stopped being joyful and laughing.”
His No. 98 jersey was retired at Deerfield Beach High in 2018. And Martin? He’s followed Pierre-Paul’s career from afar. He’s out of coaching, a teacher at the Whiddon-Rogers Education Center in Fort Lauderdale. He hasn’t talked to Pierre-Paul since a little after his signing with Tampa Bay three years ago.
“Jason still keeps in contact with guys he grew up with,” Martin said. “He’s been a blessed kid — well, he’s a man now.”
Years have gone. Changes have come. But this Super Bowl story always comes back to one thought: How a teacher changed a student’s life with a simple encouraging nudge.