Fuller vows more action than talk
No. 1 draft pick unafraid to work hard to excel for his new coach
Will Fuller describes himself as a “soft-spoken” fellow, a man of precious few words. But one word the Texans’ new receiver used on numerous occasions Friday in his first Houston news conference the day after the team made him its first-round draft choice must have been Mozart to his new coach’s ears.
Fuller said “work” a bunch of times, insisting his plan going forward was to “keep my head down and try to become the best player I can be.” Bill O’Brien, who prefers players — especially the young ones — who are seen far more than they are heard, really liked hearing that.
“What we want him to do,” O’Brien said, “is come in here every single day and work extremely hard and be a good teammate, do what we ask him to do and what we want him to do on offense, and just blend into our locker room. We’ve got a good group of core leaders in our locker room that are going to guide the way for him.”
O’Brien finally gets WR
So they’re on the same page, this despite a bit of awkward history between them.
O’Brien conceded he has had “forgive and forget” that Fuller once spurned his attention, first accepting but then rejecting the football scholarship O’Brien offered him before his senior year in high school. It came at a time when the coach, attempting to bring Penn State back from one of the most odious scandals ever to rock college sports, badly needed talent in his corner as he took over for the fired legend, Joe Paterno.
Fuller went on to star for Brian Kelly at Notre Dame instead, catching 30 touchdown passes — only one Fighting Irish star has had more — and proving himself to be the athlete O’Brien thought he had seen when they first crossed paths.
That was at a Penn State football camp in June 2012. Fuller had driven over from Philadelphia, where he was a senior-to-be at Roman Catholic High School. The moment he arrived, Tom Fitzgerald — then and now O’Brien’s strength-and-conditioning coach — ordered to him to do the 40-yard dash.
“He jumped out of the car and ran a 4.3, coming from 3½ hours away,” O’Brien recalled with a detectable trace of wistfulness. “So we knew he could run. This would be a guy we’d have liked to have had in our program.”
But he has him in his program now. The Texans needed to get faster going into next season. Fuller, whose 4.28 pro day time in the 40 is the fastest ever posted by a Texans position player, helps them do that. O’Brien also observed that Fuller is a quality person from “a good family, which I’d gotten to know,” who also came with the highest of recommendations from Kelly.
Yes, O’Brien has forgiv- en Kelly, too, for stealing Fuller out from under his nose.
“Brian Kelly spoke very highly of him, and I’ve got a lot of respect for Brian Kelly,” O’Brien said. “We couldn’t hold on to him at Penn State, but we’re looking forward to working with him here.”
‘He’s a baller’
On Friday, Fuller warned the gathered media, “I’m not going to say too much. I’m just looking forward to working with this team, being the best player I can be and eventually helping us win.”
Fuller and his parents arrived from Philadelphia at 7:45 a.m., barely 10 hours after the Texans made him the 21st player drafted. He called what has happened to him “a dream come true. It’s been a crazy few hours. But it’s what I’ve wanted since I started playing football when I was 7.”
The fact that the Texans traded up a spot from 22nd to make sure they landed Fuller made him, he insisted, “only want to work harder, and I feel like I’m already one of the hardest-working guys. (Being drafted) was the best moment of my life thus far. I can’t even explain it … I got my name called, found my parents, gave them a hug.”
Said O’Brien: “Anytime you draft a guy in the first round, you have high expectations for him.”
Second-year Texans receiver, Jaelen Strong, a new teammate but an old friend of Fuller’s, promised the team won’t be disappointed.
“He’s a humble guy,” said Strong, a third-round pick a year ago out of Arizona State. “But he’s a baller.”