After his hoop dreams fizzled, Fells found surprising fallback
Had you told Darren Fells 10 years ago that he would be sweating in the Texas heat prepping for another NFL season, he would have thought you were nuts.
Not because of the heat, though when asked about Houston, the Southern Californian, who lived in Arizona for a few years, immediately brings up the oppressive humidity.
Just the thought makes him laugh. Fells says he would have ridiculed anyone who made such a prognostication. Even himself.
“If I could travel back into the past and tell myself, ‘In 2019, you’ll be in the NFL going on Year
Seven,’ I guarantee myself would have laughed at myself,” Fells said with a smile.
Laughter aside, Fells is in a place he and no one else imagined he would be: battling for a spot on the Texans’ roster.
Following a year on the practice squad, Fells played three seasons with Arizona and the last two in Detroit and Cleveland. All in a sport that was secondary in his mind.
Were he trying to make a team in H-Town, the younger Fells would have predicted it would be the Rockets.
Basketball is the sport he loved. The sport in which he wasn’t good enough to reach the top level.
Football is the sport that was low enough on the California kid’s list of interests that he turned down a Pac-10 scholarship offer and major Division I interest to play basketball at the University of California-Irvine.
It wasn’t until after years of playing overseas that Fells, who is ambidextrous but played basketball lefthanded, elected to give football a try.
Imagine that. The NFL as a fallback.
“It was not even on the table,” Fells said. “But I believe it has been the best decision of my life, and I’m enjoying every day.”
He had been told him since high school that he made the wrong choice, but he followed his heart. After playing in leagues from Finland to Argentina, Fells decided to heed the advice of his brother Daniel, then a tight end with the Patriots, and give football a try.
He started well behind on football knowledge. He wasn’t a hard-core football fan growing up, so although he was talented enough to draw recruiting attention, he didn’t have a deep knowledge of the sport.
He jokes that he “didn’t know who the hell Mike was” when coaches kept talking about what to do with the Mike, the football nickname for middle linebacker.
But he dove into the playbook and soon general intelligence became football intelligence.
Of course, that wasn’t the case when he hit his first NFL training camp as a 27-year-old rookie with the Seahawks in 2013.
“My first year, I couldn’t even tell you what a Cover-2 defense was,” Fells said. “I couldn’t tell you anything about a defense, except there were 11 guys on the other side. That’s pretty much all I knew.”
He knows much more now. And he has 68 receptions and 10 touchdowns in 70 games.
“He’s a big guy … that makes him hard to defend,” Texans tight ends coach Will Lawing said. “The thing that’s really helpful: He’s a smart football player. He understands coverage. He understands things that are going on around him and ways people are defending him.”
Big and strong was always the case. Granted, at 6-7, Fells was an undersized center in basketball. He is a load in football.
Fells was a second-team AllBig West Conference player in 2006-07 at UC Irvine, where he averaged 14.4 points and 7.2 rebounds a game as a senior. That wasn’t enough to get him drafted into the NBA.
Unlike many multi-sport athletes, Fells doesn’t shy away from contact. Blocking is a specialty of his, and he credits defensive footwork on the hardwood for giving him an advantage on the edge and in space.
“But there are no fouls and no taking charges,” Fells said with a laugh.
Fells is the veteran among the Texans’ tight end group that features Jordan Akins and Jordan Thomas, who both were drafted a year ago, rookie Kahale Warring and Jerrell Adams, who spent the last half of 2018 on the Texans’ practice squad after two seasons with the Giants (2016-17).
Tight end is one of the deepest positions on the Texans’ roster. Fells’ blocking skills give him added value on a team that has a suspect offensive line. He has been wowed by the “young bucks” who bring so much speed and agility to the table.
“It’s a very competitive roster,” Fells said. “Everybody on the squad is very talented. From top to bottom, I haven’t been part of a squad that’s like that. It’s fun to be around because there are a lot of different personalities, a lot of different types of talent. So I can learn from them, and they can learn from me.”
Despite six full NFL seasons, Fells is still learning.
“I’ve always told myself once I’m done trying to improve myself or trying to learn, that’s when I have to put everything up,” Fells said. “I mean, I’m not the best at everything. If I was, I'd be a Hall of Famer right now. I’d have the records everywhere.
“Obviously, I'm nowhere close to that. So until I get close to that, I’m going to have to keep playing and stay on the grind every single day I’m here.”
While Fells would certainly be a starter on the Texans’ basketball squad, he’d pass on the invite. He won’t be sneaking over to Toyota Center to get a run in.
His younger brother Dwayne tore his ACL and broke his femur playing pickup basketball. So while he still loves the game, Fells isn’t about to take the risk of injury until he retires from his “backup sport.”