Andrus is set on tackling the foe — and the future
It’s the last day of April, the final day of the NFL draft. So many teenagers who play football are fired up, because they’re imagining their name being called.
One of those dreamers is Martin Andrus of Los Angeles High, who has perspiration dripping from his face as he works on exploding out of a three-point stance amid a field of dying grass and weeds.
Andrus is 6 feet 3, 275 pounds, has scholarship offers from Notre Dame, Stanford and UCLA, and is living proof that it really doesn’t matter how good your field looks or what school you attend — it’s whether you’re progressing on the field and in the classroom that counts.
“I can’t take it easy on nobody,” he says. “We are all trying to get to the same place. Everybody’s got a dream. In order to reach my goal, if I have to push a little kid or someone small, that’s what I’m going to do. The dream is to make it to the NFL.”
Possessing size, agility and athleticism, Andrus is the kind of defensive lineman coaches get excited about. As a junior on a 12-1-1 team, he was credited with 125 tackles, including 16 sacks.
His high school coach, Eric Scott, uses the words “tenacious, mean, inquisitive” to describe Andrus.
“Not only does he look the part, he plays the part,” Scott says. “He gets off the ball very fast and tenaciously. He knows how to use his hands. He knows how to rip through. He plays real smart. He makes big plays and spends absolutely no time on the ground.”
Andrus started his high school career on the junior varsity team at Long Beach St. Anthony. That’s when he started thinking about a future in football.
“All my coaches used to tell me I have potential to make it to the NFL, so then I started believing,” he says. “Now that’s the goal. If I don’t reach that, I’ve failed.”
Not that Andrus is putting his entire focus on football. He understands that to reach college he needs to succeed in the classroom.
“My parents instilled education in me at a young age,” he says. “They always told me to go anywhere in life you want to have an education, so I knew school was always first.”
Says Scott: “A’s are very important to him. People give a lot of the inner-city schools a bad look, but a kid like Martin, if he can go to school and get straight A’s and achieve on the level he’s achieving … I think anyone can do the same.”
Andrus says neither of his parents went to college, so earning a degree would be a first in his family.
But in football, playing on the defensive line has become his singular focus.
“I love it,” he says. “I feel that’s what I’m best at. That’s what God blessed me with, the talent to play D-line.”