The Hope of Deandre Baker
MIAMI — Near the white hash marks on the football field of Nathaniel Traz-Powell Stadium lay three 9mm bullet casings.
Embedded, stepped over, so commonplace that the glint doesn’t catch the eye of those who practice and play on the high school field.
Just down the road is Miami Northwestern high school. The Bulls are playing their spring game here today. And while students there don’t deal with gun violence every day, it isn’t unheard of, either. In April, a student and recent graduate was gunned down blocks from the school.
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Some Northwestern students are known to carry guns; some of them don’t carry much hope.
Deandre Baker wants to change that. Since graduating from Northwestern in 2015, the University of Georgia star cornerback has grown into a far more important role than a football-playing alumnus. It’s a role that will continue to grow as he competes for a national title with UGA and transitions into an NFL career.
His role is inspirer. Not just to football players and the school, but to the Liberty City community, the six-square-mile neighborhood on the northwest side of Miami.
That sounds like a lot to put on a college student, but Baker has taken on this responsibility with pride. Though to understand exactly how Baker gives hope to the students of Northwestern, you have to know how he got where he is today—who influenced his life, how he remained focused and why he’s ready to take on the difficult duty of being a role model to an entire community and its kids.
Baker spent his early years starring as a running back in Pop Warner. And like many running backs, he idolized one of the best at the time: seven-time Pro Bowler Adrian Peterson. What Baker learned about Peterson’s playing style at running back may not translate to cornerback easily. But there were other lessons to be learned, many about character, from watching Peterson. And Baker’s dad, Andre Baker, made sure to tell him about it frequently.
“I told him, ‘If you want to be like Adrian Peterson, you got to work like Adrian Peterson,’” the elder Baker said.
Northwestern has produced 17 NFL players in the past 25 years, so competition is abundant. Starting his high school career as a receiver, Baker switched to cornerback after his sophomore year at the suggestion of his father. That move would give the younger Baker the best chance to succeed on the gridiron.
In his sophomore year, Baker lost one of his close friends to gun violence. From that tragedy came a lesson—it hammered home the point of staying focused.
“He looked at me like I was crazy,” Andre Baker said of his son’s reaction.
Baker probably isn’t looking at his dad like that anymore. After all those years of being preached to about work ethic, Baker is now an AP first-team preseason All-American and projected by several media outlets to be a first-round pick in next year’s NFL draft.
At Northwestern, putting in hard work isn’t always enough. Distractions in the form of living a fast life at a young age can hook some in the community. There must be a certain level of focus that goes along with the physical sacrifice of working hard.
From a young age, Baker aspired to be a professional footballer. He proclaimed his future in the sport to his father early on. But dreams can fade over time as the reality of life takes over. Saying something isn’t the same thing as accomplishing something. Streetlife, plush with money and fame, is a different path that is always out there. There is a grind with that life, too.
Hustling is hustling - Baker just decided that he would have to fight and hustle on the field and not in the streets. That was cemented in him midway through his teenage years. In his sophomore year of high school, Baker lost one of his close friends to gun violence. From that tragedy came a lesson—it hammered home the point of staying focused.
“I don’t want to say that it’s common, but it is,” his father said. “And Deandre saw that if you go that way, this will happen.”
After that, Baker knew what he had to do, and he stuck with it. On the field, off the field and in the classroom, too. And the people around him took notice. Especially Darryl Elmore, Baker’s track coach at Northwestern.
“It helped Deandre Baker realize that if he ever wanted to be at the highest level with the talent he had, it had to be the little things,” Elmore said. “Going to class on time, getting to weightlifting on time, seeing tutors… I never had a problem.”
Except it wasn’t all on Baker to stay on track. The elder Baker played a big part in making sure Deandre didn’t stray. More importantly, though, he had his mom in the house to help out his dad.
“It was one of the biggest things,” Andre Baker said. “These days, kids need balance. From the inner-city, two parents is kind of necessary because it’s so easy for those kids to go astray.”
The elder Baker's point is that a child having two parents should not be taken for granted. It can make a significant difference in a kid’s life, as it did with his son. Even people from outside the family saw how important it was to Baker’s development as a football player and as a young man.
“You know that’s very, very important to have both parents putting that foot in your behind,” said Jarrod Knight, a close friend of the Baker family. “He always had that structure… That kind of takes kids a long way.”
That guidance has helped Baker’s siblings, too. They aren’t making headlines on the football field, but rather blazing their own trails. He has one brother preparing to go to medical school after finishing at Albany State this fall and a sister studying at the University of Florida. Clearly, education is a big deal in the family and it is a major reason why Baker isn’t suiting up for an NFL team this fall.
“We promote education in our family,” Andre Baker said. “An education will take you somewhere… And he wanted to leave (UGA) with his degree.”
That decision to return for his senior year was one that “shook the (UGA) coaching staff,” according to Baker’s father. But it wasn’t exclusively because of his education. There was a slew of reasons to come back. Maybe the biggest is that Baker feels like the Bulldogs have a serious chance to compete for the national title once again, and he wanted to be a part of that.
“We have a saying at Northwestern,” Andre Baker said, “Wherever we go, we make a big impression.”
Baker did that during his high school years. His name is painted on the wall outside the high school’s athletic wing, commemorating him and seven others from the past 40 years as Miami-Dade County’s Athlete of the Year. Not even fellow graduates Amari Cooper, Lavonte David or Teddy Bridgewater earned that honor.
Now, in his final season at Georgia, Baker wants to leave an even bigger impression in Athens than he did in Miami.
“He wants to mark his territory,” Baker’s father said. “I told him if he goes back, wins a title, competes for the Jim Thorpe award, he could be a legend at Georgia.”
And there’s potential for those things to come true. Pressure? Baker appears to be equipped to deal with it. He’s got an attribute that his Miami friends call GUMP — Great Under Major Pressure, an acronym coined by Bridgewater and his friends while at Northwestern.
“Me and Deandre’s mom, we were hard on him,” Andre Baker said. “We pushed him, pushed him, pushed him and pushed him. So pressure wasn’t a thing to him. He isn’t going to fold.”
That trait was palpable in Baker’s pee wee football days as Knight, who coached him “fresh out of his pampers,” recalls.
“When you wanted a touchdown - when you wanted a play made - Deandre Baker was the man,” Knight said. “The other team knew he was going to get the ball, and he made it happen.”
Perhaps that was most evident when Baker and Knight were coming down to the final plays of the Florida State Championship when Baker was a seven-year-old. Knight called for Baker to get the job done, and he did - storming into the end zone for the game winner and a pee-wee State Championship.
Handling on-the-field expectations is one thing. What about taking on the mantle of role model for an entire community? Even if Baker didn’t want to become that he doesn’t have a choice.
“You have to be,” Andre Baker said of his son’s situation. “If you have a platform like (Baker has) it is important to be some kind of role model because there’s a lot of kids that feel like there’s no hope. You have some kids that don’t have food in the refrigerator, so he could be that inspiration.”
Giving back isn’t new for the Bakers. His dad and some of his friends run a non-profit group that helps around the Northwestern area. The group gives out clothes and food to the homeless and help do some household maintenance like painting houses or mowing yards for the elderly. On the side, Andre Baker also helps pick up bills for some of the kids who play football in the area, covering things like dues.
That charitable nature has rubbed off on Baker. When he’s back in Liberty City he’s helped his dad’s group on occasion, handing out shirts and gloves to underprivileged kids.
Baker isn’t a very outspoken person, either. His leadership comes from his deeds, not his words.
“His action makes you want to follow his lead,” said Verne Louis, Baker’s high school defensive back coach. “Everything he does, it makes you want to follow him. He leads as a role model, so the younger guys that are behind him automatically want to follow him.”
At Georgia, nothing has changed. Baker’s style of leadership is the same - quiet… actions speak louder than words. But when Baker does speak his teammates know to listen.
“Guys who don’t say a lot—when they do speak, people listen,” said Georgia defensive coordinator Mel Tucker. “If he (Baker) needs to get on a guy in front of other guys, he’ll do that. He may need to pull a guy to the side and get them one-on-one, he’ll do that too.”
Baker has arrived to this point - a very likely high draft pick next spring - through staying out of the riff-raff and into what matters.
“He has worked himself into the player he is today,” Tucker said.
Most three-star defensive back prospects coming out of high school disappear. Baker is the exception to that rule. He worked his way up the rungs of the playing time ladder at Georgia. Now he isn’t just a starter, but a star.
And people in the community at Northwestern have noticed. The hard work pays off. Why is it so important that Baker demonstrates that to the children of Northwestern? Guys like Cooper, Bridgewater and many others have already done it, so why now Baker?
Because it is his turn.
“Deandre Baker took the torch that was lit many many years ago,” said Patrick Davis, a 1984 graduate of Northwestern. “He excelled here academically and athletically, and now he’s in an atmosphere that allows him to show the new young kids that they too can live their dream and not be bombarded by this poverty-stricken area.”
The more people that wield this torch, the stronger the Northwestern community becomes. So as Baker gears up for his final season with the Bulldogs, he takes his place as torchbearer and people—kids—of the Northwestern area and Liberty City will watch him and decide that one day soon they can be leaders, too.
