National Football League

Foster homes, drugs & police: What Lorenzo Mauldin overcame to become a draft prospect

Published Mar. 17, 2015 4:35 p.m. ET

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Ross Jones

DANA POINT, Calif. -- Lorenzo Mauldin stood tall in front of a ballroom filled with Pro Bowlers, Super Bowl champions and others Saturday at the St. Regis Monarch Beach hotel.

The message the former Louisville outside linebacker wanted to deliver was crystal clear.

"What can you do to help others in need?" Mauldin asked of the nearly 1,000 people in attendance.

If anyone understood the importance of why everyone was gathered on this night, it was Mauldin. Being raised in approximately 16 different foster homes starting from the age of 2, saying Mauldin's upbringing was rough would be a harsh understatement.

His father was imprisoned before he could remember.

His mother sold cocaine, attempting to provide for five children and was in and out of jail.

Mauldin remembers being pulled out of class by police officers, telling him he needed to come with them. With such tumult at a young age, Mauldin and his siblings had a difficult time understanding why everything was happening. Change was the only constant. Mauldin remembers during a month-long span he attended three different schools because he would keep being reassigned to different foster homes.

Admittedly, he grew up with a temper and attitude. He didn't listen to those trying to help and was mad at the world.

Without any direction, he bottomed out.

Mauldin's awakening began inside the cold chambers of a juvenile detention center. It was there where he became determined to not live the life his parents had chosen. He wanted better.

"I remember thinking ... is this what my mom and dad are going through?" Mauldin recalled at the 13th annual Athletes First Classic. "I didn't want this life. I was 13 or 14 and I told myself I'm not going to be my mother's child or my father's son. I needed to be an example for the younger ones."

It was then that Mauldin applied his burgeoning frame and natural athleticism on the football field. He channeled the anger, fear and resentment with helmets and pads as a sophomore in high school. He quickly found out he had some ability and could use it to create his own future.

"Football came into my life and that mediated everything that I was going through," Mauldin, 22, said. "It was more of a general place where I could go, relieve stress, think about other things than what I'm going through and get me in my right mind. That was literally the only time I could think."

Years later, the 6-foot-5, 252-pounder would earn a scholarship and play for Charlie Strong at the University of Louisville. He appeared in all 12 games as a freshman. By the time he was a senior he was named first-team All-ACC. Mauldin's bleached dreadlocks might appear as if he's literally playing with his hair on fire, but that's his non-stop motor, racking up 93 tackles and 16 sacks during his junior and senior seasons.

Mauldin's success wouldn't all be possible without the care and assistance of children's foundations.

"Going through life without a team is not easy," Athletes First president Brian Murphy said. "Most people who have had some level of success can say they were successful because they had a team around them. Whether it was your family at home or people you work with, but what happens if you don't have a team? That's why we're here. We want to take advantage of our resources and give back."

Mauldin's plea for help in front of his peers sparked a wave of scholarship donations to the Orangewood Children's Foundation, a facility to shelter children who were victims of abuse, neglect and abandonment.

More than $500,000 was raised during the two-day event, but what's most rewarding is the ability to give back.

"It's a humbling past," Mauldin said. "And I'm always going to be a humble person. I don't care about the money, the fame; it's what I do with that that will define me. And I define myself from my past because of where I came from. A lot of people say don't forget where you come from. I will never forget where I came from because it's what made me today."

With about six weeks until the NFL Draft, Mauldin has been entrenched with the process. From the Senior Bowl to the NFL Combine and his pro day, Mauldin's hypersensitive focus has been zeroed in on becoming the best outside linebacker possible.

Having not talked to his mom in over a year as she has been incarcerated since his college days, he recently heard from her. With only two minutes to talk, he told her how much he cared for her and she said how proud she was of him. Mauldin remembers being in a foster home and having people come in and talk to them about how to be successful. Those people would stress to be a doctor or lawyer because of the unlikeliness of becoming a professional athlete.

"They would say only one in a thousand makes it," Mauldin said. "I never thought that I would be that one in the thousand. But I'm not a statistic, I'm an overcomer."

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