Miami Dolphin Jason Pierre-Paul’s life changed in Deerfield

MIAMI GARDENS — To appreciate the newest Miami Dolphins’ final chapter, consider his first one. Two decades ago, he entered geometry class on the first day as a Deerfield Beach High School junior. The teacher was waiting for him.

“Jason Pierre-Paul, you know geometry is a core class,’’ said that teacher, Manny Martin, who was also an assistant football coach. “You know you need to pass to graduate.”

Pierre-Paul nodded.

“You’d better be on the football field at 3:30 today,” Martin said.

Amazing, isn’t it? One push from one teacher on one afternoon started Pierre-Paul on a journey involving two Super Bowl rings, three Pro Bowls, multi-million dollar contracts and 14-year NFL career he hopes to cap with more big run with his hometown team starting at Washington on Sunday.

It shows how teachers change lives, doesn’t it?

“Who knows where I’d be if not for that?” Pierre-Paul, 34, said at his new Dolphins locker Thursday.

Martin chuckled over the phone Thursday in relating how he, “needed a little threat like passing him in class,” to get him to play football. Martin noticed his big frame walking in a hallway the previous year and stopped him.

“When I introduced myself and we shook hands, his hand covered mine and went to my wrist,’’ Martin said. I said, ‘Dude, you need to play football.’ ”

Pierre-Paul said was a basketball player. He only played one year of football at 7 or 8. And that’s why Martin remembers being surprised when after the next year’s geometry class the player showed up to football practice.

“You could see the athleticism from the first day he stepped on the field,’’ said Art Taylor, Deerfield Beach’s head football coach. “I think he just needed someone to believe in him.”

Football wasn’t the challenge for Pierre-Paul back then. Life was in a way that only adds to his story of success. He was nine months old when his father, Jean, a Haitian immigrant, went blind in one eye while driving due to “blood pressure in the eye,’’ as the father once said. He lost sight in his other eye soon thereafter.

His blind father couldn’t work. His mother, Marie, did domestic work. So, high school football wasn’t nearly as important as Pierre-Paul’s job at Boston Market. That job helped pay the rent. It’s how the fourth of six children contributed to the cause.

“I didn’t think I could practice, because I had to work,’’ he said.

He talked to his boss and his coaches. A solution was found. He’d practice, then walk the 30 minutes to work each day. Sometimes he left practice early — or practice times were moved in the summer to accommodate his schedule.

“Coach, we’ve got to bend the rules a little for him,’’ Martin remembers telling Taylor. “We don’t want this guy to run away.”

For two years, Pierre-Paul went to school, then football practice, then work. He got home at 11 p.m.

“I had to balance everything,’’ he said.

His football skills bloomed in two years. How many 6-foot-5 kids do back flips for fun? He played everywhere. Defensive end. Tight end. He also demanded to play on the kickoff team, even as Taylor explained he had to be impactful on it.

“Against St. Thomas, he busted the (blocking) wall and caused a fumble,’’ Taylor said. “There wasn’t much he couldn’t do.”

His football education took him from College of the Canyons (Calif.) to Fort Scott (Kan.) Community College to the University of South Florida. He did enough in one year at USF to become the Giants first-round pick in the 2010 draft.

For most their son’s NFL career, Jean would listen to the game on television as his wife, Marie, translated what their son did.

“Oh, he made a good play …”

“He just ran up the field …”

The first football game they attended was the 2012 Super Bowl. After that win, the son bought a new house for his parents. They now live 10 minutes from him in Boca Raton.

“They’ve got everything they want,’’ the son said at his new locker.

And the son? His good career looked finished until New Orleans signed him to its practice squad in November. He played last Sunday against Atlanta and recorded two tackles. The Dolphins signed him off the Saints’ practice squad after defensive end Jaelan Phillips was injured on Sunday.

“I don’t want to say it’s a dream,’’ Pierre-Paul said. “I’d say it more than a vision coming home. I want to come here and win a Super Bowl at home.”

He has a 9-year-old son, too, who played one year of football, then said he’d rather play basketball. Sound familiar?

“Maybe he’ll play in high school like me,” Pierre-Paul says.

The secret sharers to his career have followed his career all along. Taylor is the new coach at Cooper City High. Martin teaches math at Broward jails — “algebra now,” he says, “Not geometry.”

All those years ago, his one line in one class changed a kid’s life. Now the kid is a man, the man is a Dolphin and the Dolphin shakes his head with a smile at the full circle he’s come, saying, “Crazy, isn’t it?”