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Azeez Al-Shaair, the Tennessee Titans' 'unconquerable soul' no longer has to be 'invisible'
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- Azeez Al-Shaair, the Tennessee Titans' 'unconquerable soul' no longer has to be 'invisible'
The tone of her voice startled the 9-year-old boy.
Azeez Al-Shaair 's mother, Naadhirah Lennon, was spitting mad, yelling at every child in sight. And within earshot.
Lennon doesn't remember what she was yelling about. She doesn't remember who she was yelling at.
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She remembers her son Azeez coming to a halt in the middle of the family's living room, though, momentarily paralyzed.
"I'm like, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " Lennon said to Al-Shaair, who 17 years later is a 26-year-old linebacker with the Tennessee Titans . "He's like, 'I'm being still.' "
But why? Why was he being still?
"Because if I'm still, then you don't see me," Al-Shaair said. "I'm invisible. I won't get in trouble."
Still .
Invisible .
Those two words struck Lennon hard, stuck with her. The son she called "goofy," the "class clown," the second oldest of her eight children who was "always smiling," was telling his mother something.
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"It's funny on the surface," she said of his reasoning. "At the same time, if you look into it, it's kind of sad."
Still .
Invisible .
"That was kind of how he felt," Lennon said.
"He was overlooked."
Mostly because he was low maintenance, and the low-maintenance doesn't usually get a lot of attention on a daily basis.
'It's a smell you never forget'
The sound of a smoke detector startled the 15-year-old high school sophomore from his sleep.
Azeez Al-Shaair awoke around 6 that summer morning in 2012. An "orange and black glow" was overwhelming the narrow hallway outside the tiny bedroom where he and some of his brothers slept on the floor. There was no room — or money — for beds.
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Al-Shaair crawled down the hallway into the living room. Through the smoke, he could see into the kitchen. Orange flames swallowed the stove. Two of his younger brothers and his infant niece were the only other people in the house.
Tennessee Titans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (2) show his tongue as he warms up before an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2023, at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London.
Al-Shaair tried putting out the fire. He couldn't.
"The flames were just so big," he said. "Everything just started to fall down on the cabinets."
Al-Shaair turned his attention to his brothers and his niece. Rushed them to safety outside and then saw his own life flash before his eyes.
"I was just like, 'I have literally zero,' " Al-Shaair said. "I couldn't see past that."
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One of Al-Shaair's sisters had been cooking chicken in a frying pan. She'd accidentally left the stove on when she left for work that morning.
The two-bedroom home in Tampa where the electricity was sometimes cut off and food often was scarce, was owned by Al-Shaair's grandmother.
Nonetheless, it was a home for Al-Shaair, his seven siblings and his mother.
Now it was gone. Now they had no home. Spent seemingly endless nights on friends' couches, in extended-stay motels.
The smell, the sights, they aren't gone. Never will be.
"I'm terrified of fire to this day," Al-Shaair said.
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Eventually, Al-Shaair gathered some of his ash-encrusted hand-me-downs that had been spared.
"I remember washing them off, 30 to 40 times," he said. "The smell would literally not go away. It's a smell you never forget.
"Any time I smell it, even just a little bit, like when someone is cooking, I freak out."
'You don't need that much toothpaste'
A brush with a toothbrush is an everyday reminder Ruqayyah Al-Shaair Bragg has of her older brother.
She was 7 years old when 9-year-old Azeez happened into the bathroom one morning.
"I was over-squeezing, overloading toothpaste on my toothbrush," she said. "He popped me upside the head. 'You don't need that much toothpaste. There are people right now who don't have toothpaste and you're out here wasting all this toothpaste.' "
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"He probably would be like, 'What? I don't remember that.' I think about that every single time I brush my teeth, like not to waste toothpaste."
On the morning of the same day she shared that story, Ruqayyah swore she scolded her husband for doing the very same thing while he was brushing their 2-year-old son's teeth.
"I literally went in there and took some toothpaste off," she said.
Her brother would have been proud.
'I lived a lot of my life in fear'
Azeez Al-Shaair is not much for wasting.
Not time.
Not money.
After he signed his first NFL contract as an undrafted free agent with the San Francisco 49ers in 2019 — three years, $1.77 million — Al-Shaair bought a silver bicycle.
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He rode it to practice every day. He did most of his shopping at Walmart and Target. Not until his second season in the NFL did Al-Shaair buy his first car — a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which he had wrapped in matte black.
He has made nearly $9 million since his bicycle-riding days. He sometimes still shops at Walmart and Target.
"As a child I lived a lot of my life in fear," Al-Shaair said. "That was one of the biggest emotions I remember, is being afraid."
He has since been able to help his family. Help strangers. He doesn't worry as much about where tomorrow will take him, or if tomorrow will come.
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Today he lives in the today.
His biggest vice, if he has one, is his game-day wardrobe collection. He doesn't skimp on that.
"The rest of time he's in sweatpants, stuff the team gave him," Lennon said. "He and I kind of had, I call it 'Broke B Syndrome,' and the B stands for not a nice word.
"You're still living your life like you don't have resources. I tried to encourage him to not always do that."
'Losing this attachment to being attached'
Azeez Al-Shaair doesn't ride a bike to work these days.
More than happiness, money has bought him peace of mind.
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"I can make $100 million and one day I will die," he said. "Whether I kept the $100 million for myself or not is not the point."
It goes back to his Muslim faith.
"If I have to meet my maker, have to stand in front of God and say, 'Hey, you blessed me with $100 million and I put all of it in a savings account to save up for a moment I don't even know if I'm going to have.'
"I might die tomorrow, after this conversation. I have no clue what's going to happen five minutes from now. If I gave away $100,000, or a million dollars, nothing is being taken from me."
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His faith has led him to believe in fate. That everything is predestined. Happens for a reason.
He appreciates the value of money but doesn't want it to define him.
"It's like losing this attachment to being attached to things," he said.
'Took me so long to remember'
The name Al-Shaair means "son of a poet" in Arabic.
When Al-Shaair's parents converted to Islam before he was born, they took on that name.
Al-Shaair's grandfather, James Tokley Sr., was the first poet laureate of Tampa and Hillsborough County, a position he has held for more than 30 years.
He befriended famed author, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou .
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His words appear on landmarks throughout Tampa, including atop the Hillsborough County Courthouse.
He was something of an inspiration to Al-Shaair. He tried be a male presence after Al-Shaair's father left. He'd encourage his grandson to recite "Invictus," a poem penned by William Ernest Henley. He'd give him $5 every time he did.
Out of the night that covers me, it begins.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"It took me so long to remember," Al-Shaair said.
It's something he'll never forget.
'It was very easy to connect with him'
Al-Shaair's parents divorced when he was in second grade.
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His father was an English instructor whose job took the family to Jeddah, a city in Saudi Arabia, for two years. Al-Shaair said he hasn't talked to his dad, James Tokley Jr., since he was 13.
Still, he has remained a proud, accepting, sometimes outspoken Muslim who sometimes attends mosque with Nashville SC star Hany Mukhtar.
They met through a mutual friend.
"I know how it is to come to a new city, don't have friends here," Mukhtar said. "It was very easy to connect with him."
Al-Shaair's teammates feel the same way.
Tennessee Titans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (2) takes a selfie with fans as the team gets ready to face the Cleveland Browns in Cleveland, Ohio, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023.
'I have no clue what somebody else is going through'
Embarrassment routinely startled the budding teenage football star.
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Al-Shaair often wore dirty clothes to school. He didn't have many friends. He'd steal hot fries and Cheetos and Kit Kats from Dollar Tree "for dinner."
"I would be like, 'Well, I don't have anything and these big old companies have all this money,' " he said. " 'Walmart will be OK.' But it's the principle. Who am I to say that?
"Who am I to say that, 'Oh, this person whose car I'm breaking into, they have a car, they have a house, they'll be OK?' I have no clue what somebody else is going through."
He knew what he and his family were going through. He was trying to survive, he told himself.
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"Stealing bikes. Selling them to pawn shops," he said. "Stealing phones, whatever it might have been."
Sometimes he and his cousin would put on their football pads, stand in front of a local business and hold their helmets out for donations, as if they were raising money for the team.
"They really were raising money for themselves," Lennon said.
Before long he wanted to right his wrongs. Or at least stop excusing them.
The kid who felt "still" and "invisible" strived to be a man who is anything but.
He's in his fifth season in the NFL. He has played 2,000-plus more snaps there than he ever could have imagined. He's in the top 10 in the league in tackles.
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He was a part of the 49ers team that made the Super Bowl in 2019.
All of that, after a torn ACL during his senior year at Florida Atlantic left him wondering whether the NFL would ever call.
That call never came.
Al-Shaair wept in his mother's arms. He apologized and thanked everyone who attended his draft party.
"He thought he had failed his family," Lennon said.
'My mom once told me something'
Every last 6 feet, 2 inches and 228 pounds of Azeez Al-Shaair overwhelmed a black, patterned chair inside a meeting room at the Titans' practice facility on a September midafternoon.
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A torn-off-sleeves, ripped-down-to-his-stomach, Titans-blue tank top was draped over his neck. A matching bandana covered his head. Al-Shaair interlocked his fingers when he talked. He leaned forward. He was vulnerable. He was at ease.
Tennessee Titans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair (2) warms up before a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023.
The man who was undrafted out of Florida Atlantic, the man who rode a bicycle to practice his rookie year, was talking about what had shaped him.
The fire.
Saudi Arabia.
Friends' couches.
Extended-stay motels.
His grandmother's living room.
His mother and his brothers and sisters and his grandfather.
All of it.
"My mom once told me something," Al-Shaair said. "That which is for you shall not pass you by, and that which passes you by is not for you."
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'Flash back to being 12'
Naadhirah Lennon grew up a dancer. Dreamed of being the next Debbie Allen. Attended the Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York.
That dream passed her by.
So when a teary Azeez begged her to let him play football when he was 12, told her it was his dream, she relented. Even though she was dead set against the idea.
"I flash back to being 12," said Lennon, who works overnight shifts verifying identities for the IRS. "To my dream of being the next Debbie Allen . . . my parents didn't necessarily support that goal.
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"I was like, 'I can't do that to him.' So I told him, 'I'll let you play, but if you get hurt I'm going to pull you out.' "
'He cares about everybody in the locker room'
Al-Shaair couldn't have in-home visits with college coaches because he didn't have a permanent home.
He was invisible to schools such as Alabama and Michigan and Notre Dame.
He became a legal guardian of two of his younger brothers, Abdul-Lateef and Abdur-Rahmaan, when he was at Florida Atlantic, moved them in with him and supported them with cost-of-attendance checks.
He turned into a man who was voted to be a Titans captain before he'd played a snap for the franchise.
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That was no fluke. No coincidence. That goes beyond being a good football player.
"It shows everything you need to know about him, that he came in and was voted a captain in his first year," Titans linebacker Jack Gibbens said. "That speaks for itself."
"I think of someone who's very thoughtful, has a lot of wisdom," Titans linebacker and Al-Shaair's locker neighbor Luke Gifford said. "He cares about everybody in the locker room. When you back that up with actions and the things you do on the field, it goes a long way."
Football fields are where Azeez Al-Shaair makes his living. Life is good.
Azeez Al-Shaair is no longer invisible. He's no longer still.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How Tennessee Titans' Azeez Al-Shaair found his peace of mind
