MIAMI — Edgerrin James is relaxed, ankles crossed and resting on the light gray rope-woven lounge chair by the pool at his Miami condo. It’s halfway through the two-hour conversation, and a cool breeze is starting to settle in, a common weather change for a Wednesday evening in early February.
A clump of trees obscures a clear view into the Straits of Florida, while purple and orange cloud streaks highlight the sky as the sun sets. James changes his position for the first time in almost 40 minutes, since he placed four empty Popeyes boxes in a large brown paper bag.
He leans forward out of his chair to grab his phone on the patio table, his black and white Hall of Fame slides now positioned on the concrete deck. As ‘90s R&B faintly plays from his compact Bose speaker roughly five feet away, James begins to scroll speedily through one particular string of text messages. There are multiple emojis in the thread, from fire to footballs, and videos of an elated James.
James doesn’t get excited for much, but this particular batch of messages drew a sustained smile out of the former Indianapolis Colts running back.
The contact name reads: Colts Big Man.
It’s Jim Irsay.
“Look at how much we communicated,” James proudly says, referencing the late Colts owner. “It was non-stop. It wasn't just, ‘Oh, you just chop it up with this person.’
“That was my ...” James says before pausing. He can’t produce enough words to describe the impact Irsay and the Colts had on him.
‘It feels like 20 years, but it doesn’t’
Two days earlier, James was at the community gym inside his condo. He begins his workout at 4:10 p.m. Leg and arm stretches to start. Then crutches, dumbbells, leg extensions and calf raises. “When one part rests, another is moving,” he says towards the end of his workout as he walks toward the medicine balls. “It’s all about maintaining.” That's one of his go-to words nowadays.
James grabs the blue 10-pound ball off the rack and begins to rotate his torso from one side to the next 50 times.
An elderly lady goes back and forth between machines, glancing at James as he works out.
“I’m gonna do what you’re doing,” she says before reaching for the yellow four-pound medicine ball.
James doesn’t follow anyone’s workout regimen. He’s doing it his way, a formula that often worked in his favor and captured Colts fans during his NFL career.
It’s 4:35. The workout is done. James, wearing an all-black Alo athletic outfit his daughter bought him, treks outside his living quarters and begins the 25-minute walk down Brickell Avenue to S47 Lounge. The European restaurant is one of James’ favorite hangout spots. But it’s the hookah that attracts him.
Soon, he’ll walk in, strut past the first chair, take out the second one on his left, put his feet up and enjoy a lemon-flavored hookah alongside a D&G Jamaican Ginger Beer.
But first, James is going down memory lane. March 2006 – the month James signed with the Arizona Cardinals, ending a seven-year journey with the Colts.
“It feels like 20 years, but it doesn’t,” James says 10 minutes into the walk as the sun’s rays find their way through the cracks between the palm and guaiacwood trees serving as dividers in the road.
The Colts drafted James with the fourth pick in the 1999 NFL Draft. At the time, the easy selection for Irsay and then-GM Bill Polian was 1998 Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams. In hindsight, the right one was the 20-year-old kid with gold teeth and locs from Immokalee, Fla.
James had 4,442 yards from scrimmage his first two seasons, the second-most in NFL history (Eric Dickerson had 4,456) and his 12,246 rushing yards are the 14th-most in NFL history. The Hall of Famer is one of five players to rush for 1,500 yards in a season at least four times. A Colts Ring of Honor member, James is the franchise’s all-time leading rusher.
The gold teeth
James’ personal driver and friend of roughly two years, Eric Simmons, is waiting outside the lounge in a Black SUV. He’s aware of James’ star power, but he’s past the star-struck phase. Right now, his mind is on returning to James' residence. James needs to change into a new outfit, one appropriate for the next destination: Prime 112. The prestigious steakhouse has served the likes of LeBron James, Tom Brady and The Rock.
James sits at a round black dining table with the founders of The Real Autograph, a sports memorabilia company. Owner Grant Tieman makes his business pitch as the four men feast on rib-eye steak and stuffed Maine lobster.
“I know Edge, the football player,” Tieman says before showing James a printed PowerPoint. “But I don’t know Edgerrin James.”
Indy established Edge, the football player, as a legend in the world of football. But his time with the Colts also formed Edgerrin, the man. The father. The entrepreneur.
“I never even thought of it like that, but 20 years is a long time. That’s a lot of kids. It seemed like just yesterday, and there's not much you can't remember about those times in Indy,” James said. “I turned into a grown man there. You become the head of your family and you're living your dream. Just imagine bottling all that up and trying to take that all in. There’s nothing bad I can say about Indy because it’s all been good to me.”
It’s Tuesday afternoon, 76 degrees and sunny, good enough weather for James and his posse to go for a boat ride. A sticker that reads “Forever Outside” is posted on one of the windows, a testament to James’ love of doing activities outside the house.
One of James’ friends, known as “Captain Morgan,” makes his way to the cooler positioned next to the brown leather seats at the back of the Yamaha boat. He grabs the cranberry juice, his gold teeth shining as he laughs when another friend, KC, cracks jokes up front.
Did Edge inspire you to get those?
“You know what it is,” Morgan says, jokingly trying to find a way to discredit James’ influence in South Florida as he sees the father of six make his way to the back.
Before he could utter his next words, James interrupts.
“I inspired the whole state,” he says.
He inspired two.
James and Indy form ‘perfect marriage’
Indy-based promoter Amp Harris met James in the first month he arrived in Indianapolis. The two stood outside the Indiana Roof in July 1999. Here, Harris says he saw the “innocence in this big tough guy.”
“Man, look at these people and look at me,” James told Harris. “I got dreds, gold teeth, this accent — these people ain’t gon' like me.”
South Florida was a melting pot. Indiana was 86% white.
Harris told him his play would change hearts. James remembered his uncles, Isaac and Johnny, who inspired him not to be a follower.
James decided not to conform. Indy responded with acceptance.
One stranger gave James a ride home after a night out and stopped at his house so James could meet his family. A parking lot full of women appeared at the Hot 96.3 radio station when James broadcasted a cheerleader tryout. During James' rookie season, he and Harris began hosting Monday Night Football, a weekly party featuring NBA and NFL players and roughly 1,500 guests who would gather to watch football.
He bused a group of roughly 100 kids to training camp. Teens began growing locs and installing gold teeth. As Simmons put it, “Basketball had Iverson for the culture, but for football, there was Edge.”
He randomly appeared at a Warren Central football game with his friends. “Our players were going crazy that he was so accessible,” said Carmel coach Kevin Wright, who coached the Warriors from 2000-2005.
Fridays consisted of lunch at Kountry Kitchen and dinner at Red Lobster. Both were on his tab. James set aside $10,000 a month to bless his peers.
After games on Sundays, teammates like Reggie Wayne sometimes went to James’ house to play basketball on the custom-built court in his backyard. During the summer, Riverside Park was the Sunday hangout spot.
“In Indy, he was like a lost son who came home,” said James’ mother, Julie.
“He literally created a space for himself that could never be denied in Indy,” Harris said. “It was a perfect marriage for him to be here.”
James didn’t know how to manage Indiana's winter at first, once throwing hot water on his window in an attempt to melt the ice. But he knew how to take care of those around him.
How Immokalee shaped the young man Indy inherited
A fresh plate of rice, lima beans, cornbread and neckbones was prepared for anyone who visited Grandma Annie’s house. Annie set the framework for generosity in James’ life, allowing him to offer the man who had delivered the Popeyes some of the food with no reluctance.
James lived a mile and a half away from Annie. He went to his grandma’s on most days after school, sat on Annie’s couch and consumed her wisdom.
“All you've got to work is like two or three days a week, and just put five dollars back every time,” Annie preached. “You’ll be surprised how much money you'll have in a year.”
James took heed. He was that type of kid. He needed to be.
Julie didn’t have the NFL on her mind. As a single parent in a community where roughly 25% of the population lives below poverty, her only goal was to get Edgerrin and his four brothers through high school.
Julie painted apartments, worked at Circle K, cleaned laundromats and worked in food service at the local school. On some occasions, she rode a bike to work or walked late at night.
In her free time, Julie read “Wake,” a magazine that advised mothers to talk to their children as if they were mature. When James was 9 years old, Julie told her son he needed to be the man of the house — the leader when she wasn’t there.
But James didn’t do everything right. Julie told James he could only get two gold teeth. A 15-year-old James came back with five.
“I learned years later they start talking about these stories,” Julie laughed. “But me being out of the house gave him leadership responsibility.”
James was just as committed to training for football as he was to tending the home. Before every Pop Warner game, James cut the yard. If he was above the league’s weight limit, he put on a weight vest and ran a mile to get below it.
During the summer, his workouts included throwing watermelons into a truck alongside Isaac and Johnny.
“Some women shield their child, and he's not ready for the real world, or you have to learn it through trial and error a little later. I got mine early,” James said. “As a single parent, my mom realized she couldn’t make this boy a man and needed to utilize her resources. Her resources were my uncles.”
Johnny and Isaac taught James always to keep a poker face. If you’re excited, don’t show it. If you’re hurting, no one needs to know.
They spoke with caution, aware that what came out of their mouths would always be. They engaged directly, sugarcoating little. James describes his uncles as ones with “motion,” men who never mimicked the crowd.
When Colts fans and media saw Edge, they saw Johnny and Isaac.
“You become that,” Edge says. “They did things their own way, and that’s what I wanted to do, create something that didn’t exist.”
James takes a few seconds to chew his Popeyes chicken thigh. He gently pounds the table as he sums up Johnny and Isaac's mentality in a series of phrases.
“You gotta have a memory of an elephant.”
Pound
“You gotta be slick like a fox.”
Pound
“You gotta have the heart of a lion.”
He doesn’t bang the table before his last line.
“And you have to move like a turtle — slow and efficient.”
James has a notes tab dedicated to quotes he’s heard from others or read from books like Proverbs or Tuesdays with Morrie. They are his “tools” for different seasons of life. Longtime Colts reporter Mike Chappel calls these “Edgeisms.”
Behind the poker face is a wise mind.
And a man who feels.
The Colts’ lifelong impact on James
The Colts decided to move on from James in 2006, electing to pay Wayne, Dwight Freeney and Dallas Clark instead. James was at peace and still is. He understands it’s “business.”
But Harris saw the hurt.
“He wouldn’t say it, but you could see it,” Harris said. “He wasn’t mad at the Colts at all. He always expressed his gratitude to the organization for helping him escape poverty. He had to leave the place and people that he had grown to love. Naturally, anyone would get hurt from that.”
Former Colts quarterback Peyton Manning once told his father, Archie, that James was the “best teammate (I) ever had.” To Marvin Harrison, James became a confidant as the two often discussed life after football during practice.
Twenty years later, James still recognizes “those conversations meant something.”
“Every day those conversations sharpen each other, visualizing what life's gonna be like and things you’re doing to position yourself,” James said. “They became true friends. We were able to build something and turn Indianapolis into a football town.
“Some people are just teammates, and some go to different levels. Those relationships are genuine because they weren’t just about football. I’m most grateful for the relationships built.”
James once responded in shock when a college teammate told him he had a mother and father. Raised by a single mother, he didn’t have a direct blueprint. But he had examples like Johnny and Isaac. Like Irsay.
When the two first met, Irsay gave James an outfit for his baby daughter and talked about hip-hop. After James tore his ACL in Week 7 of the 2001 season, Irsay told his three daughters, Carlie, Casey, and Kalen, that James would fly home with them instead of on the team plane.
”He had never done that before, and never once after has he done that,” Kalen said. “He was like, ‘This is an emotional time for him, and he’s in a lot of pain, so I don’t want anyone to bother him.’”
Kalen said letting James go at the end of the 2005-2006 season was “one of the hardest decisions” Irsay made. But the two had already developed an unbreakable bond, epitomized by Irsay giving James a Super Bowl ring after the Colts won in 2007.
Wayne delivered it to James at Sean Taylor’s burial service in December 2007. James put the ring in a safe for 18 years. He didn’t wear it until Irsay’s funeral.
“It was fitting to wear it at the Big Man’s funeral. It was a nice gesture for him to see me in that light, so it came full circle,” James said. "Giving me something of such sentimental value was cool because in the league, you are looked at as just a number. But in that organization, you’re family."
Kalen said James “rose to the top very quickly” as the player the family would select to speak at Irsay’s funeral, noting that her father “loved him so much from the get-go.”
“He was that cool father figure, but all in one, a friend and father figure, and filled with so much wisdom and information,” James said of Irsay. “And then you start to understand, he gets you. We were different, but we connected. You realize this man is just a good, solid dude, and his heart is in the right place. But he’s not afraid to say what he's thinking and do what he says. That man did anything it took to help you out to become a great player.”
Irsay died on the day James’ youngest son, Euro, graduated from high school. A time of celebration met with the sting of death, a reality familiar to James.
Irsay showed James father-like intentionality. He would need to exercise it three years after leaving the Colts.
'Football didn't really matter'
James made the Super Bowl with the Cardinals in 2009. But as much as he could during Arizona’s improbable run, James was by Andia Wilson’s bedside at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla. as the mother to four of his children dealt with acute myeloid leukemia.
James was losing the woman he had known since eighth grade, the one with whom he had a “homemade relationship.” The one with a “pure soul” who was “as real as it comes.”
“I ain’t never experienced nothing like that in life. I’m sitting there, and it’s like, ‘OK, she got AML. You start looking it up, and then it’s like, ‘Yo, she's got a 30% chance of living.’ Now everything turns,” James said. “You are trying to go through the season but this shit is real. As you get closer to the season, her condition keeps deteriorating, and every time you come back, she’s less of a person. And you gotta balance it with the kids, because you ask, what if something happens?
“You don't even notice that you're broken, you just keep going through it. It's going to have some type of effect at some point. So you try to play through it, and you can mask a lot of things, but these things become your priority. That's how it was with me. Football didn’t really matter.”
Wilson died on April 14, 2009, 72 days after James played in the Super Bowl. The father now had to be the nurturer. James threw himself into emergency mode. He struggled at first. His other baby mothers stepped in. Julie encouraged him and told him to take initiative.
She said it took James time to step into the role. James knew he couldn’t replace Wilson. James’ oldest child, Qui, 28, praised her father for trusting the women in his life to serve as mother figures.
“There could be like anything else in life, he was not gonna fail at being a father,” Harris said.
James succeeded.
Qui is an attorney. Eyahna, 24, is a musician and graduated from Clark Atlanta three years ago. James isn’t ashamed of playing her new song, “Heavy,” on blast while driving through Miami in his Tesla.
Emani, 22, wants to be a plastic surgeon and will pursue a master’s degree at Meharry Medical College in the fall. James’ first son, Eden, 21, plays running back at Howard, where he won two conference championships and is pursuing a master’s in economics after completing his bachelor’s in three years. Jizzle, 21, plays basketball at Cincinnati, where Euro, 19, also attends.
James admits he wasn’t perfect as a father, but he’s satisfied. James is considering returning to school and getting a degree, with the hope of graduating the same year as Euro. Even if James doesn’t, his boast remains.
“I went six for six,” he said. “That's one of my proudest things, because they all got or are getting degrees, and I don't have a degree.”
But they have his wisdom. His words of advice. Passed down from Grandma Annie’s couch. From Julie’s magazine. From summers with Uncle Isaac and Johnny.
“Despite all the things my dad dealt with, he always told me it’s what came with being the man of the household. I still gotta make sure I provide and take care of those I set to take care of,” Eden said. “Now that I'm starting to have a much greater awareness of what's going on, that's hard.
“I'm in college, and I'm over here complaining about some minor stuff. I can only imagine what he went through, but he takes pride in being intentional with us, and he’s accepted that responsibility.”
‘He’s finally living for him'
It’s Thursday. James is on his way back to S47 after his second workout of the week. A driver who is attempting to turn puts up his two hands in anger at James, who is the only one crossing the busy street, while a group of people remains on the sidewalk.
James, with his earphones in, slightly lifts his finger and points ahead. The walking signal is on. He’s in his own world, yet he manages to analyze everything. The driver concedes. He puts up his hand to apologize. James’ situational awareness and calm demeanor win the battle.
James makes it to his hangout spot. He didn’t favor its pizza on Wednesday, so he settled for broccoli this time. Per usual, soda is on the table, hookah at his mouth, and digital chess occupies his fingers. The game is James’ pastime.
James, an owner of multiple nightclubs and Goodfellas Pizza & Wings in Atlanta, begins to discuss his goals. Establish a nightclub in Houston. Open a Goodfellas Pizzas and Wings in Indianapolis. James loves to walk, but he’s still debating whether to buy an electric bike for when he’s in Miami. He’s certain about wanting a private jet. It may come in handy if he assumes media roles in the future, a decision he's mulling.
James has long poured into others. But now, “he’s finally living for him,” Harris said.
Future trips come up. Houston at the end of the month. South Africa in early March. William “World Wide” Wesley, the executive vice president of the New York Knicks, FaceTimed him at Prime 112 and told him to come to New York. A trip to the Big Apple may be imminent.
James is still smoking, but the night is done for a middle-aged man sitting in the back of the restaurant near the bathroom. The man puts his laptop in a computer bag and makes his way to James’ table for the second time this week.
On Monday, there was shock. “Are you who I think you are?” he asked while putting up a “U” sign to pay homage to Miami, where James played college football. Today, there’s a sense of familiarity. “Go Canes. Good to see you again,” he says in a more relaxed voice. “Alright, buddy, you too,” James says.
It’s common for people to still call out to James in Florida. But James is fully aware there’s another set of people waiting to call out his name and embrace him like old times. They’re in the heart of the Midwest.
More on James: 'Immortalized ... Inmate No. 3-3-6 in the Pro Football Hall of Fame'
He’s “one call away,” he says, eager to return, having “nothing bad to say” about the city that helped raise him.
Whenever James is needed, he’ll be home.
“I was a kid when I went to an Indy — a 20-year-old kid — and now it’s been 20 years since I left Indianapolis,” James says before immediately correcting himself. “Well, since I left football, because I’m always part of Indianapolis.”
From gold teeth to gold jacket: Colts legend Edgerrin James paved own path to hall of fame
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: The making of Edgerrin James: Gold teeth, Colts Big Man and Grandma Annie
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