QB James Tabary's road toward NFL minicamp and beyond filled with ups and downs
 

Take a walk inside the River Road Flea Market and you’ll spot everything you never wanted, and quite possibly the one thing you never knew you had to have. That’s the beauty of it.

Dust-covered china, books filled with poems from no-name authors, cedar chests and dining room sets fill the cyan-colored two-story shop, with weather-worn flower pots, wrought-iron benches and old car dealership logo signs cluttering the exterior patio.

From there on Friday afternoons, you can hear the frequent smattering of yells, some with encouragement, others of ridicule. Wyatt Harris, a bald black man with dark wraparound sunglasses and a black Dri-Fit long sleeve, barks orders at his smattering of football talent — past, present and future.

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The six players and Harris cycle through their precise sets of routes on Hell Friday, a once-a-week gauntlet some of the area’s hopeful pro football players pay handsomely for in order to torture their bodies to the brink of exhaustion. On the field at David “Pro” Scheurman Stadium, James Tabary’s cleats grind against the sparse turf as he drops back.

His former McNeese State teammate David Hamm darts downfield and gets maybe 10 yards away on a short crossing route. He pauses briefly, pivots and takes off left.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop!” Harris yells.

Tabary senses the mis-timed route, delays his throw by a fraction of a second and manages to hit his roommate in stride, but not without consequence.

“Don’t save his ass, James!” Harris chides. “Give it to him!”

But that ability to save what looks like a broken situation, it’s become habit by now. Right now, the pro quarterback hopeful is on a team of one, training to reach the ultimate payoff of landing on an NFL training camp roster. But he’s been in survival mode in the sport almost since he picked up a football.

His young career in the game has been a product of snubs, playing in others’ shadows, injuries, team dismissals, benchings and one phone call that almost never came.

“I’d rather go through war again than go through what he went through,” said his father Jimmy, a former Sergeant Major in the Marines. “And yet, he still withstood it.

“Probably 98 percent of kids would have quit with the (stuff) he went through.”

Then, one day, Tabary’s phone finally buzzed. A week-and-a-half after it was supposed to come, the Saints called just days before the team’s rookie minicamp back in May.

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