Najee Harris

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Najee may have dodged recruiting questions with an unparalleled skill – much to the frustration of those in recruiting who consumed Najee updates with vigor – but in other areas this “enigma” is translucent.

The conversation shifts from Nick Saban to burrito shops, and Najee is clearly in his zone. He stands up to tell another story.

He points to the walls of this standard office breakroom, cutting the space into a third to leave six by eight feet of space. Najee then points to the corner: “There was a bed, a bed and then that’s the door.”

At one time, he can’t remember exactly when, that area held his dad, sister and two of his brothers. It takes a minute, but he recalls the building was called “The Soup Kitchen” in Richmond, California.

“The food was downstairs,” Najee said. “There’s like ants crawling over the food and hella homeless people. … We stayed there for almost like a year, probably. But I stayed in hella shelters before. When that didn’t work we stayed at a family member’s house. We stayed in the car.

“Staying in a house is the best thing.”

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“Najee, how many places have you lived?”

“What the hell?” Najee says. His expression matches his exasperation at the absurdity of the question. Then he starts to count on his fingers, muttering while he tries to get the order straight.

“Richmond, Antioch, Pennock, Hercules … It was just everywhere in the Bay Area. I stayed in Oakland for a little bit at a friend’s house, I stayed in Pittsburg. I stayed in hella places. Let’s see … a lot.

“You’d have to ask my mom.”

Tianna Hicks doesn’t know either. When asked what she considers Najee's hometown, she can only reply “he was raised in the West Coast.” Born in Martinez, California – a place Najee never actually lived – he bounced around with his family throughout childhood.

Ping-ponging within the Bay Area, to Seattle and back, Najee was a child raised in upheaval.

“Sh**, I’m about to move again,” Najee said when asked if he’s ever felt steady. “Yeah … Fu**. It’s not steady. You’ve got to be ready for anything.”

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Najee is the youngest of five children of Tianna and Curt Harris – Najee also has four half-siblings from Curt’s side.

Jamal Gregory, Najee’s uncle and Curt’s brother, remembers Najee as quiet, yet competitive, in his younger years. A standard family activity for the clan would be watching movies and eating a special dinner, normally pizza.

The traces of ordinary ended there.

Tianna had her children young and hadn’t earned her high school diploma early in Najee's life. Curt never held a steady job and Tianna said he abused drugs and went through numerous addictions. That caused issues and financial strains that resulted in frequent moves. Najee can’t remember staying in one place for more than a year when he was younger as the family bounced from apartments, to homes of family friends, to shelters.

Even in the rare comfortable housing situation, home life provided little safe harbor.

Both Tianna and Jamal said Curt was verbally abusive toward his children and Tianna. Tianna said the abuse went further than vocal barrages. She said Curt's whoopings of the kids would be “bad beatings.” Tianna would then step in, leading to fights between the pair.

“Najee didn’t see me with bruises as much as my older children had, but it was still a lot,” Tianna told 247Sports. “They witnessed a lot of stuff.”

Curt, who currently lives in Seattle and hasn’t spoken to Najee “in a while,” admits he cursed at his kids and said he had a lot of “frustration” that would lead to fights with Tianna and those whoopings. “I regret that today,” he told 247Sports. He also said there were times Tianna got mad and started slapping him, but he’d “never” hit back.

“I came from banging, straight up,” Curt said. “My mentality was a fire lighter – one minute I could be this, one minute I could be that. I was very aggressive until I was like 21, 22, 23. … I didn’t give a fu** back then. It takes a while to give a fu**.

“It was truly a freaking nightmare, and I wish it didn’t happen.”

Najee has grown into a happy, polite young adult. While in New York he insisted a pregnant woman on the subway take his seat. He may have kept reporters guessing at the Army All-American bowl in San Antonio, but he stopped and smiled for every picture request he received, especially when kids scurried up to meet the one of the nation’s top players.

But the Najee of a decade ago, in only the way Najee can describe him, “was a little a**hole.”

Witnessing plenty and without much of an anchor in youth, Najee, always large for his age, was a deviant. In kindergarten Najee couldn’t go a day without the school calling Tianna to calm him down. Once, he destroyed an entire classroom – tables, chairs – to the point the teacher had to pull the entire class out of the room for their safety. When the principal entered to talk to Najee, he kicked the principal in the stomach. Later, after they locked him in the room in an attempt to pacify him, he escaped and hid under a bus.

For many this could easily be attributed to youth and immaturity, but Tianna admits Najee had anger issues. A few years later in a Seattle park, a kid made fun of Najee. So Najee picked up a pool stick and let fly a furry of rasps leaving “hella marks on his back.”

Najee relates these stories with an abashed humor now.

A shift to somber reflection doesn’t take long, however.

“Everything has changed,” he said. “I had to grow up at a young age. … You’ve just got to live with it.”

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