There is much to Ken Lucas, and a lot of it doesn't fit.
He doesn't fit the image of a football player. He's not macho or loud. He's not quick with words. Although he has the body fat of a brick, he doesn't intimidate with his physical presence or a cold stare.
He rarely wears T-shirts or sweatshirts, shorts or jeans. After a game, he'll put on a loud suit he often helps design. In big stripes and 1960s fedora, you could see him with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. He'd be the one who didn't talk.
“Ken is very interesting,” says Carolina Panthers receiver Muhsin Muhammad. “He's easy to get along with. I'll say he's very analytical. He's a thinker.”
Lucas, 29, says he's an introvert. But when he came to the Panthers from Seattle as an expensive free agent in 2005, he knew his role would change. He was a veteran now, and although uncomfortable with the media, he felt compelled to represent the team.
But there were better and quicker quotes, and his profile simmered until Steve Smith's sucker punch broke his nose in training camp. Only then did Lucas begin to attract a crowd.
If he had the personality of former Panthers safety Mike Minter, a natural leader, we'd be outraged that Lucas was not in the Pro Bowl every February. He's that good. But we know as little about him as any four-year starter on the team.
To learn more, he and I talk twice last week. Call his cell phone, and you get a two-word message: “Mr. Lucas.”
Before he responds to a question, it's as if he arranges the words and thinks about how they'll sound before he sets them free.
“I'm so big on perception,” says Lucas. “I like attention but I don't like attention. If that makes sense.”
It might if you wore something other than a suit with baggy pants and a garter around the sleeve of your arm. You think you might be noticed when you walk into Chili's on Rea Road, plop your expensive clothes on a bar stool and sip water?
“I'm a loner,” says Lucas. “I don't have to fit with others. I've got a swagger when I'm by myself. People see that and know I'm confident. I dress like I want to dress and can sit and drink water or sit on somebody's floor. I'm from Mississippi.”
If there's a contest between liking attention and not liking attention, liking is running up the score. His silver Rolls-Royce Phantom almost ensured it. Strangers tend to stare.
“Especially in Charlotte,” says Lucas, almost exasperated. “People would slow down and look. ‘Who's driving that car?'”
To avoid the curious, he dumped the Phantom and bought an upscale SUV. Nothing about it stands out except, perhaps, that it is extremely orange.
“Coming from Cleveland, you know, once you get a little money, you can get nice things,” says Panthers guard Keydrick Vincent, who played with Lucas at Mississippi. “He's not boastful, he's not arrogant.”
And he isn't always introverted. Before Kansas City's first possession at Bank of America Stadium last week, Lucas jumped and pointed and exhorted the crowd. And he didn't care who saw him.
Told this, he laughs. “We get to change our personality when we're on the field,” Lucas says. “When I put on that football uniform and helmet, I feel like I'm wearing a big mask. I could be like Sir Purr (the team mascot) and do what he did as long as you couldn't see my face.”
When he entered Mississippi in 1997, the upperclassmen didn't see his face. They saw his hair. And they told him they were going to remove it. They were going to shave the heads of all the freshmen. Keydrick Vincent submitted. What was the alternative? Run, and they'd shave your eyebrows, too.
“Old Ken decided to run anyway,” says Vincent. “He got caught. He had to have his picture taken on picture day without eyebrows. Had to be the funniest thing. That's Ken Lucas right there.”
It was Lucas' hair, and he didn't have to give it up just to be one of the guys.
Alas, when you're willing to be different, you pay. If they don't come at you with shears, they'll come at you with one-liners.
Lucas speaks too softly to convince his teammates that he is a superior athlete with big-time receiving and running skills.
But what about your 43-yard interception return against Kansas City? We saw what you could do.
“I'm glad you did because a lot of other guys they hate on me,” says Lucas. “I don't know what it is about Luke.”
When teammates talk basketball, they dismiss him, tell him he can't play.
“Everybody just laughs at me,” says Lucas. “I don't what it is. I guess it's just my demeanor.”
Who says this? “Everybody,” says Lucas.
Who will defend you? Who will tell the truth?
“Keydrick,” Lucas says about his old friend.
Keydrick, what impresses you most about the 43-yard interception return?
Vincent is incredulous.
“All Ken had to do was run down the right,” says the 325-pound Vincent. “I would have scored on that one. But Ken was like a little ballerina, wheee, wheee. That's Ken. Doing a whole bunch of nothing. That's my guy. I love him to death. But get the TD!”
Vincent also recalls a touchdown pass Lucas dropped at Mississippi as a freshman wide receiver, and says Lucas will pretend he can't remember it.
Do you recall a certain dropped touchdown pass?
“Don't believe anything the young man says,” Lucas says of Vincent. “He's a compulsive liar.”
Vincent laughs. He says he's going to have a TV show someday and if Lucas is nice he'll try to get him on it.
If the running skills of Lucas are questioned by teammates, his faith is not. Lucas grew up a devout Southern Baptist but is non-denominational now.
“You may say Jesus had on a blue robe and I may say he had on a red robe,” says Lucas. “So our beliefs are different. But the common thing is we all believe in the same person. So it's all about believing in something positive.”
That belief helped him through the episode with Smith.
Smith is the team's best receiver and Lucas is the team's best cornerback, and they prove it in drills. Years of pushing and grabbing and talking finally escalated. Smith was standing and Lucas was kneeling and Smith threw a right and broke Lucas's nose.
Although the Panthers suspended Smith for two games, Lucas forgave him.
Football players break noses; they don't have noses broken. But with the damage still apparent, Lucas – injured and out of uniform – joined his teammates in the locker room at Fanfest.
Players took turns embracing him. The loner was not alone. A Panthers official said at the time that if Carolina accomplishes anything this season, it's because of Lucas.
Lucas said then and says now that the team is closer because of what happened.
“Sometimes it takes a little adversity,” he says. “If it wasn't for the adversity I don't know if me and Steve would have the relationship we do now. Now I can truly say we're friends. I don't regret any moment of it. I had to be a sacrificial offering but at the same time it was for a bigger cause, like I told the world it would be.”
What bigger cause? “Everybody has each other's back and everybody is out there for the same common goal,” Lucas says of the Panthers. “And we put our selfish motives behind and do whatever it takes to win. And you can tell the difference. We're just out there enjoying ourselves and playing the game. If something bad happens, we're in it together. And if something good happens we enjoy it together.”
The man in the fedora, the man who goes his own way in every way, even if it costs him his eyebrows, is happy in a uniform.
“I feel like I'm part of something now,” says Lucas.
He fits.
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