Made in New Orleans: Deion Jones Tries to Be Next Katrina Kid to Take over NFL

There’s a special group of young NFL players and top prospects who liken themselves to savages and consider themselves battle-tested in an extraordinary way. The members of this group of about a dozen Southerners, all between the ages of 21 and 27, have one thing in common. 

As teenagers, just as they were molding their football careers, one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history turned their lives upside down.

Like Odell Beckham Jr., Jarvis Landry, Eddie Lacy, Tyrann Mathieu, Kendrick Lewis, Mike Wallace, Landon Collins, D.J. Fluker, Alfred Blue, Keenan Lewis, Chris Clark and former LSU teammate/future star Leonard Fournette, rising 2016 NFL draft prospect Deion “Debo” Jones survived Hurricane Katrina. 

When the Louisiana-born-and-bred linebacker is drafted later this month, he’ll join that group of mean-streaking stars at the NFL level, but he’ll be one of the league’s first Katrina kids who went through that experience as an actual kid. 

It’s now been over 10 years since that Atlantic hurricane struck the Gulf Coast, killing over 1,200 and displacing over 1 million Gulf residents. Louisiana was the hardest-hit state; New Orleans was the hardest-hit city. That’s where Jones was, just starting sixth grade, when his life changed forever.

“Coming back from that makes you feel like you can come back from anything,” Jones said. “From having to move from where you grew up and make a new start and still have the resiliency to come back and rebuild and keep the tradition of New Orleans alive.”

 

11-Year-Old Nomad

Just as his life in sports was beginning to take off, Katrina forced 10-year-old Deion Jones to live out of a suitcase for half a year. He and his family were fortunate that their townhouse on Kabel Drive in the city’s West Bank neighborhood of Algiers wasn’t totaled, but the damage—combined with a lack of city resources in the aftermath—still forced them out of their home for about six months.

Living where they do, the Jones family had encountered big storms. So when Katrina first hit, Jones—then an only child—and his parents, Cal and Tahonas, packed some bags for what Deion figured would be a short stay with his maternal grandparents in Magnolia, Mississippi. 

“I figured I’d be able to go back like nothing happened, but it wasn’t that at all,” he said. “It wasn’t that at all.”

After a few days in Magnolia, Cal Jones connected with his mother, Montrell, who waited out the storm in the Superdome with her new husband but by then had relocated to Houston. So the family crossed back through Louisiana to unite in Houston before migrating to Duncanville, Texas, just outside of Dallas. That’s when it became apparent—based on the aftermath in New Orleans—that the Jones family would be interim Texans for an indefinite period of time.

“My biggest concern was will I be able to go back home?” Deion said. “That’s where I grew up, where I had all my friends and childhood memories. I was just worried if I was gonna be able to finish playing football with my friends.”

The Jones family wasn’t sure if or when it would return to New Orleans, but while living on the road in Dallas, Montrell Jones became sick and passed away. They returned to New Orleans to bury her, and they stayed. 

The entire ordeal—the displacement, as well as the loss of his beloved grandmother—altered young Deion’s perspective and expedited his maturation.

 

Katrina Made Them Savages

Pretty soon, kids coming up will be too young to remember Katrina. That doesn’t mean they won’t feel the impact and can’t be influenced by Katrina-surviving big brothers and sisters, cousins, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. Katrina’s impact may fade as firsthand accounts evaporate, but it’ll likely never die. 

Still, there’s something special about this group. It’s almost as if Katrina made them men before their peers to the north, east and west. That might cause some resentment, but it has also given them unique perspectives on football, life and the world around them. Most—and we’ve already seen this at the NFL level from guys like Beckham, Landry and Fluker—have chips on their shoulders, and Jones is no exception. 

In the fall, when Alabama football fans made a banner mocking LSU by urging the Crimson Tide to “finish what Katrina started,” Jones responded the next day on Instagram with a simple yet fierce three-word message.

“Katrina made SAVAGES!” read the post, which featured an intense picture of Jones in action:

“Katrina never broke us,” Beckham posted on his Instagram account the same day, along with a picture of Fournette scoring a touchdown, “it made us savages.” And Fournette also used the term “savages” in a subtler tweet:

Inspire us to go harder love my savages…….

— 7⃣ (@_fournette) November 6, 2015

The raw comparison on its own is jarring, but I believe the context for that popular savage metaphor comes from what Jones said about how Katrina “makes you feel like you can come back from anything.”

And there are certainly degrees associated with the experiences that stemmed from the hurricane. For Jones, it was a major life disruption. For Fournette, who was forced to live on an interstate overpass for nearly a week, it was life-threatening. For Fluker, whose family never returned after losing its home, it meant a new life entirely. 

Beyond social media, it’s clear a lot of these guys share a feisty attitude. Landry has developed a reputation as a scrappy receiver who fights for every catch, every yard. Clark has the same reputation as an offensive tackle. Fluker is a nasty interior offensive lineman who trains with as much fire as anyone in football. The NFL.com scouting report on Jones lauds him for his “willing, aggressive mindset.” In the same report on Kendrick Lewis, he was referred to as “aggressive” and praised for his “vocal leadership.” Collins is referred to as “aggressive and tough with a desire to intimidate.”

But what’s clear is that shared resiliency regarding a somewhat mutual experience has created a strong kinship among this particular group of football players.

“Not a lot of people have been through that,” said Landry, a Pro Bowl wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins who grew up just outside of New Orleans and spent three years at …

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