Russell Maryland was the No. 1 pick of the 1991 NFL Draft and a three-time Super Bowl champion who finished his career with the Green Bay Packers.
This will be a special Father’s Day for Maryland. His son, RJ, is a rookie tight end with the Packers.
“It’s an incredible feeling to know that he even has a shot to do something that I was able to do all those years ago,” Russell Maryland said. “If anybody has a son or a daughter, for that matter, but in this case, the son to make it to the highest level of the professional ranks of the NFL, it’s always a special thing. So, I am 100 – 1,000 – percent behind him.”
Maryland’s final NFL season was 2000, when he started 16 games for the Packers. The next phase of his life was just as exciting.
“To see a kid get out there and take charge of something and really work to be really good at something – and it doesn’t matter if it’s sports – it’s rewarding,” he said. “I have two older daughters. They were track athletes, volleyball athletes, but they were also cheerleaders. And I spent the better part of my retirement being a cheerleader dad, a volleyball dad, a chauffeur to volleyball and track meets.
“And so just to see your kids doing something, making something of themselves, and not having idle time and really working towards being the best at something is really a fun thing. And it could be playing the flute or the bassoon or whatever. So, I’m really, really excited to see him try to take it to the next level.”
Russell has fond memories of mornings waiting for the bus to take RJ to school.
“We’d get outside and, if it was basketball season and he was doing basketball, we’d work on right-hand dribble, left-hand dribble, work on your shooting form right outside on the street waiting for the bus for 10 minutes. And if it was football season, then we’d throw the football, catch the football, and just do that for 10 minutes before the bus came.
“And, by God, by the time the week was out, he had 50 minutes extra working on different skills. We did that over years and years of time. I was just glad, for one, that I had the time as a dad to be able to do that and, for two, that I had the ability to be able to work with my son on something that he absolutely loved, and I loved to see him do.”
RJ Maryland’s start in the sport began when he was 6 or 7 years old playing flag football. It didn’t take long for Russell to figure out that his son might be more than just pretty good.
“We didn’t put the pads on him until middle school,” Russell said. “Here in Texas, they come out of the womb with pads on and they play early. We just took it in stride. I said I wasn’t going to rush him to anything.
“He played quarterback and he could play all the positions in flag football. He was a great passer, but he was also a great, of course, pass catcher, and he was a great runner. He really had the ability to calculate angles. If he knew a guy was coming at him at a certain angle, he knew how to avoid that kid or make the kid miss. And, conversely, if he was playing defense, he knew how to take the correct angles to pull a flag. He just had an uncanny ability at an early age.”
Russell was an All-American defensive tackle at the University of Miami. As a senior in 1989, he won the Outland Trophy as the nation’s top lineman.
RJ, though, gravitated toward the offensive side of the ball. At Southlake Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas, he caught 65 passes for more than 1,100 yards and 14 touchdowns as a senior. At SMU, he finished his career with 1,495 receiving yards – most in program history by a tight end – and 19 touchdowns.
“He played defense probably for a couple weeks [early in his football life], and then he found out that he’d rather try to avoid the tackle than actually come in and make some tackles,” Russell said with a hearty laugh. “So, he turned out to be really good at catching the ball and be really fast, to boot. So, I figured, ‘Hey, Dad was pretty fast, but he couldn’t catch worth a damn.’ There was only two places to go for me: the defense or the bench.
“When I figured out he was really good at catching the ball, I said, ‘Hey, offense is for you, Son.’”
Russell said it was a “bummer” that his son wasn’t drafted, but he quickly saw the positive of him having a chance with Green Bay.
“To be able to hear from the Packers, the team that I was very familiar with, a team that’s really a good team with solid players, a team with great coaching, I said, ‘You know what? This might not be a bad thing. At least you’re getting a shot and at least you’re getting a legitimate shot with a good team.’
“That was really my reaction to say, ‘Hey, you got the shot. Even though it’s probably not where you want to be [as an undrafted free agent], it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish up and how you finish up.”
Russell said he didn’t pressure RJ to play football. He supported him in whatever he tried and focused on a positive approach to coaching.
“The best advice is to sit back and be slow to criticize, always turn it into positive,” he said. “It’s easy to be negative. It’s easy to be critical in a bad way and say, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t do this’ or ‘You can’t do this’ or ‘You’re not doing this.’
“You have to turn things into a positive and say, ‘Hey, you could do this a little bit better’ or ‘Maybe if you did this a certain way’ or ‘I’ve seen the greatest do it this way. Why don’t you try this?’ So, I just think you have to be very careful not to make your critiques negative and you always have to turn things into a positive. I think kids respond to that a lot better than the other way.”
Russell’s not only proud of his son for making it to the NFL. He’s proud of the person he’s become, which is all any dad could ask for from his kids.
“I’m very proud,” he said. “RJ doesn’t say a whole lot. He’s very observant, he’s a quick study, and he is very smart. Whenever you see any of your kids really be able to excel in that manner, whatever they set out to do, whether it’s a scientist or studying to be a lawyer or in the NFL, it’s always a great thing to see him using the best of his abilities to be the best that he can be at what he is trying to be the best at.
“So, I’d have to say that’s really the great thing about watching the kid come up. And the fact of the matter that it was something that I was able to excel in, it makes it all that more special to see him attempting to do the same thing, as well.”
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