From the Omaha World-Herald
Pheldarius Payne cried outside a football stadium in a state he'd never visited before. The tears didn't stop until a car pulled up ready to take him on an all-night drive. The early December evening was great for Payne, a starting defensive end for Lackawanna College. Playing in the junior-college national title game in Pittsburg, Kansas, he was a force in the trenches. Seven stops, including 2.5 for loss. He had the highlight of the game too — a fumble recovery he took 14 yards for a touchdown. And it all happened with Nebraska coach Scott Frost and staff members watching from the stands.
That weekend represents the zenith of a football career, so far, that almost didn't happen for the native of Suffolk, Virginia. Lackawanna lost the game 24-13, but there wasn't much time to mourn. Nebraska had sent a ride for Payne and his parents — it wasn't long before they were asleep heading to Lincoln for an official visit and an eventual future with the Huskers.
While Payne's route to quarterbacks is usually quick and straightforward, his path to major college football has been anything but. Shaky academics and underwhelming physical strength whittled his options to almost nothing out of Nansemond River High School despite a proven ability to repeatedly sneak into backfields. No scholarship D-lineman at Nebraska is listed as lighter or shorter than he is at 6-foot-3, 275 pounds.
But the man with nicknames like "Payne Train" and "House of Payne" has found himself in recent months. Wiser and stronger from two junior college years in Scranton, Pennsylvania, he shares a belief with Nebraska that they have found a change of pace in each other. That the best days are still to come.
"They say football's not life, but to me it really is," Payne said. "I know the Huskers are going to be ready to compete real soon. Everything is coming around, and I want to be a part of that."
The embarrassment that schoolwork caused Payne in high school scars him more than any physical injury. And he's collected his share of marks and turf burns.
Old Dominion wanted to offer him a scholarship but couldn't. When his first video highlights made the rounds as a sophomore, Virginia reached out and said he needed to improve his academics — then never spoke to him again. The worst, though, was when North Carolina coaches came to his school for a game.
"As soon as they saw my grades, they left," Payne said. "That definitely hurt. I didn't know grades mattered that much."
Intelligence wasn't the problem. Payne had been focused on joining the military like his father, so he figured school could wait. He changed course midway through high school when his father retired from the Navy and insisted he put in more effort. But the damage to his GPA was done.
Payne tried to attend a postgraduate school in Virginia and reclassify. But he couldn't do a single bench-press rep at 225 pounds. Coaches there considered him unable to play right away, so they couldn't take him.
Four hundred miles from home, Lackawanna was the only place willing to give Payne a fighting chance. Its coach, Mark Duda, saw a player nobody could block on the field. Perhaps his program could help remove the other obstacles holding him back.
Payne arrived as a 245-pound true freshman but still made 23 tackles (five sacks) in 2018. By the time he stood outside waiting for Nebraska to pick him up in Kansas in December 2019, he had added 30 more stops (12 for loss) with five QB hurries. His grades were steady and he had gained roughly 30 pounds of muscle, significantly improving his strength while never losing his elusiveness as a starter for the national runners-up.
"He'll beat people rushing the passer as cleanly as anybody you'll ever see in your life," Duda said. "He can make you miss in short spaces, and that's really a unique deal. People don't do that. His ability to make people miss is what makes him incredible."
Payne had pledged to NC State before his sophomore juco season but was beginning to draw more attention elsewhere. Nebraska offered in late November. Penn State and Syracuse had him on campus.
The visit to Lincoln left no doubt. When his parents flew home early — mother Johnnetta, a postal worker, and father Phelton, a shipyard worker, had to return to their jobs — Payne stuck around for an extra day. It felt like home. His family gave their blessing too. He silently committed that weekend, only a couple weeks before signing day.
"When you compare Big Ten and ACC, it's like night and day," Phelton Payne said. "Facilities, fans, they just don't compare."
Nebraska is recruiting big bodies on the defensive line. Then there's Payne, something of an outlier by design.
The Huskers prioritized size in the defensive trenches throughout the 2020 class with the likes of juco transfer Jordon Riley (6-6, 290) and Nash Hutmacher (6-5, 300). The 2019 cycle included Ty Robinson (6-6, 315) and another juco product, Keem Green (6-5, 315).
NU D-line coach Tony Tuioti said in March that while the Huskers generally seek large frames at the position to fill passing and rushing lanes, Payne (6-3, 275) creates a different kind of chaos and won't weigh much more than 280. The coach compared his skill set to departed Nebraska linemen Khalil and Carlos Davis, who clocked the fastest 40-yard-dash times of any interior linemen at the NFL combine last February.
"Pheldarius brings us that athletic defensive lineman that can win a one-on-one pass rush, that can win in space," Tuioti said. "We definitely needed that with missing the twins. That's why we put a high premium on trying to get somebody like him. He's gotta get bigger and stronger, obviously, but he has the athleticism that the twins had."
Frost called Payne "twitchy" for an inside player and someone who did an "unbelievable job" getting after quarterbacks at the top junior college level. Duda, Lackawanna's coach, said his former player could move well enough that he would have been a good tight end too. Payne sheds his blockers quickly, using pressure to help his team lead the country in interceptions.
"I think all his best football is ahead of him," Duda said. "You can't teach quickness — you either have it or you don't — and he has it. It's something that's going to make him a factor, probably pretty early."
Payne got his first taste of success when his fifth-grade team, the Bennett's Creek Warriors, won a Pop Warner national championship. The Payne Train was rolling that day, blowing up more than one bootleg attempt.
Basketball attracted Payne more as he grew. But he noticed he still had those Pop Warner moves as a sophomore on the junior-varsity football team. Then he realized he could get past varsity blockers with the same ease.
"I was like, 'Oh, shoot,'" Payne said. "'This might really be me.'"
The question isn't whether Payne's family will make it to Lincoln. It's how.
Support has always been strong for him, running 15 people deep at times the last two years for football games despite a seven-hour drive to Pennsylvania. Lots of siblings, aunts, nieces, a brother-in-law and more. One of the best social media images to come from Nebraska's offseason recruiting push was when Tuioti visited Payne's home in December and threw the bones with the entire bunch.
Will it be the same with Pheldarius playing 1,400 miles from home?
"That was going to be the only reason I didn't want to go to Nebraska," Payne said. "But my dad sat me down and said, 'You know how we are. We'll travel up there and you'll see us.'"
Phelton Payne, who answers the phone with a "Gooo Biiiig Reeed" chant, said this spring the family will figure out a way to be present. The elder Payne never had that experience — he played at Alabama State for a semester, then suddenly left to join the Navy without telling his coaches.
Pheldarius — whose name is a combination of the "Phel" from his dad and "Darius" at the recommendation of his mom's hairdresser — still follows the yes-sir, no-sir approach from a military upbringing. Perhaps too much so, his father jokes.
"I almost be like, 'Go out and break curfew,'" Phelton Payne said. "He still asks me when he comes from college if he can go out. I'm like 'Are you kidding me?' But I don't say anything. He's a high-character guy."
The family has dinner discussion about what Payne could do in Lincoln. A couple well-timed sacks could have swung a couple more games in Nebraska's favor in 2019, relatives agree. NU coaches have said his quickness off the line was already "professional level." What's next? They can't wait to see what happens when the lineman lines up on the edge in a key third-and-long situation.
Neither can the Huskers.
"He just popped up out of the blue these last two years," Phelton Payne said. "And people say, 'How did Nebraska come in at the end and steal a kid all the way on the East Coast?' A lot of coaches got upset about that."
