Father who died when Texans receiver was 9 motivates rookie
By Brian T. Smith
Photo: Brett Coomer, Chron.com
The name will last as long as Jaelen Strong lives.
John Rankin.
Jaelen's father and biggest supporter. Big John, who stood 6-8, starred in college basketball at Drexel, then rose higher as a respected Philadelphia police detective.
"He and Jaelen were extremely tight," said Alexis Strong, Jaelen's mother.
Rankin's name is tattooed on Jaelen's chest and stretches across his heart. It's the closest the Texans rookie wide receiver will come to touching his dad on Father's Day.
While sons across the world will reach out or reconnect Sunday - many bonding with their dads through the uniting power of sports - all Jaelen has left of the man who helped create him are memories, photographs, passed-down stories and the name permanently inked on his 21-year-old body.
Jaelen only got nine years with the father who's still at the center of his life. When the No. 70 overall pick of the 2015 NFL draft was first falling in love with football, cancer was killing his dad. Rankin fought off leukemia for two years. But Big John was forced to eventually give in April 2003 at age 36.
Twelve years later, Jaelen is just like his father in his prime. Proud and hard-headed. Guarded on first glance, then warm and open when trust is formed. A listener, then a speaker.
Twelve years after Rankin's death, Jaelen is closer than ever to honoring his father's name. The wideout selected after Andre Johnson departed will need strong seasons and huge numbers to make No. 11 matter and last in Houston. But the moment Jaelen became a Texan, Rankin's legacy grew. And when Jaelen finally sprints across NRG Stadium before 71,000 fans in Week 1, Big John will have a boy who played in the NFL.
"I'm picking up where he left off," Jaelen said. "It's my motivation."
***
Jaelen's father was always going to be around. Even when he wasn't.
Rankin and Alexis never married and only lived together until Jaelen was 2. But the couple remained close after they separated, with Rankin promising he'd never be like the deadbeat dads he saw on Philly's streets.
"Jaelen's dad was like my best friend," said Alexis, who raised her family in the Mount Airy section of the city. "Afterwards, we were really good friends."
So were Shawn Wilson and Rankin. As kids, they played on opposing teams in the Sonny Hill summer basketball league. As young men, they entered the law-enforcement world by pairing up at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution in Graterford. As cops, they took their police test at the same time on the same day in the same classroom, then were hired by the city together and started the academy as a duo.
"(Rankin) was one of the best detectives in the city of Philadelphia, just because of the fact that he had such a stronghold in the community," said Wilson, who retired as a sergeant in 2011 after 20 years on the force.
Big John and Jaelen were always tight. It was the basketball father and the football son. It was the man who cared and the boy who loved his dad back. Rankin knew the dangers of a policeman's life, though. Time could stop anywhere at any moment. So Jaelen's dad made a private vow to the friend who understood the fragility of their world.
"If it ever became a time when (we were) not here due to death, we promised each other that we would step in and do the best that we could and help to raise each other's children," Wilson said.
***
Jaelen found football at 6.
Rankin was diagnosed with leukemia when his son was 7.
Big John fought, initially beating his cancer into remission. Jaelen handled his father's changed world like a grown man, telling adults how to wash their hands and what scrubs to wear when they visited a weakened Rankin.
"Jaelen was really mature, even going through the different stages with his dad. … He was very knowledgeable," Alexis said.
A year later, Rankin's leukemia returned and wouldn't let go. A bone-marrow transplant didn't fully take. Big John was fighting a battle that couldn't be won.
But the father still had to watch his son play football. When Rankin was supposed to be confined inside, he was instead wrapped in blankets at a stadium. As concerned friends monitored his body temperature, Big John took in one of the best games of Jaelen's little league life.
"He made it, even when he was sick," Jaelen said. "He was supposed to be on bedrest and he made it out to my games."
Rankin got his final football vision. Then came the final word.
"We were told he wouldn't live long," Alexis said. "We were told right after Jaelen's birthday, and their birthdays are less than two weeks apart."
Jaelen's father died three months after his son turned 9.
Before Big John left the world, another pact was made between two Philly cops.
"He asked me to look out for Jaelen in any way that I could," said Wilson, who is now known as Jaelen's uncle. "I promised him that I would do that. And I never gave up on that promise and I never will."
***
Jaelen carried even more weight after his father's death. A sporting life once balanced by basketball and track became solely devoted to football. A 15-year-old stuck at 5-8 suddenly sprouted, absorbing the height passed down by Big John.
"Jaelen was stronger than I was when we found out about it," said Jordan Strong-Croom, Jaelen's half-sister. "Jaelen was like, 'It's OK. He's in a better place. He's fine. He's out of pain.' I'm just like, 'Are you OK?' "
The future Texan was and he wasn't.
Through high school, the receiver was known as Jaelen Strong Rankin. When Jaelen was first making his own name at West Catholic in Philadelphia, he kept seeing and hearing a similar name everywhere. On plaques, on walls and out of the mouths of admirers, who saw so much of Big John - a West Catholic star and Drexel's all-time second-leading scorer - in his growing son.
Instead of being honored, Jaelen was crushed. For the first time, he allowed himself to feel the pain of his father's death. While other dads watched their boys up close from the stands, Jaelen could no longer touch his father in real life.
"I thought that he would be OK to go there," Alexis said. "But it just really hurt him that he could see his father's name and he wasn't there."
Jaelen "went off the rails" during his sophomore year. While his mother enlisted a therapist to try and reach her son and West Catholic refused to give up on Rankin's promising young boy, Jaelen became caught up in the football life. School was meaningless. The game was all that mattered.
"I was one mistake away from getting kicked out of everything and never being here," Jaelen said.
As college approached, he clearly had the talent for Division I ball. But Jaelen was academically ineligible and big-name programs were out of his reach. He would have to cross the country, leave his family and Philadelphia behind, and enroll at Pierce Community College in Los Angeles, just to keep playing football. He would have to make his own name for the first time.
"It was something that was humbling," Alexis said. "But it needed to happen, it had to happen, because it forced him to dig down and work hard."
***
Texans coach Bill O'Brien is pushing Jaelen hard. Arizona State coach Todd Graham helped shape and make the 2015 third-round pick. But it was the anonymity of Pierce that gave Jaelen his real strength. No family, few friends, little money. His own name and his father's legacy on the line, more than 2,700 miles away from where everything began.
"When I think about it, it's crazy," said Jaelen, who was forced to sit out his first year at Pierce, then received more than 10 Division I scholarship offers before choosing the Sun Devils. "But at the time, I was just so motivated. It was just like whatever I had to do, I was doing. I wasn't counting my steps. … If I had counted my steps, I probably wouldn't be here. I would've been like, 'No way am I doing that.' "
All-American teams, Pac-12 honors and a Biletnikoff Award nomination followed. The NFL draft waited. As Rankin was dropped from Jaelen's full name, the receiver stood taller than his father ever did in the sporting world. Big John helped make him. But Jaelen made his football name on his own.
"Nobody knows me better than myself," Jaelen said. "Going through everything I went through, can't nothing really break me. No matter how hard anybody tries to break me, they'll frustrate themselves just trying to break me. That's the gift I have."
***
Sweat pours across Jaelen's face. NRG Stadium, shadowed by rain-filled clouds, frames his body in the background.
On Jaelen's chest, a white No. 11. Cradled in his right arm, an unscratched Texans helmet that has one word taped across the top: Strong. Beneath Jaelen's new blue-and-red jersey, tattoos that mark the arc of his life, including one honoring his father that stretches across the young receiver's heart.
"Even when people really don't see it, I understand what's going on myself," Jaelen said. "I feel everything that's going on."
Strong-Croom moved to Houston four months ago, having no idea her brother would be drafted by the Texans. Wilson will soon arrive, keeping his policemen's pact intact and making sure Jaelen surrounds himself with the right people in his new world. Alexis is already figuring out which games she can fly in from Philly for.
"In a million years, I never would've thought that, from age 6, this is where he would be in our life," she said.
Jaelen is still figuring out who he can trust. He's guarded and quiet, proud and hard-headed, just like his father.
"I know myself so well that when I don't show people right away who I am, they start doubting me and they start getting, 'Oh, what's wrong with this guy?' " Jaelen said.
There was always another side to Big John. Warm, open and inviting. That's the real Jaelen, his family says. The one John Rankin would be so proud of on Father's Day.
"That's why he goes so hard on the football field," Wilson said. "Because he cherishes it, he respects it and he loves it, just like he did his father."
