would get Wally Pipp\u2019d<\/a>, Neketta made certain her son kept his mind busy. \u201cMental pushups,\u201d she has long called it. And the best mental pushups, she figured, were hosting May football camps in Mississippi and Philly. She would not let Nakobe dwell on his injury or his fate thereafter.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat I would tell him was, you know, we don\u2019t know what God\u2019s plan is for you,\u201d Neketta said. \u201cGod\u2019s got the last say-so. And I always push God, you know what I\u2019m saying? Not God being this invisible person, like for some people, but God being helping people that you see every day. The God in you and showing love to people. I knew that if I got him busy in the community \u2026 you\u2019re gonna see the smiles and the happiness. And it has nothing to do with football.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neketta grew up country, which is to say her grandmother taught her how to drive a stick-shift 1978 Ford truck when she was in the sixth grade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a clunker,\u201d Neketta recalled.<\/p>\n
But she was happy to be driving. And this was the country, after all. So, of course, there was a reason a child needed to drive. Neketta\u2019s mother essentially enlisted her as their pocket of Tunica County\u2019s trash service. She\u2019d drive out to neighboring families, throw their trash in the pickup bed and haul it out to the dumpster a quarter of a mile outside of town.<\/p>\n
Neketta liked her job. She also liked delivering plates of food to neighbors from their family\u2019s Sunday dinners. Their extended family all lived in one home. Most families in Tunica did, too. The Rev. Jesse Jackson once called the region \u201cAmerica\u2019s Ethiopia\u201d due to its extreme poverty, and many homes lacked running water and electricity. Neketta said a 2,000-square-foot home would typically house 12 extensions of a family.<\/p>\n
Food was often scarce. Neketta\u2019s grandmother shared everything with her neighbors, including their Sunday dinners. \u201cTake them a plate,\u201d she\u2019d tell Neketta. Out went the plates. Out went the trash. Neketta said her interactions with the neighbors gave her \u201cthis euphoric feeling,\u201d a \u201chappiness that people have just being thankful of your presence,\u201d a thankfulness \u201cthat you\u2019re doing something that seems so small.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, I remember Miss Elizabeth, she was an old lady in the neighborhood, and she only had one leg,\u201d Neketta said. \u201cSo I remember my grandma saying, \u2018Go down there and mop for Miss Elizabeth.\u2019 I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Oh, mom, I don\u2019t wanna do that.\u2019 But then afterwards, she was so happy. And as you grow up, you see the value in just helping others. Because even when she passed away eventually, we were so sad in the community. She was a pillar of the community. So I learned early the value of taking care of elders and seeing after them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakobe spent a good portion of his childhood serving in nursing homes. In Horn Lake, Neketta, her sister, their aunt and cousin wanted to continue their family\u2019s principle of community service. They started a tradition they called the 12 Days of Christmas. They gathered their children for acts of daily service that started on Dec. 1, and they held a family party on the last day. (Nakobe\u2019s birthday is Dec. 13.) They bought 99-cent pairs of socks, bagged them with apples, oranges and peppermints and delivered them to nursing homes. They bought toys for kids in family shelters. They delivered meals to homeless shelters.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mama always just tried to make sure that we knew that we was blessed and to always be grateful,\u201d Nakobe said.<\/p>\n
Neketta left no other choice for Nakobe, his older brother, Nikolas, and younger sister, Brooklyn. When she took them on her Saturday work events, she pushed them through the early years of complaining about the Saturdays she\u2019d steal from them. \u201cI don\u2019t care!\u201d she\u2019d say. But by high school, they\u2019d bought in. They\u2019d bring along their friends. By Nakobe\u2019s junior year at Horn Lake High, most of their football team was helping with city cleanup days. Neketta permitted her kids \u201cFreestyle Fridays\u201d at the house, which was their day to host friends, eat pizza, play video games and play basketball outside.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was their day to look forward to,\u201d Neketta said. \u201cBecause they know Saturday, we up and chucking it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakobe is a tinkerer, which is to say he is often considering what is possible. When Neketta had him volunteer at veterans affairs facilities as a kid, he saw wounded people with no limbs and wondered how it would be to give them legs. He discovered prosthetics and considered developing them. Neketta steered him toward an engineering degree, which could lead him to medical school if that path became possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a math and science wiz,\u201d Neketta said.<\/p>\n
Nakobe knew his multiplications by first grade. And not just one times two, but 12 times 11, and so on. Neketta said it was a considerable gift given Nakobe also battled a severe speech impediment until middle school.<\/p>\n
Neketta emphasized schooling in their family. She never let her kids get a job. Beyond volunteering, she made it clear to them, \u201cYour job is school.\u201d Nakobe graduated from high school with a 4.3 GPA. As a five-star linebacker, he had scholarship offers from Harvard and Stanford to go along with his letters from Georgia and Alabama. Neketta preferred Stanford. Nakobe preferred playing in the Southeastern Conference. He said he wasn\u2019t going. She told him, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to tell me why.\u201d The next day, Nakobe presented his mother with a breakdown of California\u2019s cost of living, the average plane ticket price for her and other family members to visit, and other economic factors. \u201cYou can\u2019t afford for me to go to Stanford,\u201d he told her.<\/p>\n
His sly argument worked. He enrolled at Georgia and majored in mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe put the math on me,\u201d Neketta said. \u201cHe hit me with the one-two: One plus one is two.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/USATSI_18169367-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Nakobe Dean with his father, Byron, and mother, Neketta, on the red carpet at the Fountains of Bellagio before the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft. (Kirby Lee \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Neketta, who earned her master\u2019s degree in social work at the University of Tennessee, was just the second in her family to attend college. Her aunt, Idamae Keys, played basketball on scholarship at Northwest Community College and Mississippi Industrial College for Women. Neketta had been the salutatorian of her high school but assumed she couldn\u2019t afford higher education. Her underfunded high school did not advise her about financial aid, which she would have secured. So, she entered the military. She served eight years in the U.S. Army, three on active duty in the Gulf War. She\u2019d been told the GI Bill was her only path out of poverty.<\/p>\n
Nakobe\u2019s grades and football pedigree afforded him more options. There was a time when Georgia briefly thought he was uninterested. Coach Kirby Smart and defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann paid a visit to the Dean house on a recruiting visit. But Nakobe had a physics project due. He had to build a small electric car out of wires and wood. Smart was trying to sell Nakobe on a program that had just won a national championship (and would win another with Nakobe at linebacker), but Nakobe kept tinkering with his car.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like, \u2018Can you put this down for a second?\u2019\u201d Nakobe said.<\/p>\n
Schumann has laughed recalling the story when visiting with Neketta.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like, \u2018I couldn\u2019t even talk because I\u2019m staring at, like, this kid is really sitting here making a car,\u2019\u201d Neketta said. \u201c\u2018He ain\u2019t thinking about football.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakobe, who left Georgia a year early for the NFL, says he still intends to go back and finish his degree. He had a 3.55 GPA. Perhaps he\u2019ll return to his interest in prosthetics. But he\u2019s interested in opening businesses. He has a few ideas, but he kept them to himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course, it\u2019ll be maybe post-ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nakobe\u2019s quad twitched, which is to say his recovery had just begun.<\/p>\n
After he tore his patellar tendon, he traveled to Los Angeles for the surgery. He stayed there for two weeks and was told that timeline was vital in getting his quad reactivated. His father, Byron, sent Nakobe\u2019s younger brother, Bryce, to stay with him and help around the hotel. On Nakobe\u2019s first day after surgery, a doctor hooked up a muscle-stimulating machine to his quad and asked him to squeeze as hard as he could.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a real painful thing,\u201d Dean said.<\/p>\n
He felt like he was squeezing. But the quad muscle wasn\u2019t responding. The next day, it jumped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all I needed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was one of them things \u2014 like, you know when you\u2019re working toward something, like, you know it\u2019s going to happen, but you\u2019ve got to make it happen? Yeah. I feel like most moments happen like that in life. You know something\u2019s going to happen, but you\u2019ve got to make it happen. We know we can get to the Super Bowl, but we\u2019ve got to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dean began the season on the PUP list. He circled Oct. 1 as his return date. He did not want to miss anything. He made an arrangement with Autumn Lockwood, an assistant strength coach, to begin his rehab work an hour and a half earlier than initially scheduled so he could attend all the team\u2019s practices and meetings. He attended everything with the team while on PUP. Every meeting. Every practice. Every lift. Every game. It was a conscious correction from when Dean withdrew while missing 12 games with foot injuries during the 2023 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had kind of checked out,\u201d Dean said. \u201cThis time, I didn\u2019t check out. I had been through it before. My emotions were in check. My will was stronger. It was like I know I\u2019m going to come out better on the other end of it, so no reason for me to sulk right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
After six weeks, he was allowed to remove his knee brace. He still had to pass physical tests arranged by the team, which included stretches and specific torque numbers in his jumps. He didn\u2019t pass those tests until Week 2. After two more weeks, the Eagles opened his practice window on Oct. 1. He went a half-hour early because he wanted to be ready to go. He debuted in Philadelphia\u2019s Oct. 9 loss to the New York Giants. The Eagles won four straight before Sunday\u2019s loss to the Dallas Cowboys.<\/p>\n
Dean initially split snaps at inside linebacker with Campbell, who would either sub in during alternating drives or play along the edge in base packages. But defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has preferred Dean. Dean has started in each of the last four games, and Campbell\u2019s snaps were reduced from 34 against the Green Bay Packers to 11 against the Cowboys. Dean, an effective blitzer, has recorded a sack and tackle for loss in each of the last three games.<\/p>\n
\u201cNakobe has been playing very well, and he deserves to be in there,\u201d Fangio said.<\/p>\n
Dean is back at the center of an Eagles defense that has revealed it can be dominant. The unit held the high-octane Packers and Detroit Lions to 16 total points. Even after Sunday\u2019s 24-21 loss to the Cowboys, who totaled 473 yards, the Eagles are tied for sixth in the NFL in defensive EPA per play (0.06), according to TruMedia.<\/p>\n
When the Eagles host the Bears the day after Thanksgiving, Dean will again be where he belongs.<\/p>\n
In service of his city.<\/p>\n