CB Stanley Wilson Jr.

[jjakq27]

Note to Pushy. After reading this article I realized something. People in this town should resent and hate Stanley Wilson for ruining our chances in the Super Bowl in 1989. However he was a decent person and most people genuinely liked him and have forgotten his "sin". On the other hand, people should really like Corey Dillon but because he was an ass, no matter how great on the field, people don't like him. In life, you reap what you sow. Better get used to it.

http://www.bengals.com/press/news.asp?iCur...=0&news_id=2765

A rising son

2/23/2005 - 4:25 p.m.

BY GEOFF HOBSON

Stanley Wilson, the son, never turned his back on Stanley Wilson, the father. Stanley Wilson, the father, keeps looking ahead by helping show Stanley Wilson, the son, how he got there.

Stanley Wilson, cornerback, Stanford, takes another step up the draft board and into the NFL later this week when he arrives at the league’s scouting combine in Indianapolis with the rest of the defensive backs.

“A lot of people don’t even have their father. Or if they did, they no longer have them,” Stanley Wilson the son says. “I love my Dad. I’ve always had a great relationship with him since I was a little kid. It’s something that God has given me and I’ve been blessed.”

If it sounds like Stanley Wilson is a special kind of kid, it’s because he is the lead in a special kind of story. And the NFL looks like it’s about to find out.

“He’s just a phenomenal person. In the 17 years I’ve been doing this, I think he’s got one of the greatest support systems I’ve ever seen,” said Ken Zuckerman, his agent. “He’s the kind of person that makes me remember why I got into the business. That’s the kind of guy he is and how he makes you feel.”

Stock is soaring

Wilson, 22, has served on student council and mentored kids in East Palo Alto while in college. But he has always been able to run as only a track guy can run. In the last few months, his play at Stanford and the Senior Bowl has revealed more than speed, and his number has shot up and suddenly made him one of the top five or so senior cornerbacks on some NFL grade sheets.

He looks to be overcoming the fact that he had three different positions at Stanford, and played through rotations before his senior season.

“When I talked to my Dad after (my junior) season, it pretty much looked like I was going to be a free agent,” Wilson said this week. “He told me I really had to focus in and dedicate 100 percent of my time in the coming year if I wanted to realize my goal. I took his advice to heart and worked on my weaknesses.”

Wilson, the father, known as one of the brightest guys to play for the Bengals, passed on the football smarts to his son. The son read the league’s scouting reports on him, and went to work on sinking and moving his hips and staying low in his back pedal in tying the technique to the speed. He also worked in the offseason with former Vikings safety Orlando Thomas.

“My overall work ethic, I think,” Wilson said.

How long has it been? That “little kid” figures he was five years old day his father missed Super Bowl XXIII. He remembers it. Not how the Bengals, their fans, and the NFL remember it.

There was the cocaine binge the night before that took him out of a game in which the Bengals pregame script had asked their marvelously versatile fullback to do so many things. A game that the Bengals lost by four points in the last 34 seconds. A game founder Paul Brown went to his grave believing his team would have won if Wilson had played.

“That was an unfortunate event, but you learn from it as a child,” Wilson said last month after one of his Senior Bowl practices. “It’s hard to go through. But I learned from it. He’s very supportive. I talk to him all the time. Unfortunately, he’s not able to watch me, or I’m unable to see him physically, but it’s a great relationship.”

We are just coming off that Super Bowl season in which the Wilson tragedy annually gets re-hashed through all media vehicles. Many (but not Wilson's old teammate, FOX-TV's Cris Collinsworth) have cartoonishly numbed it to the bone, making it so familiar that you forget it affected a real team, a real family, a real kid.

“I hear about it and I see it, and it’s not like I’m sensitive to it or anything like that,” Wilson said. “But I don’t listen to it. I know what happened.

“I can see where it was a distraction for them, and it probably wouldn’t have been as bad if he had been injured.”

He remembers the Bengals. He said he hasn’t heard much from his Dad’s former mates, but he knows what’s going on here.

“I know they haven’t been to the Super Bowl since (his father) played,” Wilson said. “But they’ve got the new coach and a lot of talent. I hope they come back.”

Uncertain future

His father’s future is unclear. Nearly six years ago in Los Angeles, a judge sentenced Wilson to 22 years in prison for stealing $130,000 worth of property while also throwing out a third offense. At the time, his lawyer said the elder Wilson suffered from a bipolar disorder that ranged from mania to depression.

The son, raised by his grandparents, hopes his father will be able to watch him play in the NFL sometime soon.

“Hopefully, sooner than later. I’m not exactly sure what is going to happen,” Wilson said that day at the Senior Bowl. “I just talked to him yesterday. He watches as many of the games as he can. He’s just a big connoisseur of the game. He knew everybody’s position and what they were supposed to do. He says that’s one of the keys to being a great player, so I’m trying to do that as well.”

If his father couldn’t watch the Senor Bowl, he would try to get it on the radio. He listened to plenty of Stanford games and the son finds it amazing that the father could tell him what he was doing even though he was just hearing the play.

If there is anybody who knows just how good and how smart the father was on the field, it's Bengals running backs coach Jim Anderson. It’s no surprise to him that the son has pursued an urban studies major so he can help those in the inner city help themselves.

“When you know the family involved, you know they are great people,” Anderson said. “Stanley (the father) is a good person. Things happen that you can’t explain. That doesn’t take away from the good. You've heard the saying, 'When bad things happen to good people.' "

One of the good people is the grandfather and father, Henry Wilson, a retired materials control manager who accompanied his grandson to the Senior Bowl.

“He’s always been there supporting me, and that’s what he’s doing now,” Wilson said. “He’s here to keep me focused.”

Henry Wilson says he has tried to give his grandson the same foundation he has. The Lord: “What we’re seeing is the manifestations of realizing what He has given him. The Lord blessed me to bless him. That’s what you do. You pass it on.”

But Wilson has been here before. The Bengals took his son in the ninth round out of Oklahoma in the 1983 draft.

“Once you experience the thrill, the thrill is not the same,” Henry Wilson said. “What I mean by that is you’re always walking on the edge. Even you and myself. So you really have to stay on the edge. And it’s a difficult life to do that.

“You’re talking about the joys that we’re seeing. You still have to remember you’re walking on the edge. We’ve had (the joy) already, but you learn from it that it’s not as high and mighty as you thought it would be. And I learned to stay humble and be humble behind that experience.”

Family ties

The father and grandfather seem to have taught the son well.

“A lot of times when you sit down with kids, they don’t get it. Stanley gets it,” Zuckerman said. “Because of what he’s been through and what’s happened to him, he understands how hard it is to get here, but not only that, how hard it is to stay. And he’s always straight with you. If he says he’ll call you the next day, or send something in, he does it.”

Henry Wilson thinks his son will one day be allowed to see on his own what his own son is able to do.

“I think he’ll be able to experience all of that. He’s grown himself,” he said.

The son is starting to realize that as much as the father has helped him, he’s helping the father, too.

“I guess I give him hope and something to look forward to,” Wilson said. “In his situation, it kind of gets lonely, but this is a positive thing and he’s been such a big help to me