How Rasul Douglas went from eating off dollar menu to feasting on NFL QBs as Packers' biggest feel-good story
GREEN BAY, Wis. - From his hotel room, Rasul Douglas would start each game-day morning flipping through the channels, searching for kickoff. His team would be in Tennessee, or Jacksonville, or Los Angeles, and Douglas was stuck behind in Arizona, alone and helpless.
He could have avoided the game entirely. Pretended it didn’t exist. Instead, Douglas absorbed every snap. He squinted at edges of his television screen, an NFL cornerback trying to identify coverages without seeing the entire secondary. He texted teammates on the practice squad, other helpless souls watching alone inside their hotel, confirming what they saw.
All week, Douglas was a full-time member of the Arizona Cardinals. Wore an official practice jersey and everything. Then the weekend would come, and when his team caught a charter flight to play its next game, Douglas was left behind.
The practice squad doesn’t travel for road games.
“I was just practicing every day for nothing,” Douglas says. “Just feel like you’re working, coming there extra early, and then you go home — and that’s just it.”
Ask Douglas what was the low point in his football career, the moment his dreams felt furthest from reach, and he doesn’t mention rationing the McDonald’s dollar menu in college so he didn’t practice on an empty stomach. It wasn’t when he was sleeping on an apartment floor because Nassau Community College had no dorm rooms, and he had no bed. He doesn’t reference all the other hotels, living remotely in Charlotte or Las Vegas or Houston, because that’s life as a discarded NFL vet.
No, rock bottom was here in Arizona, languishing on the practice squad. Douglas tried to approach each day like a game. That was hard when coaches wouldn’t allow him to even catch a potential interception, because practice reps aren’t live.
It’s more telling what Douglas doesn’t say though. At no point did he consider the mortality of his career, the potential death of those dreams. He didn’t blink. Didn’t doubt. Never questioned whether he would resurrect his future somewhere else.
Douglas just waited for his chance.
‘He is a ball hog’
His long-shot odds didn’t start on an NFL practice squad. Before he was the Green Bay Packers’ undisputed feel-good story of 2021, leading the team with five interceptions and creating unforgettable moments along the way, Douglas wasn’t even considering football.
Basketball is king in East Orange, New Jersey, where Douglas grew up. Marion Bell, football coach at East Orange High, watched promising football careers fizzle out on the basketball court over the years. Basketball offered a reprieve from harsh, cold winters in the northeast, capable of being played in any season.
Bell wondered how fertile the football recruiting ground would become if kids flocked to the gridiron instead.
“If you’re not the point guard at 6-3,” Bell says, “then you’re not a basketball player.”
Douglas, not a point guard at 6-2, was not a basketball player. He just didn’t know it yet.
Lured by his athleticism, Douglas was poised to be another hoops casualty midway through high school. He could get to the rim anytime he wanted, but not driving to his left. His jump shot was better than his handle. Bell saw what was coming, the dead end so many hoop dreamers meet, thwarted by their lack of height.
He hammered the logic to Douglas as directly as possible.
“I had to say that to him,” Bell remembers, “that you’re a shooting guard, and you don’t really have a great left hand. So you’re not really a basketball player.
“But a 6-2 defensive back is something that can take you far.”
Bell had his eye on Douglas since youth football. Douglas was a quarterback, not an unusual position for the most athletic player on the field, but he moved to defense on Bell’s suggestion. The coach finally enticed Douglas to join his high school football team as a junior.
The same athleticism Douglas showed running past defenders on the way to the rim instantly made him dynamic on a football field. Bell says Douglas had the combination of size, speed and natural ball skills that would have made him the team’s best receiver. “I could give him a fade all day,” he says, “and it’s going to be a touchdown.” The coach still remembers a fade Douglas ran against Pope John, a private program expected to dominate public schools like East Orange.
Douglas overpowered Pope John’s defensive backs, leaving them behind like they were running in mud.
“I mean, he ran by everybody,” Bell says. “It just looked incredible because you see this big, tall receiver just running behind the entire secondary catching a post. It was a ‘wow’ moment.”
Douglas knew defensive backs across New Jersey couldn’t stop him. He stalked the sidelines between drives, demanding the football. Eyes earnest, Douglas repeated the number four to anyone who would listen, making the same point to coaches and teammates.
At East Orange, “four” was the fade route.
“He is a ball hog,” Bell says. “He wants the ball all the time.”
Douglas was even better in the secondary, but basketball was hard to shake. It didn’t help, Bell says, that East Orange’s basketball coaches were determined to convince Douglas he could play in college. Bell knew the truth, that his weak left hand and 6-2 height would limit his options. He also kept getting phone calls from Curtis Guilliam, the head coach at Nassau Community College.
Guilliam desperately wanted Douglas in Nassau. He saw the same possibilities his height and athleticism could bring.
“He had great size,” Guilliam says. “I just remember how physical he was, how tough he was. He just had a little edge to him, and definitely you’re always looking for players that are physical, have great size, great attributes. I was like, ‘This is a guy who will definitely fit our program.’”
Douglas resisted. Bell pressed harder. Their conversation carried throughout Douglas’ senior season, until Bell finally called his star defensive back before signing day. Meet at the stadium, Bell ordered.
In his office, Bell presented two futures. The first included basketball at a small college, where Douglas could get his degree, return to East Orange as a police officer, maybe a firefighter. A working man. “Not saying that’s a bad thing,” Bell says. Except, there was the second option.
Even then, Bell knew Douglas’ talent had a chance to take him to the NFL.
“You need to play,” Bell told him, “because that’s where your future is.”
Douglas weighed both options. Finally, he put his faith in football.
He had no idea how difficult that road would become.
‘He’s used to getting things the hard way’
Douglas stared at the McDonald’s cashier, a mixture of shame and disbelief. He had just plucked a McDouble with no pickles and fries off the dollar menu, same order he made most days, his normal meal rationing because he couldn’t afford anything else. There was just one problem.
He couldn't afford the dollar menu either.
His debit card was declined.
“I was only grabbing two things for a dollar,” Douglas says, “and I couldn’t even get that.”
The debit card kept declining, again and again. The middle of five children, Douglas thought he knew the reality that awaited him in Nassau. Times would be tough. Resources, thin.
“I knew the focus wasn’t going to be on me,” he says. “I still had younger siblings that were still in high school and stuff. They still need school clothes, they still need stuff like that. So really if there was stuff I wanted, it was stuff I had to get myself.
“It was one of those times like, if you want this, you’ve got to do it. You have to help yourself. It’s on me to find a way.”
That’s how Douglas, future NFL cornerback, found himself working at McDonald’s. He was only part time, preparing orders two hours a day. It wasn’t for the money. At McDonald’s, employees got a free meal with their shift.
Douglas literally worked to eat.
“When you grow up in East Orange, New Jersey,” Bell says, “you’re a lifetime humble person. You know the grind, you know the grit, you know the struggle. So he’s used to getting things the hard way.”
It was enough to keep him thriving on the field. Douglas was a playmaker, those receiving skills transferring nicely now that his entire focus was at corner. He might have spent months at a time sleeping on the floor, because he was crammed into an overcrowded apartment with teammates and didn’t have a bed, but Douglas would not be stopped.
He led the team with three interceptions as a freshman. He had two more as a junior. He found his joy in the game.
Douglas, pads strapped and helmet on his head, would do back flips between practice reps just because.
“I was like, ‘This guy,’” Guilliam says. “He’s just a kid at heart. He was just happy to be there, so he was flipping at practice. Obviously, you’re not supposed to flip with your equipment on, but he was just that guy. He was happy-go-lucky.”
As he learned the game, Douglas became more efficient playing the football each season. He signed with West Virginia after two years in Nassau. Douglas led the nation with eight picks as a senior in 2016. He returned one interception against BYU for a 54-yard touchdown.
Guilliam wasn’t surprised. He saw Douglas not only as a natural ballhawk, but a playmaker. Douglas had an interception in his first game at Nassau against Navy Prep. In his third game, he returned an interception 47 yards against rival Lackawanna College. His third pick — in the first five games of his college career — came a week later against Hudson Valley Community College.
He was even better as a sophomore.
“His last year,” Guilliam says, “is when I was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to get a shot (at the NFL). He’s going to get a shot.’ Because he started playing out of his mind. And what I mean by that is, he was so confident in his ability that he could do no wrong. He was so confident in his ability that there was no end to what he could and couldn’t do.
“That’s where he is at, I think, right now. In the mental state of, ‘I can make any and every play if I get the opportunity.’”
He doesn’t need to work at McDonald’s anymore. Surprisingly, Douglas didn’t get his fill of the fast-food chain in college, though his order has changed.
Douglas still has a soft spot for their chocolate chip cookies.
‘He’s watching with intent’
Inside the team hotel in Dallas, hours before a late-season game in 2018, Douglas’ phone unexpectedly buzzed.
He was eating breakfast before heading to Jerry’s World, where the third-round cornerback in his second season with the Philadelphia Eagles had only begun to emerge as a starter. It was a big game, the Eagles hoping to defend their Super Bowl championship from the previous season with a late push to the playoffs at their division rivals.
Douglas’ concentration broke when he took the call. He was told his best friend, a friend so close he still refers to him as “my brother,” died unexpectedly from an asthma attack.
“He taught me every sport,” Douglas says. “Every day, he took me to the park. He took me and my little brother to the park.”
“I was like, ‘Man, what the (expletive)?’ I couldn’t believe it.”
A few hours later, Douglas had nine tackles and his first interception of the season.
Douglas’ uneven NFL career has coincided with heartbreak off the field. A few months before his best friend passed, Douglas lost his grandmother. Carletta Williams raised Douglas and his four siblings, protecting them from temptations lurking outside her home. Bell, the East Orange football coach, described Williams as a protector. “Her only interest,” he says, “was her kids. ‘What’s best for my kid?’ That was her.” Williams died in 2018, not long after Douglas’ son was born and months before his best friend passed away.
Williams had ample help from Mike Davis, a youth coach and community recreation director. Douglas considers Davis his mentor, a strong, male role model who kept him from the streets. Davis would take Douglas to basketball and baseball games, stirring his imagination for what was possible.
In March, Douglas got another phone call, this one informing him Davis had died. Another heartache. More pain. He still doesn’t know how his mentor died.
“Those three,” Douglas says, “have all moved on in life. That was a tough process.”
Their deaths lent Douglas perspective. So did the winding turns it took to reach this season. Douglas’ career began to stall in Philadelphia. After predominantly being a special teams player when the Eagles won the Super Bowl in his rookie season of 2017 — Douglas was on the field for seven special teams plays against the New England Patriots — he started seven games in 2018. Then six starts in 2019.
Douglas had ball skills. His rookie season ended with two interceptions in 422 snaps. He had three interceptions in 544 snaps the next season. In three seasons with the Eagles, Douglas defended 25 passes. Still, his football IQ was raw. He had much to learn.
The Eagles released Douglas after his career started to fizzle. Douglas started 11 games last year in Carolina, where he met a coach he says changed his career. Jason Simmons, who spent nine seasons on the Packers' staff, was in his first year as the Panthers' defensive backs coach when Douglas arrived.
Simmons says Douglas was an instinctive, physical corner when he started coaching him. A “vision player,” he says. Douglas didn’t have an interception in 2020, but Simmons says his ball skills were apparent.
“The biggest thing about him,” Simmons says, “is he doesn’t panic at the ball. He can catch the flash of the ball. He doesn’t have to see it thrown.”
Douglas says Simmons taught him how to study film for the first time in his career.
In the film room, Simmons’ lesson was clear. He instructed Douglas to stop watching football as a fan, gleaning finer details instead of simply tracking the ball.
“Watching tape with an intention to learn something,” Simmons says. “That’s the biggest thing he learned. He’s watching concepts. He’s watching mannerisms of particular players. He’s watching with intent. Stances, splits, formations. When you start watching it that way, and you watch the game through concepts and formations, then you have a better understanding of who guys are as an offense. Now not only are you playing that player, you’re understanding how the coordinator is trying to attack you.
“When you know that, that’s when you take that next leap.”
Douglas started playing smarter early in 2020, his football IQ sharpened in film study. Then he got COVID-19 at the end of October. He wasn’t the same player after returning, Simmons says. Still, he knew Douglas was capable of breaking out. He’d seen it before the virus broke his momentum.
All he needed was his chance.
‘He’s a star’
It came like a lighting strike. There was no warning. Fifteen seconds left in Arizona, the team that left him home on its practice squad. Ball on the 5-yard line. A.J. Green across the line of scrimmage.
Douglas, a journeyman, backpedaled against the seven-time Pro Bowl receiver. In that moment, a Thursday night win on the road against the NFL’s last undefeated team of 2021 felt lost. The Packers controlled throughout, but they were ravaged with injuries and the Cardinals were driving, already in field goal range down only three points. They needed 5 yards to deliver a gut-punch loss that seemed inevitable.
Then Douglas, and not Green, caught quarterback Kyler Murray’s pass in the corner of the end zone.
“That’s the first time,” Douglas said in Arizona, “I’ve won a game like that. So it was a shocking feeling.”
It could have been a singular moment, Douglas exacting revenge against the team who deemed him not good enough to play for it. He has turned that end-zone interception against the Cardinals into something else. The springboard for one of the NFL’s most emphatic breakout seasons.
Four weeks later, Douglas jumped a Matthew Stafford pass against the Los Angeles Rams and returned it 33 yards for his first career touchdown. He didn’t wait nearly as long for his second. In his next game, Douglas became the first Packers cornerback since Hall of Famer Herb Adderley to have a pick-six in consecutive games at Lambeau Field, returning Chicago rookie Justin Fields’ interception 55 yards to the end zone.
On Christmas Day, Douglas intercepted not one, but two passes from Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield. The second sealed a Packers win in the final minute.
“He’s a star,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said after that game. “I mean, he’s got incredible ball skills. He’s around the ball all the time. He’s changed our team. He really has.”
Douglas has also changed minds. From practice squad to Pro Bowl alternate, he leads the Packers with five interceptions despite not playing a snap for them until Week 6. None of this was expected. Douglas was a healthy scratch in his first Packers game at Cincinnati. He came off the sideline a week later in Chicago.
Two weeks later, he had an unforgettable moment in the Arizona end zone and never looked back. Five picks, two touchdowns, a pair of game-clinching plays.
He isn’t practicing for nothing anymore.
“We are very, very fortunate to find a guy like that,” LaFleur says. “I’ve never seen anything like this, I know in my time in the National Football League, where somebody who comes in midseason has such tremendous impact on your football team. I love what he’s all about.”
Simmons says Douglas found the perfect position coach for him, pointing to Packers defensive backs coach Jerry Gray’s long, successful history in the league. Rodgers says Douglas’ demeanor, his natural swagger, ensured the moment wouldn’t be too big for him. “I think it’s safe to say,” receiver Davante Adams says, “that he’s a superstar at the cornerback position.” Back home, Bell just smiles.
Bell knows what it could mean in East Orange. Maybe, he says, more kids will brave those harsh, northeast winters on a football field.
“There’s hope,” Bell says. “To see somebody from your city doing things that he’s doing, it gives the other young kids hope that they one day could be out there doing the same thing.”