Growth potential

Not every NFL player enters the league to the draft-day sounds of Mel Kiper Jr. hyperventilating.

Take Colts rookie linebacker Ramon Humber, for example.

Today, Humber is the leading special teams tackler on a 13-0 team. Not too long ago, he was just a kid growing up in Brooklyn Park wanting to play football for his hometown Gophers.

He wasn't good enough. Or so he was told.

"A lot of schools felt the same way," said Tom VanVoorhis, Humber's linebackers coach at Champlin Park High School. "Ramon was a great player, but always an inch shorter than what they wanted or maybe 10 pounds less than what they wanted. They really didn't give him much of a look."

Humber was 5-11 and 220 pounds as a senior.

"It also didn't help that he got the flu or mono and lost about 15 pounds after the season," VanVoorhis said. "We had schools coming in, looking at him and going, 'Oh, man, he's awful lean.' We tried to tell them he had been sick for a couple weeks. But it didn't help."

"That was great," said his father, Ramon Sr. "And we should have beat them the year before [in a 10-9 loss], too."

This past spring, Humber found himself in an all-too- familiar spot heading into the NFL draft: He was too small. Or so people said.

Humber had grown to 232 pounds, still light for a linebacker by NFL standards. Vertically, he's stuck on 5-11 thanks to dear old 5-8 dad.

"Yeah, Ramon teases me, blames his size on me," said Ramon Sr., who coached his son for seven years in the Champlin Dayton Athletic Association. "I just told him you can't let people tell you what you can't do. He always had talent and a goal of playing in the NFL. It was just a matter of what he did with it."

The NFL draft came and went without Humber's name being called.

As a rookie free agent, Humber had the advantage of picking an interested team that best suited his strengths. The Colts were the perfect fit.

Not only is Indianapolis adept at finding and utilizing rookie free agents, it also employs a defensive style and philosophy that requires speed, quickness and a high football IQ. Those are Humber's three greatest attributes.

"It's been a blessing," Humber said. "To be undefeated, what a great feeling."

Humber has 11 special teams tackles, all solo. He has a forced fumble and four defensive tackles as the primary backup to leading tackler and weakside linebacker Clint Session. And, oh yeah, he also earned his own wall in Champlin Park head coach Mike Korton's office.

One wall is dedicated to the current Rebels. Ramon's younger brother -- Nomar, which is Ramon spelled backward, by the way -- is pictured on that one. Another wall includes grads now playing in college. South Dakota defensive lineman and current NFL draft prospect Kommonyan Quaye is over on that one.

On Sunday, the Colts beat the Broncos 28-16. In doing so, they clinched home-field advantage throughout the playoffs and set league records for most consecutive regular-season victories (22) and most wins in a decade (114). Future Hall of Famer Peyton Manning was there, of course. So was his 22-year-old teammate from Brooklyn Park, one of four long-shot rookie free agents to make this year's Colts team.