The words "sneaky little boy" aren't the ones that come to mind when you stand across from Jacky Chen.
Chen is 6-4. He's 302 pounds. He's a boulder with tattoos.
But ask Jacky or his mother or anybody else who knows him, and they will tell you Jacky's unlikely football journey never would have begun — let alone reached the NFL as an undrafted Vikings rookie — had Jacky not been a very "sneaky little boy" with a mother dead set against him playing football seven years ago.
"He tricked me to play football," says his mother, June. "I'm still not over it."
She sounds like she's kidding. But not entirely.
June and her husband, Tony, were born in Beijing. They go by June and Tony, but their given names are Jia and Tao. Neither had heard of American football until long after they had moved to New York City as young newlyweds so Tony could open a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan in 1994.
They had their children in the United States. First came Rita, then Jacky. Rita swam so well that the University of Maine gave her a scholarship. Jackie loved football, played "Madden" every day and still spent seven years in a pool doing the breaststroke because it was safer than football and easier for June to drop both kids off at the same place after school.
One day, Jacky told June he was "retiring" from swimming. She asked how he planned to spend his after-school hours. His answer? You guessed it. Football.