Local NFL players Jake Grove, Paris Lenon have new leases on careers

Jake Grove wasn’t in the mood for small talk. His team was losing a close battle to the Detroit Lions when Paris Lenon approached him and asked, “You went to Forest, didn’t you?”

Grove, then the Oakland Raiders starting center, didn’t know what to say. If this was Lenon’s attempt at trash talk, he wasn’t doing a very good job, though one would have to dig deep into his NFL bio to know Grove went to Jefferson Forest High School.

Lenon, a Lions linebacker at the time, was actually making chitchat, which could be just as offensive as trash talk when it’s directed at a player on a losing team.

He was only trying to introduce himself to a fellow member of the small Lynchburg-area NFL fraternity.

“He wasn’t too happy at the time,” Lenon remembered recently of the players’ first-ever meeting.

That Sept. 27, 2007, game was the only time Grove and Lenon, a Heritage High School grad, faced each other in an NFL regular season contest. Detroit came out on top 36-21, one of only 10 wins Lenon experienced in three years with the team.

The two area NFL players will have a couple of chances to renew acquaintances this year as new participants of the rough and tumble AFC East.

After spending years with two of the NFL’s worst organizations, Grove and Lenon have landed with two of the league’s very best.

Grove, who played five seasons with the Raiders, signed a five-year $29 million contract in the offseason with the up-and-coming Miami Dolphins, who made it to the playoffs last year under a new regime that included first-year executive vice president Bill Parcells and first-year coach Tony Sparano.

Lenon, who spent three seasons with the Lions, signed a one-year deal with the New England Patriots, who enter this preseason as strong candidates to win their fourth Super Bowl title in the last nine seasons.

As training camps convene this week — the Patriots begin practice today and the Dophins start Sunday — Lenon and Grove both admit to being excited to be with teams that appear committed to winning.

The 6-foot-4, 300-pound Grove said it didn’t take long for him to notice a different attitude among the players and coaches in Miami.

“Guys are working hard. I think the players are committed to making this thing work and to be the best team in the NFL, to go to the playoffs and win a championship,” said Grove, who was drafted by the Raiders in 2004 out of Virginia Tech. “I think that’s the biggest difference. Oakland, you can say what you want, but when it comes to working, it just didn’t feel like they had the same commitment.”

The 6-2, 235-pound Lenon went from an 0-16 team last year to the NFL’s best organization of the last decade. The difference in organizations, he says, is the commitment by the Patriots’ players and coaches to improve with every OTA and practice.

“That’s what really attracted me to this organization. I just felt a real sense of urgency. Everybody is focused about football,” said Lenon, who signed in 2002 with the Green Bay Packers after a standout career at University of Richmond and seasons with the XFL’s Memphis Maniax and NFL Europe’s Amsterdam Admirals.

Everything feels better in Miami, Grove said. Whereas he had an hour commute to and from Oakland’s training facility, he is now only 10 minutes away from his new headquarters in Miami. His wife, Katie, and 1-year-old daughter Emma Whitney like it down there, too.

And being a fishing fanatic, there aren’t many better places to cast a reel than South Florida.

“There are so many great places to fish down here,” said Grove, 29. “We went out in Miami a couple of weeks ago and caught some kingfish, some sailfish and dolphin, and the Everglades are about five minutes away and it has world class bass fishing, so there’s a lot of great fishing down here, which I like.”

He also likes the stability he feels in the Dolphins organization.

The Raiders went 20-60 in Grove’s five years in Oakland — last year’s 5-11 record was the best of Grove’s tenure — and he played for four head coaches.

When you’ve been through that kind of stretch, anything seems better. But Grove will go one further. He feels the Dolphins are on the cusp of something special under the tutelage of Parcels and Sparano.

“I kind of sensed that there’s not going to be a turnover on the coaching staff almost every year like there seemed to be in Oakland,” Grove said. “I think that was what I was looking for. This is my fifth year in the league. I don’t want to have to learn a new system every single year.”

If there’s anybody who can relate to Grove’s plight, it’s Lenon. After making the playoffs in three of his four seasons in Green Bay, Lenon went to Detroit, a postseason wasteland.

The Lions rewarded Lenon with a starting job, and he was able to showcase his talents — he had 118 tackles in 2007 and a team-high 121 stops last season — but he did it for a dreadful team.

Now he’s competing for a starting job with the Patriots, who went 11-5 last year despite being without star quarterback Tom Brady for most of the season.

He spent most of OTAs and mini-camp learning the nuances of New England’s 3-4 defensive scheme, and he’s confident he’ll be ready to go when camp opens today.

“All I can do right now is go out there and learn and compete and do everything to the best of my abilities,” said Lenon, 31.

He’s not short on motivation. The player who once sorted mail here in Lynchburg for a short time while waiting to catch on in the NFL could be playing for his first championship ring come February.

“This organization has had a great amount of success,” Lenon said, “but the main thing about being here is everybody has one common goal, and that’s to improve as a team and play good football.”