Ravens' Rice is living tall

Ray Rice was acting out of kindness and determination, not arrogance or ego, on that fall evening six years ago when he told his mother he would someday play in the NFL.

His mother remembers the look in his eye, the certainty in his voice.

"In the 11th grade, I would run his bath water after he had a hard practice," Janet Rice said. "This day, he looked me in the eye and said, 'Ma, I'm going to the League.' He's looking out the window, talking. ... 'I gotta make it to the League.' The rest is history."

This was when Rice was still rampaging through high school defenses in New Rochelle, N.Y. It was when everyone was telling him he was too small, at 5 feet 7, to play for a major college team.

And it was before he became a Heisman Trophy candidate at Rutgers, before he rushed for 2,012 yards as a junior. What would prompt such a bold declaration?

"At the time," Ray Rice said, "I was having a moment [where] I wanted a better living for me and my family. I told her my goal one day is for her not to work anymore. I said I was going to go do it, no matter what the road. I believed it."

No false prophet, Rice made good on his promise. He was a second-round draft pick - if not a curiosity - with the Ravens a year ago. This season, he has become an NFL sensation as a 5-foot-8, 210-pound, all-purpose running back.

After seven weeks and six games, Rice ranks second in the NFL in total yards from scrimmage, averaging 7.6 yards per touch and 6.0 yards per carry. The Ravens expected big plays out of him this season, but no one could have predicted this - except, perhaps, him.

In just his second season, Rice plays with uncommon poise. Grounded in family, he is wise beyond his years.

"My father wasn't there when I was young," Rice said. "Having to mature at a younger age definitely helped me out. I was the oldest of four children. I'm 22, but I've got to have the mind of a 30-year-old because I had to almost raise my brothers and sister. That maturity, that's a value that my mother instilled in me."

In 1988, when Rice was 1 year old, his father, Conrad Reed, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Rice grew up finding father figures where he could - he found a lasting one in New Rochelle football coach Lou DiRienzo - but always was attuned to his mother. When he got to middle school, Janet took him aside and told him he was the man of the house.

"He really took pride in that," his mother said. "From that day on, he never looked back. He was more than a brother to his siblings. He was like a father figure."

Rice took it to heart. At 13, he got his first job at a summer camp, saw his first paycheck, doled out a portion of it each week to his mother.

"That was taking on a man's responsibility," he said. "It wasn't like I had to pay rent."

He did have to hit the books, though. That was one thing his mother stressed from the start. When Rice was in fourth grade - already a dynamo at running back in Pop Warner football - he brought home a bad progress report.

Without saying a word to Ray, Janet told his coach to sit him out the next game.

"I wanted him to know it was more about his education than his running that football," she said.

Rice got the message.

"Tore me up," he said. "If I didn't have one part of my life in order, she wasn't going to support the other part. She kept me balanced. The scary part is, you see so many athletes out there on the street because they didn't have one part of their life together."

When Rice arrived in Baltimore last year, he spoke in sentence fragments. Now he speaks in paragraphs. He watches players like Ray Lewis ("You'd be a fool not to take from a guy like that") and Derrick Mason ("how he takes care of his body") and applies those lessons to his life, his game.