Titans nose tackle Teair Tart is glad he kept his cleats on at West Philly High

Teair Tart, his feet swollen and blistered, ripped off his cleats minutes into his first football practice and told the coaches he wanted to play in sneakers.

Karl Patrick spotted Tart eight months earlier at a high school basketball tournament, told him he had the makings of an NFL defensive tackle, and urged him to transfer before his junior year to West Philadelphia High School. It was a lofty dream as Tart had never played football or even worn cleats, but the 15-year-old agreed to give it a shot.

» READ MORE: Eagles-Titans predictions: Our beat writers make their picks for Week 13

And that journey — which brings Tart home Sunday when the Titans play the Eagles — felt only more unlikely in August 2013, when Tart walked off the field holding his new pair of size 14 cleats.

“I had to think quick,” said Patrick, best known as Coach Bubb. “I can’t lose this dude. I can’t lose him. So I said, ‘Go ahead, wear your basketball shoes.’”

Tart, struggling to find his footing in sneakers, was pushed off the line despite being 6-foot-3 and 265 pounds. Football, he told his coach, was stupid. He was done. Patrick urged him to keep going — with cleats on his feet — and that may have been the last time Tart considered quitting.

He grew up as one of 10 children in a North Philadelphia row home, attended four junior colleges in two years, finally climbed to Division 1, went undrafted, landed on the Titans’ practice squad, and forced his way into the starting lineup for one of the AFC’s top teams.

Tart’s brother died when he was at school in New York, he was cut from a junior college known as “Last Chance U,” and lost his scholarship to play at Alabama before finding his way to a junior college in Kansas that led him to Florida International.

Tart, graded by Pro Football Focus this season as one of the league’s better interior defensive linemen, just kept fighting.

“I just found a way,” Tart said. “Nothing is going to be easy. Nothing is going to be handed to you. It’s going to be hard, extremely hard, to break the mold and break bad habits that have been created for generations. You have to stick to it, accept change, and be willing to move with change. Adversity is going to hit at some point, but you have to stick with it no matter how hard it is or how ugly it looks. Just keep going. Keep trying. Keep going forward.

“You’ll never accomplish anything by doing nothing. But as long as you’re doing something, something good will come from it.”

It didn’t take long for Patrick, then West Philly’s defensive line coach, to convince the other coaches that Tart was special. Tart finally started wearing cleats and was a force by the team’s first scrimmage. He dominated the defensive line, and the Speedboys used him as a fullback for what Patrick said was an “automatic two-point conversion.”

Tart helped West Philly reach the 2014 Public League championship game in his senior year and was the MVP of the All-City all-star game. Not only was he huge, but Tart was quick and agile, moving like a basketball player.

He was playing for Walter D. Palmer when Patrick spotted him on the court. The school, which closed in 2014, didn’t have a football team. So Patrick called Tart’s mother that day from the gym and asked her to send her son to West Philly.

“I said, ‘Ma’am, I’m looking at an NFL defensive tackle right now,’” Patrick said. “‘If you have him come here and play football, I promise you he will be next up.’ In August, the season was about to start and she called me.”

Patrick, now West Philly’s head coach, knew Tart’s path to the NFL would take him first to a junior college. Tart was late to football and his GPA also needed to improve.

Tart got to ASA College in Brooklyn — which regularly sends players to Division 1 schools — and looked to be on his way in January 2016. Alabama, a week after winning a national championship, offered him a scholarship. Three years earlier, he was playing basketball in West Philly. Now Nick Saban wanted him.

Six months later, just before Tart’s second season at ASA, his 24-year-old brother, Rasheed, died in a motorcycle accident on the Blue Route.

“Ask anyone, he had the best smile in the world,” Tart said. “He was a great guy, caring for sure. It was really hard. We all lived together in the house and it was the biggest part of my rough patch.”

Tart left Brooklyn to come home. Patrick helped him get to Valley Forge Military Academy and asked them to not even talk about football. Tart, dealing with the loss of his brother, needed a break.

He soon transferred to East Mississippi Community College — the subject of the popular Netflix series Last Chance U — but was dropped from the team before playing a game. His Alabama scholarship offer was gone.

Tart, his football dream dimming, kept going. He earned a spot with Ellsworth Community College in Iowa, and it was there that former Cleveland Browns head coach Butch Davis noticed him. He offered him a scholarship to Florida International, a Division 1 program in Miami.

“All I ever said was somebody had to give him a chance,” Patrick said. “I told Butch Davis this. I said, ‘Coach, I ask one thing. Give the kid an opportunity, work with him, take your time, and I promise you he will deliver for you on the field. I promise.’ When you get an athlete like that, they only come once every 20 or 30 years. You don’t get blessed with guys like that all the time.”

He played two seasons for FIU, and impressed at the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, but he was not one of the 255 players selected in the 2020 NFL draft. He went to training camp with the Titans and earned a spot on their practice squad. The Titans, Tart said, give every player a chance no matter what draft pick they were.

Tart made his NFL debut in November 2020 and cracked the starting lineup in Week 16. Tart has started all 12 games this season and plays roughly half of the snaps for the Titans, who have allowed the league’s third-fewest rushing yards. He’s been one of the league’s better interior pass rushers, hurrying the quarterback 13 times despite routinely facing double-teams.

He has deflected five passes, the third most among all linemen, and could eclipse Jevon Kearse’s franchise record of nine by a defensive lineman. In Week 4 against Indianapolis, Tart tipped Matt Ryan’s pass into the air and caught it as he was falling to the ground to secure an interception in a key divisional win. The 304-pound lineman showed the athleticism that made him stand out on the basketball court.

“I’ve shown what I can do in this league, but I still think there’s so much more there,” Tart said. “I just have to keep finding ways to develop my game. Keep finding ways to improve and little things that can work in games. I’m OK with the way I’ve played, but I think there’s so much more there that I can do, and I want to show the world what I can do.”

Patrick wasn’t at the basketball tournament 10 years ago to recruit football players. He had nothing to do that day, so he figured he would watch some of the students he coached in football and track play basketball. And then he saw Tart.

Patrick said he doesn’t take credit for discovering Tart. He believes he was meant to be in the gym that day. He’s just thankful he had the chance to introduce him to football.

“I hate to sound like this, but a lot of the time, I’m not surprised at what he does on the field,” Patrick said. “It’s not arrogance. It’s a feeling that God put this in my spirit a long time ago for him. I never wavered from him because I never waver from God. It’s just that I always had faith in God and I knew this would happen. And I know football.”

Patrick will be at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday afternoon when Tart runs out of the tunnel to play against the team he grew up rooting for. Tart will have 15 family members in the stands and he asked his old coach to pick five players — “I want the kids who go unnoticed and work hard and come to practice every day,” Tart said — to bring with him.

The defensive lineman still remembers what it sounded like as a kid in North Philly when Donovan McNabb found Terrell Owens for a tying touchdown, the entire block roaring as every house was glued to the game. On Sunday, he’ll be on the field as his city tunes in to watch him play.

All because a coach saw something 10 years ago and a teenager kept his cleats on and found a way to fight.

» READ MORE: ‘I feel like I’ve won’: Eagles’ A.J. Brown reflects on trade, looks forward to playing the Titans

“I grew up with a fear of not doing anything and becoming homeless,” Tart said. “I don’t know why, but that fear was always there. I was just so afraid that I would be homeless or not be able to do anything. Just a fear of me doing nothing. That always made me want to try harder and work a little bit more. I hope I never have to figure out what I would’ve done if things didn’t work out, but I know how I feel now and how I felt then.”

“It’s been crazy. It’s very humbling. It was an emotional journey. There was a lot of adversity and a lot of tough times, but I’m glad I stuck to it. I never gave up on myself and I kept working.”