Former Super Bowl foes team up to run camp at Horn Lake High School
NFL linebackers Darius Harris (center right) and Nakobe Dean (center left) partnered together for a youth football camp at Horn Lake High School. (Frank Bonner/The Daily Memphian)
Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Darius Harris remembers the times he visited his old stomping grounds of Horn Lake High School to talk to the football team in previous years.
Linebacker Nakobe Dean was playing at Horn Lake at the time. Harris got to see Dean help lead the Eagles to a 2021 state championship before heading to Georgia, where he won the 2022 national title and earned the 2021 Butkus Award given to the top linebacker in college football.
“To see him grow and win the state championship and to go on to Georgia and do his thing, it was just good to see that,” said Harris, who played at Middle Tennessee State. “It was good to see somebody else come after me and take it another notch, to go to SEC and things like that.”
Dean eventually joined Harris in the pros when he got drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft. Dean and Harris beat the odds to have two Horn Lake graduates play in the most-competitive football league in the world. They took that a step further during Dean’s rookie season.
Harris and Dean played out a scenario that is usually reserved for movie scripts when the Eagles and Chiefs met in the 2023 Super Bowl. Harris, who has three Super Bowl rings with the Chiefs, had already won his first title by then. Dean was attempting to complete the trifecta of winning a championship at all three levels. The Chiefs put that on hold with a 38-35 victory over the Eagles. Both linebackers, however, embraced the accomplishment of having Horn Lake represented regardless of the outcome.
“That’s a blessing,” Dean said. “It’s a blessing for me, (Harris) and the city of Horn Lake knowing no matter what, they’ll have a winner coming out of there. Even though he got it, it’s always a blessing.
“About a week before the game, we saw each other out to eat while we were in Arizona. We were able to chop it up and everything then, and we were able to catch up. Before then, we really hadn’t seen much of each other, but we always knew about each other, for sure.”
The two former Horn Lake standouts teamed up Saturday to put on a camp at the high school that had about 200 kids from ages 6 to 13 participating. Each camp member wore a burgundy shirt that had Darius Harris & Nakobe Dean Youth Football Camp with a design of two players with helmets on the front. Some participants had Dean with his jersey No. 17 on the back and others had Harris with jersey No. 47.
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Horn Lake High School Darius Harris Nakobe Dean NFL Subscriber OnlyThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Frank Bonner II
Frank Bonner is the Memphis Tigers football beat writer. He is originally from Indiana but arrived in Memphis after spending two years in Tulsa, covering Oklahoma State football and basketball. He covered high school sports in Columbus, Indiana for two years before getting his Master’s degree in Sports Journalism at IUPUI. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Indiana University.
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