Behind the scenes with Darius Robinson at NFL draft: 'The exclamation point'

Eight hours before his phone buzzed with the call that will change his life in ways he still has not fathomed, Darius Robinson stood in front of the full-length mirror in Room 1917 of the Westin Book Cadillac hotel, a short walk from the NFL draft at Campus Martius, giddy with disbelief.

He pulled a white button-down shirt over his bare shoulders, had a public relations assistant slide cufflinks through the shirt’s wrists, craned his neck while his agent straightened his bow tie and buttoned the mid-length purple-and-pink tuxedo-style jacket New York clothier-to-the-stars Terry Corbett designed special for this occasion.

“We’re going to the draft,” Robinson repeated incredulously to himself. “This shit don’t feel real.”

A Michigan native who played the past five seasons at Missouri and blossomed into one of college football’s best defensive linemen last year, Robinson was one of 13 players who attended the first round of Thursday’s NFL draft in Detroit.

He granted the Free Press behind-the-scenes access to parts of his day, and as he put the finishing touches on his red-carpet arrival, in a room across the hall from No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams, Robinson insisted he was content no matter how the night played out.

“When I hear my name, that’ll be the exclamation point,” he said, adjusting his coat and the diamond-accented Cartier buffs — his ode to his hometown of Detroit — on his face. “I’m still thankful to be here regardless what happens tonight. If I go first, second, shit, last, I don’t care.”

“Stop,” Robinson’s agent Chris Cabott said.

“It’s an opportunity to be here and to really take advantage,” Robinson said.

Robinson never dreamed of reaching the NFL when he was young. Back then, he was a basketball player determined to go to college in that sport. A scholarship, he figured, was his only alternative to a career in the military.

He played football as a youth but gave up the sport in high school — until he realized there was only so much future for a 6-foot-5 big man.

He transferred from Canton Prep to Canton High midway through his sophomore year so he could play football again, but even then no one would have pegged him as a future NFL star.

“It took a while,” Robinson said Thursday morning in a bustling Starbucks at the Westin. “Like, I remember, first time we lifted weights, we had 135 and I got it stuck on my chest. And I remember everybody was laughing. I said, ‘All right, I’ll remember that.’ And now it’s — that’s why. I got a few chips on my shoulder I keep.”

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Robinson doesn’t talk to the teammates who joked about the underwhelming muscle on his oversized frame anymore, but as he stared in the mirror in his hotel room the afternoon of the draft, he pondered what they would have said then if someone had told them he’d be in the NFL one day.

“They would have been like, ‘Shit, he’s got a long way to go,’” Robinson said. “But nah, I’m just thankful to be here and that’s why I said, let me enjoy this with my family, my teammates.”

Robinson touched his temples as if modeling the draft hat he hoped to don later that night.

“Damn, what color hat we going to put on today?” he said.

“I got some ideas,” Cabott said.

'Down to his core'

After a restless sleep Wednesday night, Robinson awoke for good around 7 a.m. Thursday.

He opened the Bible app on his phone and read his morning scripture — Philippians 4:7; “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

He scrolled through TikTok “for a little too long,” excited about the night, then shuffled through a selection of gospel music to quiet his running mind.

Eventually, Robinson hopped out of bed and knocked out 33 push-ups on his hotel room floor.

“Cause there’s 32 teams in the NFL and I got to do one more for everybody else,” he said. “That’s kind of how I envision it.”

After meeting a reporter in the back of Starbucks, Robinson took an escalator upstairs to a private breakfast with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and other draft prospects and to meet some of the league’s sponsors on the second floor of the Westin.

By noon, he was back in his hotel room, where he gave an ESPN camera crew a rundown of his wardrobe for the night for content the network would use the next few hours to tease its live coverage of the draft.

“Purple’s my favorite color and we’re in Detroit, we wear buffs, so I got some purple buffs that I’m going to wear as well with my suits,” he said. “You can put the diamonds on them to ice them out and stuff like that, a cool little look for the draft. And then you got the lights at the draft are going to be real bright so they’ll come out really well.”

When the camera crew left, Robinson closed the box to his red-bottom size 15 black patent leather Christian Louboutin dress shoes and looked out his 19th floor window at the distant Detroit River, high above the city streets already bustling with traffic.

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“Whooooo. Crazy,” he said. “This shit's getting real.”

Robinson arrived at Missouri in the summer of 2019, a three-star recruit under former head coach Barry Odom at a time the program was middling in the SEC. He left as a two-time captain and the sack leader of a Missouri team that went 11-2 and won the Cotton Bowl last year.

Robinson solidified his status as a potential first-round pick with a solid showing at the Senior Bowl. Scouts loved his size (6 feet 5, 285 pounds) and versatility (he played both tackle and end in college), and while some questioned his play strength and considered him a mid-round pick last spring, Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz told everyone who’d listen Robinson would be a force multiplier for their team.

“I work out in the mornings and it would be 6 a.m. and Darius would be walking on the treadmill and he would have a gallon of water with him and he would just be on the treadmill walking, drinking a gallon of water. And his workout group wasn’t until in the afternoon,” Drinkwitz said. “It was just an obsession. He was always trying to find a way to get better. Be more hydrated, take care of his body. Get his body into the right shape. He really bought into the nutrition and changing his body type, and so that kind of dedication, I knew something special could happen.”

Occasionally, Robinson would text Drinkwitz late on Friday nights in the offseason, asking for the security code to Missouri’s indoor football building. He’d gather some of the team’s young defensive linemen and hold an impromptu 10 p.m. workout, determined both to drive the team to greatness and show his young understudies the right way to be.

“He’s just a really unique person,” said former Missouri defensive line coach Kevin Peoples, now an assistant at LSU. “I haven’t met too many guys like him. At first when I met him, I thought it was a come off, I thought it was an act. It’s not an act. It’s genuine. It’s who he is, down to his core. You can’t shake that. And that’s who he is.”

Robinson hosted Drinkwitz, Peoples and Peoples’ wife, Rebecca, as part of his green room party Thursday. Two of his former Missouri teammates, Johnny Walker Jr. and Isaiah McGuire, now with the Cleveland Browns, also came to support him at the draft.

After the ESPN crew left his hotel room, Robinson met Walker, McGuire and his big brother and father figure, Reggie, back downstairs in the Westin lobby before heading a few blocks uptown for a VIP tour of the StockX pop-up store on Woodward Ave.

Most of the group squeezed into a white Lamborghini Urus that Robinson had on loan from Suburban Exotic Motorcars of Michigan for the draft. While they waited at the valet, Robinson insisted on ordering an Uber for other members of his traveling party who couldn’t fit in the car.

At StockX, Robinson marveled a pair of Adidas Bape Camo cleats as he milled around the store. The group got gift bags with StockX sweatshirts and posed for pictures, then started towards the company’s headquarters before turning back to the car — a decision that came a few minutes to late when they arrived to find a municipal officer writing a $45 ticket for parking illegally in a spot temporarily off limits because of the draft.

Unfazed, Robinson returned to the hotel where he signed five autographs and posed for three selfies before heading back upstairs. He brought his mother and grandmother a lunch of chicken, pasta and salad, then returned to the second floor to a private dining area with Peoples and Walker.

By 3:41 p.m., he was dressed and ready to catch a shuttle to the Fox Theater, where he’d walk his mom and brother down the red carpet.

Before leaving the hotel room, Cabott pulled Robinson close and said a prayer.

The moment of truth

Early Thursday, Robinson said there were “a solid six to eight” potential landing spots for him late in Round 1. He did not want to name the teams, but acknowledged his draft range included the early part of the second round.

In the months leading up to the draft, Robinson made 12 top-30 visits to team headquarters, had 18 formal interviews at the combine and met with all 32 teams at the Senior Bowl.

He took a local day trip to the Lions and said before he left his hotel room that staying home “would be like a dream.”

“That shit would probably go crazy, ‘The Detroit Lions are on the clock ...’” he said, feigning an announcer voice. “Then again, like I said earlier, I don’t care who. But whatever God has planned for me, just whatever team, put that hat on, walk out there, dap (Goodell) up, then I’ll probably start yelling. Like you ever watch the Mizzou pregame, I’ll be out there just yelling, turning everybody up. I’d probably just do that, just in my own head. I’m a little crazy. Football makes you crazy.”

Cabott’s job Thursday was, in part, to make sure Robinson didn’t go too crazy as one of the last players expected to be in the green room, the personal living space the NFL gives prospects backstage at the draft.

Robinson carried two phones with him Thursday — “I don’t want to be a meme,” he said, determined to avoid any prank draft-day calls or false alarms that might be caught on camera — and planned to use one to watch the Los Angeles Lakers-Denver Nuggets playoff game during the early portion of the draft.

Best-case scenario, he figured he’d go in the 20s, and teams like the Green Bay Packers at No. 25, Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 26, Arizona Cardinals at No. 27 and Lions at No. 29 seemed like the most likely landing spots. If he wasn’t picked in Round 1, Robinson planned to return for the second day of the draft.

The Chicago Bears opened the night shortly after 8 p.m. by taking Williams, the 2022 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from USC that started an unprecedented run of 14 straight offensive players coming off the board.

Robinson watched the Lakers-Nuggets game on his phone as the draft progressed and passed the time talking to family and friends. Cabott traded messages with a handful of interested teams throughout the first round and kept Robinson abreast of his conversations.

When the Lions traded up to take Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold with the 24th pick, Robinson was the last player left in the green room. Still, Cabott reassured him he had a good chance of going before the night was done.

“Honestly, at that point it just eases some anxiety,” Cabott said.

The Free Press was not allowed in the green room, but viewed video of Robinson backstage.

The Packers took Arizona offensive lineman Jordan Morgan at Pick 25, the Bucs followed with Duke offensive lineman Graham Barton at Pick 26, and Robinson was sitting on the back of a white couch in his green room area when the Cardinals went on the clock at No. 27 around 11:10 p.m.

He looked down as his phone buzzed on the table in front of him, then turned to his agent and smiled. The two shared a hand slap and half-hug, and Cabott was so excited he knocked Robinson back into the couch.

Robinson had his first interview at the Senior Bowl and first interview at the combine with the Cardinals, and as soon as he picked up the phone he recognized the voice on the other end: Arizona general manager Monti Ossenfort.

“I can’t wait to get out there and get to work,” Robinson said before Ossenfort passed the phone around Arizona’s draft room. “When do we report to camp?”

When Goodell stepped to the podium and announced the pick to the world, Robinson hugged his mother, grandmother and the rest of his green room crew and made his way to the stage. He pulled a Cardinals hat on his head, told the network TV camera following him that Arizona was “getting one now, believe that,” then embraced Goodell and held up a red No. 1 Cardinals jersey with his name on the back.

“I dreamed just how it was like, but just even more of a chip on my shoulder now and more excitement and passion just to get there and help my team win,” Robinson said. “I just can’t wait to get out there. We leave tomorrow morning, so let’s get it.”

Ninety minutes after he was on stage with Goodell, Robinson was on the second floor of the One Campus Martius building going through the NFL’s post-draft player media tour.

He did radio hits on SiriusXM NFL, ESPN and Westwood One. He shot a promotional video for YouTube and signed his first NFL trading card for Panini. He cut more promos for the league’s social media channels and in between he took a minute to digest his whirlwind day.

The former basketball player who couldn’t bench 135 pounds when he returned to football and was never offered a scholarship to his dream school Michigan was a first-round pick in the NFL draft.

“Are we on?” Robinson said, playfully checking a reporter’s phone to see if it was recording. “Yeah, I can’t tell you how I really feel, but it’s a blessing. It’s an opportunity, man. I just wanted one team, one opportunity, one team to believe in me and it just so happened to be THE Arizona Cardinals. I’m about to — where this jersey at? I’m going to sleep with the jersey on, sleep with the hat on.”

Robinson finished his media obligations at 1:04 a.m. He did stand-up interviews with Arizona TV and radio stations in town for the draft, then took an elevator to the parking garage where a car was waiting to whisk him back to the hotel.

He had a private flight to catch the next morning to Arizona with fellow first-round pick Marvin Harrison Jr., but said he was too amped up to sleep and was headed out to celebrate with friends.

“I told you, this chip on this shoulder just got a little bit bigger so I’m turnt up,” he said.

Asked to explain why, Robinson said, “You know why, man. You know why.”

“Michigan passed on me, Detroit passed on me,” he said. “It’s OK. I’m just excited to get to AZ, man, cause they believe in me, and I just need one person to believe in me and go play ball.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: NFL draft: Behind the scenes with first-round pick Darius Robinson