Damien Lewis grew up in Canton, Miss., a small city of about 13,000 people located north of Jackson. He received no Division I offers coming out of high school and enrolled at Northwest Mississippi Community College. There he played home games in front of crowds of roughly 2,500 people.

As physically prepared as the massive guard was to hold his own in the Southeastern Conference, the communication part of the job — a lynchpin of any good offensive line — took some getting used to with 100,000 screaming fans in the stands.