Josh Weinfuss, ESPN Staff Writer 8y

Robert Nkemdiche marches to beat of his own drum, like his new coach

TEMPE, Ariz. -- From the moment Robert Nkemdiche met Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians, he felt like the two connected beyond football.

It was during a meeting at the NFL scouting combine in February, and there was one topic on every team’s mind that week: Nkemdiche’s incident last December at an Atlanta hotel.

“I said to him, ‘I’m not trying to tell you what you want to hear. I’m really just trying to be me,’” Nkemdiche said. “He’s like, ‘No, I’m feeling you. I’m listening to you. I feel you.’ I’m like, ‘I like this guy.’”

There were 31 other teams that could have drafted Nkemdiche, but he was selected by the one with a head coach who’s as independent a thinker as there is in the NFL. Arians marches to the beat of his own drum, whether it’s with his approach to play calling (he goes deep on third-and-short), the media (he’s open, honest -- sometimes -- and funny), with his players (he doesn’t sugarcoat anything) or his style (he wears driving caps designed specifically for him and wears shirts more apropos of a night out in Scottsdale than a Monday morning news conference).

In Nkemdiche, the Cardinals drafted a player who also marches to the beat of his own drum, a man with hobbies outside of football. For one, he plays the saxophone and is an avid reader. He also said money isn’t motivation -- in football or in his life.

He’s driven by proving to the Cardinals they made the right decision.

“Just really to get an opportunity to play football in an organization that’s accepted me fully for who I am and give it back to them is what drives me, is what drives the fire inside of me and the passion for the love of the game,” Nkemdiche said.

Before their football relationship begins Friday with the first day of rookie minicamp, Nkemdiche and Arians were already a perfect fit. Arians isn’t a cookie-cutter coach and Nkemdiche appreciated getting drafted by a team that doesn’t necessarily want their players to be clones.

“It’s not even the fact of not conforming, it’s the fact of just knowing yourself, just being yourself,” Nkemdiche said. “I’m a simple man. I’m not even like a complex guy, and for the fact that he’s a guy that likes people that move to the beat of their own drum, I’d love to play for him. I can’t wait to go to work for him.”

As he went through the pre-draft process -- meetings, visits and interviews -- Nkemdiche started believing teams weren’t as concerned with his incident as much as they were that he didn’t fit the idea perception of him that they’d developed.

“The issues were I’m not a stereotype,” Nkemdiche said. “And they don’t want to say that, but that’s the truth because I don’t have [a] history of incidents. I had an incident that was stupid and I learned from it. But they -- this team -- saw what they were supposed to see and that why I’m here, and I’m excited.”

The Cardinals have taken chances on players with off-field incidents before.

In 2013, they drafted Tyrann Mathieu, who missed a full season at LSU in college, because of failed drug tests and an arrest. In March, Arizona traded for outside linebacker Chandler Jones, who had an incident in January in which he showed up at a Massachusetts police station unsolicited and shirtless. He reportedly had a bad reaction to synthetic marijuana.

And last week they drafted Nkemdiche, who fell 15 feet out of the window of an Atlanta hotel in December. Police found marijuana cigarettes in his hotel room and he was charged with possession.

But the Cardinals felt comfortable enough with their in-depth evaluation of Nkemdiche to not let the incident have a large impact on their decision to draft him. And that’s what stands out to Nkemdiche.

“This is the perfect place to be because I guess somewhere along the lines, somebody on this staff knows how to look through people and see people’s souls,” Nkemdiche said. “That speaks measures, because [for] people in this world it’s hard to look at somebody’s soul because they’re just so caught up on the procession of whatever they heard,  what they’re supposed to think, and they don’t really have an opinion of their own.

“Somebody on their staff has an opinion of their own, and that’s why I’m here.”

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