Vernon Turner never imagined his life story would be turned into a major motion picture. But it’s happening. The script has already been written by Brad Gann, the writer of the Disney hit “Invincible” starring Mark Wahlberg . The cast is almost set. And once a director is selected and the announcement is formally made, filming will commence.
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All Turner has to do is sit back and watch as his inspirational true tale of how he somehow made it to the NFL and onto the Buffalo Bills is magically reinvented on the big screen for the world to see.
“My entire life has been one big arcade game,” Turner laughs. “One head scratcher after another. Even when I reflect back on how things started and where they went, I still scratch my head. It’s my life and I know what happened in it, but to read a script of that caliber brought me to tears.
“It’s one thing to read your life story in a book,” he says, “but when they reincarnate that into a movie with real people playing parts and portraying you, it’s surreal.”
Turner retired from football two decades ago, after six years in the NFL as a receiver and running back, and a short stint in NFL Europe. Now 51, he’s a businessman and a motivational speaker. He travels around the country to talk about his personal journey, with hopes of inspiring people in the process. During those conversations, he says he often shares the following quote (widely attributed to Mark Twain): “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”
“That was pivotal for me,” Turner emphasizes. “Because for many years I thought I was trash. I didn’t know why I was on this earth because of how I entered the world.”
Two years ago, the Players’ Tribune approached Turner and asked him if he’d like to write something for their media platform. They had heard about his self-published 2012 autobiography, The Next Level: A Game I Had To Play. It was a book Turner felt he had to write, because he had been holding in a lot of angst and built up emotions for over 30 years. He ended up writing a letter to his younger self for the Players’ Tribune, recounting significant moments in his life that set him on a rollercoaster course to the NFL. It received such incredible feedback that Derek Jeter flew Turner to New York City to meet with him personally. They discussed the movie project and soon “Relentless” was off and running.
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To hear Turner tell his life story is an experience in and of itself. He’s humble from the get, saying he had no business ever playing in the NFL at all because it wasn’t talent that got him there. What got him there was why he was so motivated to succeed in the first place — the need to take care of his family.
“My mom died when I was a sophom*ore in high school. I have two brothers and two sisters,” he says. He’s the oldest, and just a few years later, when Turner was a freshman in college, his dad died. His siblings — whom he remains close to all these years later, though the youngest passed away in 2015 at the age of 38 — were 16, 12, 11 and 8 at the time of his father’s death.
“I had to convince my aunt to move into our house while I was away at [Carson-Newman] college. That went okay for a while. Then going into my senior year, my aunt called and said she couldn’t take care of my brothers and sisters anymore. I had two options: leave school and take care of them, or stay and they’d have to go into foster care. The second option wasn’t even on the table. I convinced [my aunt] to stick around a little longer and I started doing things like cutting hair on the side to make some extra money. I was doing everything I could to send money back home. It was a financial strain.”
Turner admits he reached a point where he didn’t know what to do and felt incredibly helpless. He was a 21-year-old kid who had promised his mother before she died that if anything happened to his father, he’d step up and assume the responsibility of the household. He’d keep the family together. Once his father passed away, fulfilling that promise was all he could think about. And one day, sitting in his dorm room with his head hung low, Turner looked up at the television. Football was on. He called his high school coach and said he was turning pro.
“I went to a small [Division II] school. I was 160-something pounds. I was five-foot-nine. I had decent stats. And I had an okay college career,” Turner says. He received a football scholarship to Carson-Newman, which gave him a chance to get an education, but the sport was never something he saw himself doing beyond college.
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“I was nowhere near the caliber of a pro football player. But once I decided to turn pro and I knew what the odds were against me making it, I went into training mode.”
Turner’s high school coach connected him to an agency, who reluctantly signed him. He wasn’t invited to the combine. He wasn’t invited to any senior bowls. But there were a few players on his teamwho were getting workouts from scouts. Turner’s agent, Howard Shatsky, told him to always carry his gym bag around and whenever a scout was visiting for a workout, show up with his teammates. And that’s exactly what he did. He put on fifteen pounds of muscle and dropped his 40-yard dash time down from 4.5 to 4.3. And all the while he kept his family situation to himself — he says no one in college or the NFL knew.
After going unselected in the 1990 NFL Draft, Turner was signed to a free agent contract with the Denver Broncos. He was released before the end of the preseason. But Shatsky called Turner and told him not to unpack, because he was heading to Buffalo to be on their practice squad instead. Turner broke the news to his siblings and they cried — not because he had realized his goal of becoming a professional football player, but because they knew they were going to be taken care of and able to stay together.
“I will never, ever be able to pay back the Buffalo Bills for what they did for me,” Turner confesses. “They were the ones who gave me a job that helped me save my family. For that alone, not to mention all the great coaches and great players that I was blessed to be around, they provided me with an opportunity to take care of my family.”
During his one season in Buffalo, Turner gave one-hundred percent in practice, so much so that some of his teammates would tell him to ease up, that it wasn’t “game time.” Turner would turn to them and reply, “It is for me.” He couldn’t afford to take it halfway or lose his job. He had four other people counting on him. And while he was there, he figured he’d learn as much as he could from some of the best players in the league.
Turner and Jim Kelly at Super Bowl 25 press day in 1990. (Photo courtesy of vernonturner.com)
“I am so blessed and grateful that I was given an opportunity to be with the Buffalo Bills. Just the players I came across and learned from — Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed, Cornelius Bennett, Daryl Talley, Bruce Smith, Don Beebe. These guys helped me mold myself into a professional athlete. Marv [Levy] let us coach ourselves on the field during practice, and that’s what made that group so special. They had a higher expectation of themselves than what their coaches had.”
Turner wasn’t on the active roster for Super Bowl 25 — he and two other players were vying for an additional receiver spot but he didn’t get it. But Turner still got to experience the game from the sidelines. It’s a moment he says he wishes he would have appreciated more —going from undrafted to being a part of a Super Bowl team, soaking in all the sights and the sounds, and getting a hug from the likes of Whitney Houston. He was released by the Bills before the start of the next season, and went on to play for the Los Angeles Rams, Detroit Lions and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
While in Tampa, Turner became the first player to return a kick or punt for a touchdown in franchise history, forever cementing himself in the NFL record book.
You might say it’s the perfect Hollywood ending.
(Top photo courtesy of VernonTurner.com)
Lyndsey D'Arcangelo writes about women's college basketball and the WNBA for The Athletic and women's sports for Fast Company. Her first nonfiction book, "Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League" is available now. Follow Lyndsey on Twitter @darcangel21
