How Resiliency Keyed Larry Dean’s Football Career as Player and Exec

EAGAN, Minn. — Twenty two-year-old Larry Dean was giddy with excitement.

There were a million reasons why after he was signed by the Minnesota Vikings 15 years ago.

In mid-August this year, Dean, helping lead Saskatchewan's front office in the Canadian Football League now, returned to Minnesota for Vikings Training Camp to scout players who in many respects are just like he was.

He called his coming back to the organization that gave him his chance a "circle of life" and said "it just feels like I'm supposed to be here. Especially now with what I'm doing. Maybe one day, maybe one day."

The pride of Tifton, Georgia, was a superstar in his pocket of the world, but a lesser-known commodity outside of it. He attended college 30 minutes away at Valdosta State and eclipsed Jessie Tuggle's career tackles record en route to being recognized as the NCAA Division II National Defensive Player of the Year.

Ten minutes after his agents said, "Big fella, we're going to Minnesota," on July 26, 2011, the school president phoned Dean and told him to quickly gather his nearest and dearest for another milestone.

"I had jeans — some Levi's jeans — a pair of Jordan Retro 7s and a polo shirt, and I put on a cap and gown," Dean remembered becoming the first person in his family to obtain a college degree. "After the ceremony, we circled up, said a prayer, and I headed to the airport and came straight to Minnesota."

The sequence was surreal then and still is as the 38-year-old replays it. The graduation was spur of the moment and approved by the university for special circumstances (Dean had a few weeks of July courses left on his plate, but his professors vouched for him). The NFL opportunity was a dream come true but almost didn't happen because of a 132-day work stoppage that lasted from March 12 to July 25 and disallowed teams from negotiating with undrafted free agents. Dean heard the news he was waiting on and never stopped working for as soon as a new Collective Bargaining Agreement was put into motion.

"Everyone's just excited, and you're kind of just riding it out. Like, wow, you chased a dream, you know, and you caught it. You caught it. You're getting the opportunity, and you're just on this high," Dean said.

"I hadn't had any conversations with Minnesota," he added, fuzzily recalling that his agents back then, Joel and Justin Turner, were trying to sell the Vikings on a kicker (it was quarterback Tyler Thigpen per a 2011 Pioneer Press article) and during their conversations to broker a deal introduced Dean's portfolio. "At that time, I had put together a YouTube video — it's still out there, a career highlight tape at Valdosta State — and I think Mr. Zygi [Wilf] watched it and gave the stamp of approval, like, 'Yeah, I think that he would be fine in camp' and not thinking too much of it."

Dean was admittedly naïve, not to mention on the smaller side for an outside linebacker at 6-foot, 216 pounds, so if he maxed out as a training camp body, few people if any probably would've batted an eye.

Fatefully, Dean met someone named Mike Singletary, who was in his first season as Vikings Assistant Head Coach and leader of the linebackers after his tenure as San Francisco's head coach ended in 2010.

The underdog rookie Dean clicked with the Super Bowl champion and Pro Football Hall of Fame player turned Coach Singletary. Dean credited the former linebacker's interest in mentoring young players; he also thinks Singletary saw himself in Dean. Not their play styles, Dean was fast to point out. But physical stature, and upbringings and personalities. They "hit it off on a different level" after their first encounter.

Dean's arrival to camp, remember, was backdropped against unusual conditions, as well as naïvety.

"I didn't look up the coaching staff or anything like that. I didn't understand the greater scheme of things, you know, of being a pro and being prepared from that standpoint. It was just, I'm a football player and I'm just going to play ball. And then everything else happened, everything [was] so fast, you know, all the congratulations and things like that, so I didn't even have a chance [to get my feet settled].

"I got in and woke up. [Vikings staffers are] like, 'We'll be out here to take you guys to meetings,' " Dean continued. "And because it was a lockout, we didn't have the onboarding process like most rookies do, like with the OTAs and the rookie minicamp and, you know, voluntaries, involuntary, all this — we didn't have all that. It was just when we got there, we maybe had two days, and then it was time to go to camp."

Dean's memory of entering his position room the first time illustrates his innocent lack of experience.

"When I walk in, there he is — like, that's him — he's holding the playbooks with the wooden cross on, around his neck, like that's Coach Sing'," Dean recalled. "And I'm like Oh, I didn't know that's my coach.

"He probably saw that I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," Dean added, "and he was like, let me help this young brother out. That's where our relationship began. For three years, we shared a meeting room. Most mornings, we would meet. He just tried to help and help equip me with the tools to be successful."

'Make this your home'

Dean pursued big dreams as a player with a bigger belief he could do anything.

"I was brainwashed under the motto of, as a defender you could be a part of any play you hustle to," he said, indirectly describing the way he attacks life. "That's what I really bought into and really believed."

As a senior at Tift County HS, which produced four NFL alumni prior to Dean, the first in 1951, he scribbled the same thing in everyone's yearbooks: "Check for me in a couple years. I'll be in the NFL." It was "always my Plan A," Dean explained.

A strong support group beginning with his ever-present dad — he attended every practice and game until Dean got to college — helped the dreamer, who took a liking to hitting someone and not getting in trouble for it, get there. Dean's NFL arrival was a testament to love from his siblings, empowerment from his coaches, including Joe Cauthen, who Dean said "put the battery in my back" when Cauthen inspired him to switch from safety to linebacker upon his second college season, and proof of concept established by Maurice Leggett, who played with Dean at VSU and started four games for Kansas City from 2008-09.

Arriving and sticking were different objectives, though. Once Dean arrived, Singletary pulled him aside from the other guys and broke down the roster with raw unfiltered honesty — teaching him how to stick.

"The gist of the story is it was all about mindset with him. It was all about mindset," Dean recounted. "He's explaining that just because you're here, that don't mean you're on the team. Like, you have the opportunity to be, but you're not on the team. It's not solidified yet. And at that time, we had also drafted a rookie linebacker from Ohio State, so it was like, 'Look, this is what you're up against. This is the sobering fact; this is the reality of it. This guy's a bona fide starter. He's a bona fide starter. He's a backup, but he's a high draft pick, so we're invested in him. This guy's played a lot of ball here; he's a guy for us."

Singletary, sharing the truth like he was on the stand, communicated that Minnesota was planning to take only four or five OLBs into the season. Dean wasn't in the equation, yet.

" 'What are you going to do to implement yourself?' " Singletary asked, and then answered.

"He was like, 'You have to embody this, you have to make this your home. I don't know what everybody else is gonna do but you have to understand that you're not gonna go home, like, that's the mindset that you have to have. This has to be your home,' " Dean recalled. "So, he was like, 'Where are your house keys at?' And then I was like, you know, in my bag. So, he was like 'Pull them out.' So I pulled out my keys — and he didn't tell me to throw them away, we just walked to the trash; he walked to the trash can and I followed him, and we just looked at it. He looked at me and he was like, 'You know what you have to do.'

"It was kind of like you could lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink it," Dean added. "And, yeah, so I tossed the keys, man. … I never had shared that story. … But it was just the mindset. It was just like, I'm all in, right?"

That lesson and the Singletary connection served Dean well.

On cutdown day in 2011, Dean and other undrafted Vikings rookies (NFL.com listed 14 signings that summer), as well as several members of the 10-player draft class suppressed their anxiety in the team hotel by going to Famous Dave's at the Mall of America. Each person pushed their phone to the center of the table. They wished each other good luck and ordered food, then unsaved numbers started flashing.

"That's the reaper calling," Dean said hauntingly.

Eventually, his eyes locked onto the clock on his screen. Dean got a call with about 30 minutes to go, except it was from Joe Webb, who was doing roster math in his head and was convinced Dean made it.

"As an older player, he understood the roster and seeing the releases," Dean said, although there was trepidation until 5:02 p.m. when the longest of longshots finally took a breath, but just for one moment.

"I said a quick prayer, then I called my dad and I was like, 'Hey, yeah, we made it.' But then it's the same thing, like, OK, yeah, you made it initially, but you have to fight to get here and you have to fight to stay here," Dean shared. "And that's the ultimate test of demand. It's a constant. There's no complacency, especially for a back-end, undrafted guy — there's no complacency. And that's not my mindset anyway."

Dean nuked the odds piled high against him and thrived on Minnesota's 53-man rosters in 2011, 2012 and 2013. In that span, he played the 30^th most special teams snaps in the NFL (634) and the 15^th most among undrafted players. Dean also was one of five players to appear in all 49 Vikings regular-season and playoff contests from 2011-13.

One of Dean's favorite memories is, well, his first that officially counted. Literally, his first NFL play.

Gearing up to go onto the field at Qualcomm Stadium, big-play threat Percy Harvin was one of many teammates who approached Dean and said something along the lines of " 'Hey, rook, what's up, man? Game day. You made it!' " Harvin holds the unique distinction of positively baffling the rook afterward.

All these years later, Dean doesn't vividly remember Harvin fielding kickoffs in training camp. Dean, however, knew all about Harvin's unusual return style — the 2009 first-round pick preferred to catch kickoffs with his palms out, like he was snaring a pass, instead of trapping it, palms in, against his body.

"I remember Coach Prief' (former Special Teams Coordinator Mike Priefer) telling everybody, 'Don't catch it like this. He's the only one allowed to do it.' "

Harvin was not the Vikings primary kickoff return man in 2011 — Lorenzo Booker ran out 19 compared to Harvin's 16 — but he averaged a team-best 32.5 yards per return. He scored a 103-yard TD to launch the season.

"I just remember getting in the huddle and him walking up, telling me, 'Man, watch this,' and he tells Coach Prief', 'I want to return it.' And then Coach Prief' looked [at us and said], 'OK, you heard him.' Like, whoever the returner was, I forgot who it was. Prief' was like, 'All right, you heard him, Percy's going to return it.' I'm like, What? That's crazy. OK. Then Percy looked at me. He's like, 'All right, I'm going to meet you in the end zone.' And he said it so cavalierly, so nonchalant, so I'm like, OK, win one for 'The Gipper.' "

"We break the huddle: To the house on three," Dean reenacted. "One, two, three — to the house!"

Harvin delivered. From three yards deep in the middle of the end zone, he weaved right, slipped a tackler, dashed ahead of Dean at the Vikings 25 and cut across the grain 75 yards to the opposite paint. Dean chased Harvin the whole way and euphorically slapped his shoulder pads. It led to an unforgettable — and hilarious — "Welcome to the NFL" moment that caught the adrenalized rookie's rush of emotions.

"They kicked it to him, and he didn't lie. He took it to the house," Dean said incredulously. "I'm almost hyperventilating. Like, Oh, my God, you told me this. You told me. I don't understand. You told me that you were going to score. And I'm walking with him to the bench, like, just arm around him, you know, just elated, right? And I'm sitting down with him, we're talking about it or whatever, and Coach Prief' is going crazy. He's like, 'Larry! Larry!' Like everybody's calling 'LD! LD!' I'm like, What?! They're like 'You're on kickoff!' But I went down, and I [assisted] a tackle, so [Priefer] wasn't too upset with me. But that was one of my moments that I like to tell people about because he called it."

Shaped by the game

Dean signed up for football when he was 6 or 7 years old, and in his words "it's been on ever since."

He played it extraordinarily.

After his three-year Vikings tenure, Dean contributed to Buffalo in 2014 in a comparable capacity — as an ace in the third phase — and then spent one offseason with Tampa Bay before going farther north than Minnesota and joining the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats (2016-18). Dean also played for the Edmonton Elks (2019) and concluded his on-field career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders (2021-23) after 2020 was canceled, entirely, by the COVID-19 pandemic and Dean missed 2021 with an Achilles tendon injury.

Dean's feats in the CFL made him a league legend: 585 career tackles, 11 sacks, seven interceptions and seven forced fumbles. He was tabbed as a CFL Divisional All-Star four times (2017-19, 2023), and in 2018, with a personal-best 105 defensive tackles, he was the East Division's Most Outstanding Defensive Player.

On the spot, Dean laughed and rewound the film in his brain to extend a scouting report of himself:

"Tough. Good FBI (football intelligence). A little undersized. Can at times get engulfed with the shedding of the o-line but has the quicks and the twitchiness to outwit them. Physical at the point of contact with the ball carrier. Understands coverage and coverage zones. Plays with a relentless motor. Good pursuit."

Nowadays, serving as Assistant Director of Player Personnel for the Roughriders, his aspirations are simple: "I love paying it forward," he said. "Giving back, you know, I think identifying players and being able to give them the opportunity, I think that's big for me because obviously someone did it for me."

Back in Tifton, there are "Home of Larry Dean" signs welcoming visitors to the city of 17,500 people. He has a foundation that bears his name, and he was inducted into the Tift County Blue Devils Hall of Fame and the Valdosta State University Blazers Hall of Fame. His sport has given him platform and perspective.

"Football and life have so many parallels. I'll forever be indebted to the game of football," Dean remarked. "It has shaped me and helped mold me as a man. You know, the thing about football in life that you're going to go through is adversity, right? And then it's how you handle it, whether it's a season-ending injury, whether it's being released, whether it's life, dealing with a death, or anything like that. You have to just keep moving forward because life goes on, and it's kind of like in football; it's the 'next play' mentality. No matter how good or how bad, it's the next play. What have you done lately?

"You understand?" he asks rhetorically. "There's no resting on laurels — nothing like that — or anything of the sort. It's the next play. How can you be better? And then it's how can you contribute, too, right?"

Dean earned table pounds from the Vikings coaching staff for three consecutive seasons.

Even in 2014, Dean was valued by the franchise and survived the initial 53-man roster pruning. He attended church that Sunday intending to go to Winter Park after and begin preparing for the regular season, but when he left the service, he noticed a missed call and voicemail from former Assistant General Manager George Paton (now GM of the Broncos). "He needed to see me," Dean said — and Paton's tenor wasn't good.

That moment ended Dean's run in Minnesota, but it effectively fueled the rest of his race as a player. Paton's voicemail is saved on Dean's phone. It motivated him on the dog days, and one day he said he will play it for Paton to hear. Not because it prevented him from doing anything. It helped him persevere.

"It calloused me because the worst thing that a player wants to happen or experience, like, it had happened," Dean said. "I don't know, like the equivalent of being broken up with, right? It's like that. Is this how it feels? And you never want to feel that again. But, obviously, that's the nature of the business.

"Everybody's going to get the call, whether it's one year, one month, 20 years. It's very seldom that a player just goes his whole career and [doesn't] get that call," Dean continued. "So, for me, sometimes, I like to say, it's all — as a football player, to get out there, everybody's tough. Everybody's tough, like physically tough to go out there, punish your body, put your body through that. But the players who are able to separate themselves, they're mentally tough. You find different ways to make you tick and click."

Dean's journey remains grounded in that mindset. He's never given any energy to self-satisfaction. He's never felt stifled by his humble background or improbable odds. Dean didn't unpack his bags during four training camps in Mankato — he cut his phone completely off for the first two, as well — because he wanted to stick around in the NFL, and Singletary's wisdom stuck to him like his jersey in the summer sun.

"After I went home my rookie year, I remember knocking on the door to give my dad a hug," Dean said.

"He was like, 'Where's your key at?' I was like, 'Long story.' "