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INDIANAPOLIS -- **"What's your motivation?" is a query more prevalent in theatre than football, but it's one that teams like to know in the scouting process, to ascertain how badly a player wants it.
Does he play as though he's comfortable? Or does he attack each drill with reckless abandon, playing desperate, as if something vital rides on the ferocity with which he engulfs a tackling dummy -- or an opponent on game day.
Perhaps no one eligible for the 2015 draft has a better answer for the question of motivation than safety Kyshoen Jarrett.
The future of his family looks much brighter if he manages to stick in the NFL. That's because even a rookie-minimum paycheck will change its outlook, easing life on his cerebral palsy-stricken brother, 21-year-old Daishawn, and their mother, who must work full-time and then provide full-time care when she gets home.
"It's all about providing the best care possible -- 24-hour care," Jarrett said. "All the care that he's receiving right now is limited within nine or 10 hours, so my mom goes to work, gets back home and she's pretty much stuck in the house.
"Whatever possible way I can provide 24-hour care for him, that's huge, so my mom can finally relax and take some load off her shoulders."
Daishawn Jarrett is confined to a wheelchair. As with many victims of cerebral policy, he has cognitive impairment. He is legally blind. He requires round-the-clock monitoring just to survive.
In high school, Kyshoen Jarrett and his two older brothers often took care of his youngest brother, helping bathe and feed him.
"We all contributed to helping my mom raise him," Jarrett recalled. "It sucks right now, because everybody moved on to do their own thing, because we're grown. My oldest brother has a family to take care of. I'm trying to pursue my career to eventually help one day."
Jarrett's attributes might not show up in his Combine workout. He plays faster than his timed numbers, and has the typical aggression in the box that you see from Virginia Tech safeties, a group whose alumni is headlined by Seattle's Kam Chancellor.
"I do feel like I have the speed to get from sideline to sideline, but I also have the knowledge and the I.Q. of the game, to make (myself) a step faster," Jarrett said.
And even if his numbers don't show it, he always has that internal push to keep him driving just a little bit more -- and the maturity to know how much rides on whether his NFL quest is a successful one: the health of his brother, and the desire to ease the burden on his mother.
"I can't take this opportunity for granted," Jarrett said.
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