Anticipatory eyes were glued to a 9-month-old Javonte Williams.

Here he was, ready to try to take his first uncertain steps. He could pull himself up onto his feet with the help of furniture or his parents, but the next part — staying upright — proved much harder.

When Javonte didn't appear to be making any progress, his parents, Jermaine and Shekemia, turned from expectant to worried. They tried standing their son on his feet for him, and he would just immediately fall.

Increasingly concerned about their little "bobblehead," as Jermaine called him, they took him to the doctor. Javonte had been having some trouble with ear infections, and his inner ear, they learned, was not draining fluid properly, which threw off his equilibrium.

The next day, they returned to have a doctor insert tubes that would resolve the problem and eventually fall out on their own.

"By the end of the week, he was walking," Shekemia says. "… Once he got those tubes, he got up and got moving. Had his balance ever since."

The story sticks in their minds nearly 20 years, because Javonte's ability to keep his feet in even the most challenging situations has become the trademark characteristic for one of the NFL's most promising young players. Last fall, Von Miller admitted he once tried to trip Javonte in the hallway just to see if it was possible. It wasn't.

And so Jermaine and Shekemia can't help but wonder: Maybe those tubes worked too well.

All they can do is just laugh and shake their heads, like everyone does.

At some point, everyone who watches Javonte play can't help but do that, and that's especially true for the residents of Wallace, North Carolina, where he grew up. They shook their heads watching him play rec-league football and watching him score six touchdowns in a game at 8 or 9 years old. They shook their heads when he went from a state-champion inside linebacker to running back and ran for more than 2,000 yards. And they shook their heads when they watched him go essentially unrecruited by Division-I schools in spite of everything their eyes told them.

These days, they're still shaking their heads, though it's now mostly just at the thought that the boy they knew as "Pookie" — the quiet child who grew to become the high school's valedictorian — made it to the NFL from their humble town.

The town of Wallace sits in North Carolina's marshy coastal plain, a short drive away from the Atlantic Ocean in the southeastern reaches of the state.

It's not exactly a sleepy place. The poultry and pig industries serve as the community's economic backbone, with the county's sales ranking No. 1 and No. 2 in the state, respectively, as of the most recent national agricultural census. A four-lane highway splits the town pretty much down the middle on an almost north-south path. Turning west on the two-lane Main Street will send drivers through the kind of quaint storefronts that are ubiquitous with small-town America of a not-too-distant past.

Still, it is a humble place, the kind of community where children think nothing of leaving the house without shoes.

"There ain't nothin' here but chicken, pigs and pigskin," Wallace-Rose Hill High School football coach Kevin Motsinger says. "A lot of people take offense to that, but it's the truth. We're a God-fearing place and just hard-working country folks."

Javonte's childhood home, located on the west side of the highway and a little ways past all the shops, was in the middle of a tract of homes all owned by family — his grandmother in one house, his great-aunt in another, a cousin in yet another.

"Everybody on this block, pretty much, is cousins and all that," Javonte says. "… I could just walk into any of these houses and everybody'd know me."

In this family focused space, a young Javonte began to take shape.

With his grandfather, he'd watch Western movies or shows, which helped spark a lifelong love for horses. One day, when a book fair opened at his school years later, he came home with a book about horses and all the breeds. Someday, he would own several of his own.

And with his father, who was a linebacker in high school, Javonte would watch football on TV. The two interests would sometimes overlap; one memorable image for his family is that of a 5-or-6-year-old Javonte hanging around the house in a unique ensemble that included a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and the shoulder pads that he'd gotten for Christmas.

About six or seven years later, Jason Tudryn was driving through the eastern side of North Carolina, where if not for the occasional high school, the farmland would seemingly stretch on forever.

For this trip, Tudryn, who was the North Carolina Tar Heels' director of high school relations, was joined by his boss, head coach Larry Fedora. UNC's football program was coming up emptyhanded in their recruiting efforts for some of the state's premier running backs, like Zamir White, who committed to Georgia, and Ricky Person Jr., who wound up at NC State.

As the pair evaluated their options between recruiting stops, the conversation turned to a small-town kid who had been a dominant-but-undersized linebacker for three years before turning his focus to running back for his final season.

"We were kind of striking out with all those other guys," Tudryn says. "I had watched, really, all of Javonte's games, because he played offense and defense. … I said, Coach, he's the best player in the state, and it's not even close. To his credit, he trusted me enough to not say, Yeah, whatever, shut up. He said, All right, let's get on him. Let's watch him again."

That Javonte had not committed to a college this late in his senior season was a minor miracle in itself for Carolina. Here was a kid who would be valedictorian of a class of 130 or 140; who had won a state championship in North Carolina's 1AA classification in each of his first three seasons; who had been defensive MVP of the title game as a sophomore; and who had been the title game's overall MVP and the county's Mr. Football selection as a junior.

In spite of all those accolades, he received little attention from Division-I programs. His coaches, though, knew better than anyone that Javonte was special enough to deserve more than what he was getting.

In the three years that Joey Price spent as Javonte's coach at Wallace-Rose Hill, he was overwhelmed by the maturity that matched or exceeded Javonte's talent. Javonte's mother had ingrained in him and his sister that education came first, and he came home with report cards that rarely, if ever, disappointed. He graduated with a 4.6 GPA, and Price once recalled that Javonte's worst grade was a 97. As a leader in the locker room, Javonte also was able to command the respect of teammates who were several years older.

On the field, from his middle linebacker position, Javonte was a nightmare — physical, fluid and a quick thinker. Over his sophomore and junior seasons, he logged 377 tackles. One series that Price remembers clearly is of back-to-back goal-line plays; Javonte met the fullback — whom Price estimates was about 60 pounds heavier — in the hole both times and dropped him to prevent touchdowns.

"He's such a quiet-mannered kid that doesn't have a lot to say with his mouth, but when he hits you, it hurts you," Price says. "… I don't mean this in a wrong way — I bet right now if they put him on defense in Denver, he'd still make plays because his motor is such [that] he's not gonna let you not let him make 'em.

"That's why he breaks tackles. That's why he keeps running. He has something inside of him that's different than everybody else."

Price began to give Javonte a significant role in an already talented running back rotation as a junior, ramping up his carries as the Bulldogs marched through the playoffs to a third consecutive title. Over the five-game playoff run, he averaged 137 all-purpose yards and about 10 tackles per game, and he scored 11 total touchdowns — seven rushing, two receiving and two defensive.

Yet, Javonte still didn't have much interest in him from any major programs. At 5-foot-10 and a little shy of 200 pounds, Javonte apparently was held back by his size at linebacker — even if he was benching and cleaning 350 pounds and squatting about 435 — "unheard numbers," as Price says.

"How could you watch those highlights, though, and not want that kid?" Price says. "What are college coaches looking at nowadays? I can't figure it."

Following that season, Price retired. His successor, Kevin Motsinger, met with his staff to evaluate their team ahead of the 2017 season, and they came to the agreement that it would be in their best interest — and Javonte's, if it worked — to move him into a primarily offensive role.

"When I told him he was mainly going to play offense, he was a little disappointed," Motsinger says. "I wouldn't say he was upset or angry, but I mean he'd been a linebacker his whole life. I asked him how many offers he had, and he didn't have any. So, for me, his way to go somewhere was at running back. … Look at his talent, his body control, his physicality … his ball skills. He was the complete package."

As he transitioned to running back, Javonte's training regimen changed. Motsinger helped him improve his hip flexibility to maintain his speed, and he put an emphasis on adding to his frame. From the time Motsinger first weighed him in 2017 to the last in late November of that year, Javonte grew from 187 pounds to 214.

That nearly 30-pound metamorphosis also required a change in meal-planning in the Williams household, and the household grill got nearly daily orders.

"It was steak," Shekemia says. "… I'll say he was probably eating four or five steaks a week. … He had to have two after each game."

Javonte wasted no time to get to Chapel Hill.

Thanks to online courses he took through James Sprunt Community College during high school, he was able to graduate early so he could enroll at UNC in time to attend spring practices.

He was probably the youngest player on the team, but it was hard for anyone to tell.

"He graduates early and he comes in there, and it was like a 21-year-old," Fedora says. "He was very mature. He didn't act like a 17-, 18-year-old kid. … From the day he got on campus, he was a surprise to me — just how mature he was, how he handled himself and that nothing was too big for him. He's coming from Wallace-Rose Hill, a little 2A program, and nothing overwhelmed him. Classes were no problem for him at UNC."

When spring practices began, Fedora was able to observe that what made Javonte impressive wasn't just what he was able to do in the classroom.

"He steps out on the football field, and the first day we have blitz pickup," Fedora says. "A linebacker comes, and, I mean, he just knocks the living [expletive] out of him and doesn't blink. And that's usually the area where young running backs have trouble, because they don't do that much in high school. Believe me, he had no trouble whatsoever. I remember at that moment, the light in my head just kind of went off, like, This kid is gonna be special."

That first year, Williams had few opportunities until the final two games of the year, when he totaled 176 rushing yards and four touchdowns as UNC fell well out of contention.

After the season, the Tar Heels made a coaching change, parting ways with Fedora and hiring College Football Hall of Fame coach Mack Brown. He, too, was able to see something unique in Javonte before even getting to the season.

That spring, Brown invited a close friend, Urban Meyer, to visit Chapel Hill to speak to his team and observe practice. In April, the three-time national-champion coach came to town and stood on the sideline.

"We hand it to Javonte in a scrimmage, and he ran over about three and jumped around two more," Brown says. "And Urban looked at me and said, Hm. I wasn't sure why you took this job, but you're going to be OK. That guy's really good."

That season, Javonte made an impressive jump. As Carolina returned to a bowl game, he ran for more than 900 yards and formed half of a talented tandem with Michael Carter, who was one year his elder.

It was just a prelude for what was to come.

Javonte's mother could very well have been yelling those same words nearly 10 months later when she and her husband traveled to Dallas to watch Javonte play for the Broncos.

In the state where everything is bigger, so was Javonte, as he captivated the NFL landscape with a career-best 111-yard outing, punctuated with a 30-yard run where Javonte pushed through a mass of Cowboys defenders.

How could this possibly be the same toddler that had no sense of balance?

Back home in Wallace, the screams were surely as loud as those in Jerry World. In Javonte's hometown, his games have become appointment viewing — especially so for the children at Wallace-Rose Hill, who return to school every Monday wondering the same thing, regardless of the previous game's outcome or final statistics: Why didn't Pookie get to carry the ball more?

When Javonte visits the school following his 1,219-yard rookie season, he is a superstar. He's asked to autograph homework, lesson plans, T-shirts — anything within reach. The school resource officer tells Javonte he's the reason his son calls him every week — "You watchin? Pookie's on."

"Everybody's tuning in," Newkirk says. "When Pookie's playing, everybody knows. Everybody in the town really is watching. Everybody's pulling for him, everybody wants to see him do good."

For those with big dreams that would take them outside Wallace or outside North Carolina, Javonte represents what they can do, in football or otherwise.

"He's a big figure, actually," Nichols says. "He gave a lot of people a lot of motivation, to see him make it to the league. He's just an inspiration, honestly, to the kids now that's in high school."

Wallace also inspires Javonte, and to him, there's no place like it. He has the town's name tattooed across his abdomen, "so it's with me everywhere I go."

When he was drafted, he could have had his party at his parents' new home just outside of Wilmington. He could have had it in Chapel Hill. Instead, he had it at his grandmother's house — where he had grown up, where his family had held cookouts, birthday parties and other gatherings and where he is not "NFL player Javonte Williams," but just "Vonte" or "Pookie."

They and their neighbors still see the kid who dominated on Wallace's Legion Field. They see the kid who was the straight-A student. The kid who wanted to be a cowboy. And they think about all the stories that once seemed so small.

It sometimes makes them shake their heads, but it always makes them smile.