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The first thing that stands out about K’Von Wallace — aside from his compact Tonka truck frame — is his crazed commitment to social media.
He’s always on it, constantly interacting with fans and inspiring people. Wallace, the Eagles’ fourth-round pick out of Clemson, feels it is part of his social responsibility to allow those outside the NFL bubble to see the inner sanctum. He shares fun videos of locker room dances and private exchanges saying goodbye to friends and family.
Almost nothing is off-limits and Wallace isn’t averse to some humble boasting as well. The 5-foot-11, 205-pound safety frequently posts highlight videos from college and re-tweets links to stories and stats hyping himself up. He gets that promoting your brand is in these days, and the Wallace brand is trending up.
“That’s one of my big motivations,” Wallace told reporters last week. “My family is number one and then I wholeheartedly believe that the fans and the people on social media are my second-biggest motivation. The community is so connected with social media, and that’s the best way I can communicate with them and be connected with my hometown because my hometown has really made me.”
Don’t be fooled. Wallace isn’t posing as a shallow one-man marketing team. No, the 23-year-old is seeking to be an inspiration for a future generation of NFL draft picks. He takes social media “very seriously” and wants to leverage it as a way to give back to the community, especially kids in his hometown of Richmond, Virginia.
“I know there’s going to be a kid looking up to me to be the next K’Von Wallace and I always say, don’t be the next K’Von Wallace, be themselves,” Wallace said. “When you make a kid feel special, it can make a difference. It can save their life, it can better their life … and that’s all I’m here to do. I’ve been placed on this earth to give the youth hope and bring light to my community and bring light to my city.”
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Wallace Blown Away by ‘Awesome’ Kobe Bryant Mural
Kobe Bryant was K’Von Wallace’s childhood idol even though the two athletes played different sports. When the Eagles selected the Clemson safety with the 127th overall pick in April, he immediately took to Twitter to say: “KOBE MY IDOL THIS IS CRAZY!!”
Then, he walked into the NovaCare Complex last week and saw the amazing Bryant mural outside the locker room. Mind blown.
“That was awesome,” Wallace said. “It’s right by the weight room so it’s given me extra motivation to be great because that’s all Kobe was, and that’s all he wanted everyone around him to be. He played a whole different sport than I did but I was always attracted to his competitiveness, to his hunger and his grind. The work that he put in was immaculate and anything that he did for basketball I try to do from a football standpoint.”
Wallace really wanted to wear Bryant’s famed No. 24 for the Eagles but veteran cornerback Darius Slay beat him to it. Instead, he’ll wear No. 42 — the same number Hall-of-Fame safety Ronnie Lott wore in San Francisco. If there’s extra pressure around it, Wallace isn’t letting it show.
“I’m trying to be the best player I can be, just get accustomed to the defense and with Jim [Schwartz] and how he runs the show,” Wallace said. “That’s the job I’m focused on right now.”
Overcoming ‘Another Obstacle in My Life’
The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have already disrupted workout schedules and rookie minicamps but no one is using it as an excuse. The Eagles’ young players knew the NFL was a tough place to earn respect before they got drafted. These unprecedented circumstances are just “another obstacle in my life,” according to Wallace.
“Yeah, it’s going to be a challenge but it was going to be a challenge if we reported three days after [the scheduled date] or now,” Wallace said. “Rookies, it’s always been hard for rookies, it was hard for me as a freshman at Clemson … there are going to be challenges that you have to overcome and this is just another obstacle in my life that I’m going to overachieve and I just can’t wait to get to work.”
Wallace added that he hasn’t been working at one specific spot or area so far in camp, just “getting accustomed to the defense” and learning run fits and various techniques, like how to backpedal better and “high point the ball” correctly in coverage. It’s mostly being done in the virtual classroom due to the novel coronavirus and that has unexpectedly spawned a tight brotherhood among the rookies.
“It’s a brotherhood here and we’re teaching each other how to be a better player, a better person,” Wallace said. “I noticed that I’m a big virtual learner and I like to see it and be active in it, and there are other guys that can just hear it and articulate it, and just learning that and them teaching me how they learn is helping me.”
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