Back for the Finale: Wake Forest's Curry is glad he passed on NFL

His coaches and teammates at Wake Forest considered it a given that linebacker Aaron Curry would return for his senior season.

The belief was based on Curry's bond with teammates, particularly his fellow fifth-year seniors on defense. No class has been more responsible for Wake Forest's rise to college-football prominence, and people around the program expected Curry to delay a shot at the NFL for one more year to help perpetuate what was started.

"This is a group that came in as true freshmen, and they've always been really, really close," Coach Jim Grobe said. "I sensed that would be the most important thing to Aaron Curry.

"He's just that kind of guy."

Curry, an All-America candidate who leads the 15th-ranked Deacons with 20 tackles, said after the Deacons' victory over Connecticut in last December's Meineke Car Care Bowl that he planned to return. Safety Chip Vaughn, another fifth-year senior, said he didn't think any more about it.

"I wasn't worried one bit," Vaughn said. "It came from me knowing him, and the type of person Aaron Thomas Curry is. He's a team-first guy, and he'll do anything he can to help Wake Forest out."

In the end, Curry said he did give in to his heart, which was telling him he couldn't leave yet.

But it wasn't a given.

"It was a tough call," Curry said. "It was a day-to-day call.

"There were some mornings I woke up and I would call my brother, Chris, and tell him I was going."

Invariably, Curry said, his brother would call back and suggest he talk with some more people.

"I talked to my mom and I talked to all my teammates to see what they thought," Curry said. "And they all told me the same thing that, ‘We'd love to have you. But if you're guaranteed to make a lot of money, it might be best for you to just take the chance and make the money.'

"I told them I wanted to be here with those guys. And they helped sell me to stay."

Curry said that there were other considerations, one concerning how badly the NFL wanted him and another how badly he would hate to leave Wake Forest.

The draft projection on which he was making his decision had him being picked in the third round.

"I wasn't interested in going in the third round," Curry said. "I knew I had the ability, and I was capable of going higher than the third round.

"I knew if I came out my senior year and worked hard, like I always work, and if I stay humble, like I'm always humble, then I would have a chance to maybe one day go in the first round."

Curry has done nothing in the first three games to hurt his stock. He was good as a junior, when he had four interceptions, three sacks and 13.5 tackles for losses, and made second-team All-ACC. He has been even better as a senior, piling up seven tackles at Baylor, five against Mississippi and eight at Florida State.

And Saturday, when the Deacons play at home against Navy, Curry will renew his acquaintance with quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada. The Midshipmen were tied with the Deacons in the second quarter last season before a riled Curry, who had been suspended for the first quarter for missing a class, knocked Kaheaku-Enhada out of the game with an injured neck.

The Midshipmen managed only one second-half touchdown as the Deacons rolled to a 44-24 victory.

"I got a pretty good shot on him," Curry said.

Curry wouldn't be the first person in his family picked in the NFL Draft. His father, Reggie Pinkney, was a star defensive back at East Carolina who was drafted by Detroit in the sixth round in 1977 and played five seasons with the Lions and Colts.

Curry's half-brother is Patrick Pinkney, a senior quarterback at East Carolina. Both are 22 and both grew up in Fayetteville. Curry, whose mother is Chris Curry, played for E.E. Smith High School. Patrick, whose mother is Rose Pinkney, played for Pine Forest High School.

"We always spent the weekends together, playing football and basketball and things like that," Curry said. "We all just played throw the ball up in the air and whoever catches it, tackle him."

Curry said he talked with Patrick on Sunday, the day after Patrick's fumble in overtime led to a 30-24 loss at N.C. State.

"I told him to put that loss behind him and don't let N.C. State beat them twice," Curry said.

Grobe suspected that Curry, in surveying the pro- football landscape, was influenced by the experience of Jon Abbate, a teammate from 2006 who passed up his senior season for the NFL Draft, only to not be selected. Abbate, a free agent who converted from linebacker to fullback, was released by the Houston Texans in August after spending the 2007 season on the team's injured reserve list.

Curry said that Grobe was right, to a point. But Curry, at 6-3 is a far more prototypical NFL linebacker than the 5-11 Abbate.

"Me and Jon have a lot of differences, just passing the eye test -- just height alone," Curry said. "It had a minor impact on my decision, but I thought I was in a different boat."

More compelling was what he stood to lose, a chance to win another ACC championship ring and play for a team with the talent, experience and depth that may be unparalleled in the history of the program.

History was, indeed, on Curry's mind. The Deacons are 3-0. Although hurdles remain, the most obvious of which promises to be a home game against Clemson on Oct. 9, the Deacons at least have a shot at winning them all.

"I came back because I wanted to be part of the history that this program is capable of making," Curry said. "I didn't want to be sitting on Monday morning reading the paper about how good Wake is playing and how they beat the Seminoles' three years straight and I didn't want to hear about all the records they were breaking.

"I wanted to be part of it. I want to go down in the record books along with Stanley Arnoux and Chip Vaughn and Alphonso Smith."

■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.