METAIRIE, La. - Just across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter is a neighborhood called Algiers, where Miami Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace and New Orleans Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis became playmates around age 5.
Their friendship went beyond sports. Wallace didn’t even play football until Lewis persuaded him to go out for their high school team at O. Perry Walker. A decade later, they’ll go head-to-head for the first time in the most fitting place of all - the Superdome - this Monday night.
It has been a strange week of unfamiliar tension between the longtime friends, who have long known each other as teammates but never opponents.
“That’s my brother. That’s someone I’ve been knowing since the age of 5, so we did everything together,” Lewis said. “It’s feeling kind of weird having to go up against him.”
They never played against each other in college. Wallace was at Mississippi and Lewis at Oregon State. When they turned pro, both wound up on the same NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, growing even closer as young adults. They were house mates and usually sat next to each other on the team plane to road games. They still talk by phone nearly every day.
Last weekend, Wallace delighted in Lewis’ first interception with New Orleans but couldn’t stop himselffrom delivering a little ribbing when they next spoke.
“As soon as he called me after the game, he said he caught an interception,” Wallace recalled. “I told him that he dropped two.”
Lewis expected nothing less.
“You know you’re always hard on each other because we want each other to be the best,” Lewis said. “I knew he was going to have a comeback, but I watched film on him this week so I tell him he missed some of those balls last week as well.”
Lewis said the trash-talking would continue in the Superdome, where the two could be matched up one-on-one on numerous plays. Lewis generally plays on the same side of the field where Wallace lines up.
“We’ve been looking forward to this,” Lewis said. “This is a guy who talked the whole summer, trashtalking how he was going to do this and how he was going to do that. So I’m pretty sure he’s heated up right now, and I’m heated up.”
Sports, Pages 19 on 09/28/2013