“I was reading and the words would come off the page and then I would start reading backward,” Barber said. “I was wondering what was going on and I had always had that problem.”
He met with a counselor this past winter and Barber, who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), was tested for dyslexia and the results showed he suffers with that learning disability as well, not uncommon for those who have ADHD.
The diagnosis was not a “surprise” because his father, Ken, is also dyslexic.
“But it was definitely a relief to figure out what it was,” Barber said.
None of it caught the Auburn coaching staff off guard because Barber was upfront with coach Gus Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee about during his recruitment.
“Peyton’s a visual guy; we know that, we knew that coming in,” Lashlee said. “You’re not just going to stand in there and tell him, you’re going to have to show him. He’s going to have to see it; he’s going to have to go do it.”
If anything, what caught Auburn running backs coach Tim Horton by surprise was Barber disclosing his personal health issues last month during his first major public interview since arriving at Auburn. Only days earlier, Barber told his position coach he was a bit uneasy about attending a media training session.
Barber has been working hard on the field as well, working with the scout team once it was clear he was going to redshirt last season.
Now Barber hopes all the time he’s spent learning on and off the field means he’ll have an opportunity to showcase the talents that made him a 1,700-yard rusher in high school.
A visual learner
Howie DeCristofaro starts at square one with his players.
The Milton High School football coach takes nothing for granted. When he begins teaching new players, DeCristofaro’s opening line is “this is a football.”
Barber didn’t need that level of remedial instruction, nor did Carl Lawson, who also starred at the Alpharetta, Georgia high school.
But it was clear to DeCristofaro and his staff that Barber was a visual learner.
“We did a lot of overheard projector stuff,” DeCristofaro said. “Formation wise we would write it up for him and give it to him in a packet a little bit at a time and then walk him through it so he could see exactly what he had to do.”
A luxury high school coaches have is few if any restrictions on practice time during the offseason. Any obstacles in the learning process, for any player, are easier to hurdle when the task has been mastered for several months.
“He was a repetition kid,” DeCristofaro said of Barber. “He repped it already 1,000 times by the time the season started.”
Still, there was something DeCristofaro and his coaching staff, comprised of teachers in each of the major core subjects at the high school, noticed with their prized running back.
“You’d give him the information, you’d tell him to read this and he would read it and he would understand some of it but he wouldn’t understand all of it,” DeCristofaro said. “We knew he was working at it, and working hard, but he just never put our finger on that that’s what it could be.”
The learning disabilities didn’t slow Barber down on the field, where he ran for 1,713 yards and scored 22 touchdowns as a senior, or top programs from recruiting him.
Seeking the scout team
As he decided on a college, one of the “biggest” concerns Barber wanted to address was what the coaching staff would do to help him learn.
“Peyton said ‘hey coach how are y’all going to teach going to teach me, because this is how I learn best,'” Lashlee said.
Malzahn said he coached players with ADHD and dyslexia in the past and told Barber they could “work past” it.
So far Malzahn has been impressed with Barber’s approach, which includes spending time studying the playbook with offensive analyst Bobby Bentley, who was hired from Duncan Byrnes High School in South Carolina this offseason.
“He’s a champ and he’s had a great attitude,” Malzahn said. “We really think Peyton’s going to be an outstanding player for us. He’s making very good grades and he’s off to a very good start in his freshman year.”
Horton discovered what DeCristofaro saw years earlier about Barber, that visual instruction and repetition were the best methods for him to learn.
The desire for more reps made Barber, who was “standing around” watching Tre Mason, Cameron Artis-Payne and Corey Grant during practice, want to go to the scout team.
Horton, who has coached the likes of Mason, Darren McFadden, Felix Jones, Peyton Hillis and Knile Davis, has never had a player request to go to the scout team in his 23-year coaching career.
“That told me he was a little different,” Horton said, “because he was willing to go down there and be a tackling dummy.”
Clearing obstacles
Spring practice was first opportunity Barber had to get consistent reps with the first and second-team offense.
Even while penciled behind Artis-Payne and Grant, who have both been mentors to Barber, he impressed his teammates.
“He’s strong. Works really hard, really runs behind his pads,” said starting center Reese Dismukes, who compared Barber’s physical running style to Artis-Payne’s. “He’s going to get yards and he’s really agile. Hard to take down, makes a lot of people miss. All-around, he’s a great back like we’ve had in the past.”
Barber’s A-Day outing was a disappointment after all the work he put in during the five weeks leading into the game.
On his first carry Barber ran 10 yards and was drilled by Cassanova McKinzy, fumbling the ball and grabbed his knee. Fortunately he only suffered a high-ankle sprain and short outing was just a “speed bump,” as Horton put it.
“You can tell he understands the offense now,” Lashlee said. “He knows what to do. He’s a great pass protector; he’s a big, downhill, athletic kid. I just think he’s got a lot of upside and if he would have played in A-Day, we’d be talking about him a whole lot more.
“I think he’s going to be a big surprise for us this year.”
Two learning disabilities haven’t deterred Barber and in the fall he’ll get a chance to put SEC defenses to the test.
“It makes people realize it can be done,” DeCristofaro said. “He’s already gone steps further than a lot of other kids who had the same opportunity.”