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GREENSBORO — David Amerson can always feel somebody watching him.

He understands. It's hard to pull your eyes away from a 6-foot-3 safety who patrols the secondary like a Doberman protecting a junkyard.

The Dudley senior has scholarship offers in hand from the Big Four and more than a dozen others, was one of six Guilford County players named to the prestigious Shrine Bowl on Thursday and will likely be one of the biggest difference-makers tonight when the Panthers play host to fellow one-loss team Page with the Metro 4-A title on the line.

But it's not always the people you expect who are keeping tabs on him.

Steve Davis was looking for Amerson before he even really knew him. The Dudley football coach was surveying an open gym last year when he saw a tall, skinny kid pick up a basketball and start dunking in work boots. Amerson hadn't played football since his days at Jackson Middle School, where he filled just about every position for coach Ricky Lewis Sr., father of Dudley's just-graduated iconic quarterback. Davis didn't need to see any more.

"He told me right there I could be a great defensive back," Amerson said. "I figured he was just talking. It's crazy that it happened so quick."

How quick? A few months later, Amerson was in the starting lineup for a team coming off a state championship. He played like a veteran, recording 60 tackles and nine interceptions for a defense that gave up fewer than eight points a game.

"In a way, he's too smart," Davis said. "He tries to dissect plays before they happen, and sometimes he gets caught up. But he knows what's coming just by what he sees."

Quarterbacks quickly learned to look for Amerson, too. He reads their eyes from 30 yards away, waiting until the last second to swoop in and break their hearts. He says he's the kind of safety he used to hate when he played under center.

"The first thing the quarterback is supposed to do is find the safety," Amerson said. "So I move around. I like to confuse them a little bit."

Moving around is nothing new for Amerson, who was born in Hawaii. His father is an Army psychologist now stationed in Afghanistan, where he's always looking for his son through whatever the crawling Internet hookup at his camp will allow. He e-mailed the local newspaper for pictures of David, "so I can be the proudest dad in my base camp."

Amerson lives in Spring Valley with his mother, who watches from the sideline every week. On the other side of the county, Noah Amerson sits and waits for a chance to do the same.

Noah is David's older brother, his football idol growing up, a hard-hitting safety himself whom David still contends had just as much promise as he has. Noah moved to Hawaii to be with his dad his freshman and sophomore years of high school, where he became a varsity starter. He moved back to Greensboro that summer, and David looked forward to watching him play at Smith.

But Noah was declared ineligible before that season, and when he lost football as an anchor to his life, "things started to turn," David said. Noah was soon arrested on drug charges and will be in Guilford County Jail for another two years. David brings him newspaper clippings to make up for the lost memories.

"He tells me I'm living his dream," David said. "He wants me to enjoy it."

If it concerns Amerson that he carries so many people's expectations under his helmet every Friday, he doesn't show it. Perhaps it's fitting, then, that he wound up as a safety, one of the most visible positions on the field, where the whole defense trusts that he'll be behind them to help. Him. Just him.

"If somebody scores, it's your fault," he said. "If you miss a tackle, everyone sees it.

"I like the pressure. It doesn't bother me that people are watching. I think it's pretty cool."

Contact Tom Keller at 373-7034 or tom.keller@news-record.com