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How Central Michigan paved Matt LaFleur and Robert Saleh's path to NFL stardom: 'They had no furniture'

Matt LaFleur and Robert Saleh didn't have chairs for their kitchen table.

Cooped up in a two-bedroom apartment near the Michigan State Police post in Mount Pleasant, LaFleur and Saleh were busy trying to make ends meet as graduate assistants for the Central Michigan football team in 2004.

“They had no furniture,” said Denny LaFleur, Matt’s father, who played nose guard on Central Michigan’s 1974 Division II national championship team and was a longtime Chippewa assistant. “So they were stealing stuff from our house. Matt had nothing.”