FRANKFURT, GERMANY -- Darrell Baker Jr. slid into his seat on a plane headed for Germany, pulled out his phone and began punching in numbers as quickly as his heart could race.

The Colts starting cornerback needed to pay for high-speed WiFi so he could make the most important video call of his life. More than a thousand miles away, a distance increasing by the minute, his fiancé was headed into labor.

So he kept typing in his credit card info, only for an error message to pop up. The minutes crept by, and soon the lights would go out in the cabin so his teammates could get a night of sleep on the way to play the Patriots in Frankfurt.

As the plane soared, he feared a moment slipping away.

Finally, his phone connected and there she was on the other line: Jade Falcon, the woman he asked to marry him in the preseason. She was ready to give birth to the boy they’d name Dallas in honor of the impossible journey they’d taken to parenthood.

“You’ve got this!” Baker shouted in a plane of passed-out Colts. “Breathe! Push!”

An NFL-style romance

Baker has played less than two seasons in the NFL, but he already owns a story that peaks at 30,000 feet and plunges to depths most players would never come back from. This is the season that will shape his life – from engagement to fatherhood, in and out of a starting NFL defense, through a controversial loss to the Browns and into that heart-throbbing space in the clouds.

Just two years ago, Baker was in his sixth and final season at Georgia Southern, where he initially walked on, when a photo of a young woman from Tampa Bay popped up on his Twitter timeline. He followed her. She followed back. He waited four months to build up the courage to send a direct message.

She didn’t respond, but she did send another tweet: “Chase the bag, not the boys.”

So he sent another message: “How about we chase the bag together?”

That one got a response.

“I was like, ‘Man, she looks good, and if I can get this one, I’m not letting her slip at all,’” Baker said. “As soon as she (direct messaged) me back and said what she said, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s over with now.’”

This was Baker’s hyper-competitive side coming out, the one that would later latch him onto the Colts in 2022 as an undrafted player. But in football and in love, he was chasing long odds. The NFL didn’t invite this sixth-year cornerback from the Sun Belt Conference to the scouting combine, and the woman he met online didn’t want a long-distance relationship.

So for three months, he didn’t even tell her he played football. Not until he invited her to Dallas, and she asked why he was there. She put off the first date they planned, but after a month, she found the courage to go.

What she found was the kind and calm person she’d gotten to know through FaceTime, but she also saw his determination. He had an itinerary for the weekend, as they bounced from tacos at the mall to Go-Kart racing to riding a Ferris Wheel. They ended with dinner at a rooftop restaurant where a server brought an ice cream to the table with a card that read, “Will you be my girlfriend?”

He’d found the idea by reading her old tweets.

“How could I say no?” Falcon said later.

The first dream was in motion, but the second needed a destination. He went undrafted into the NFL but received a tryout with the Cardinals and made the offseason roster. He and Falcon moved in together for the first time, living for four months until she had to leave for Tampa Bay to finish up her master’s degree. Shortly after she left, Baker got injured and was released.

He had two tryouts after that, and Indianapolis offered him a spot on the practice squad.

After appearing in three games as a special teamer in 2022, he and Falcon continued to fly back and forth from Indianapolis to Tampa Bay to see each other. In March, a pregnancy test came back, and it was positive.

His mind shifted to the future -- and about finding one in football.

“It was like, now we have to go all-in,” he said. “Every day, give it everything we’ve got no matter what.”

He planned a proposal for that fall. He found a rental house for the three of them to live in. He built a crib. They picked out baby names, too: They’d name a girl Indy and a boy Dallas, in honor of two cities where the match was lit.

To that point, “Dallas,” was the name Falcon always called Baker. To all her friends, he was “the boy from Dallas.”

But before he could pass along a name, he needed to make a team so he could afford this life for them. He attacked the weight room, meeting room and practice field like a man with a few names to fight for. He began the spring eighth on the cornerback depth chart, but after Isaiah Rodgers Sr. was released following a gambling suspension, Baker was suddenly in the mix in one of the youngest position groups in the league.

Two months later, he was a roster lock and on the first line of the depth chart.

“My mindset is, ‘Either I’m gonna win the rep or I’m gonna win the rep, period,” Baker said. “I always say if I’m going up against somebody 10 times, I’m winning 12 of those.

“… I don’t just want to be good in this league. I want to be great.”

Confidence had fueled every step of his journey to that point, from a baby born in Panama to members of the army to a kid in a Georgia town of less than 4,000 people to a walk-on at Georgia Southern to a man direct messaging a girl he didn’t know in a state he didn’t live in.

And now, that girl was here in Indianapolis, building this life with him by multiplying that positive energy and packaging it into a human due in a few months.

“We are literally one,” he’d say later. “I can say that’s my best friend in the world.”

They’d need each other, too, because at the highest level of football, momentum often builds half as fast as it falls apart.

A nightmare against the Browns

Nineteen days before his son was born, Baker crouched into his stance and stared into the soul of Amari Cooper with less than a minute left in the game.

He dropped back as Cooper engaged with his chest, right as E.J. Speed was obliterating P.J. Walker for a strip-sack to win the game – except it didn’t. Baker was called for illegal contact.

One flag on Baker left him rattled. The second would leave him hurt. The Browns had a first-and-goal when Walker lofted a ball to the back right corner of the end zone; Baker’s head was turned to the receiver as the ball flew well out of reach. Another flag came out. Pass interference.

Baker punched the air and screamed.

The ball moved inside the 1, and three plays later, the Browns punched it in for a 39-38 victory.

Afterword, Baker would face the cameras and say he believed he’d done his job. Soon, the NFL would inform the Colts that that at least one of the calls was incorrect, according to team owner Jim Irsay. A few teammates seethed about a game stolen from them by officials.

MORE: 'They're both uncatchable': Colts CB Darrell Baker Jr. disputes game-changing penalties

The next week, the Colts sent Baker to the bench.

“A lot to say, but I’ll keep it professional,” Baker posted to Instagram after the game.

Falcon called her best friend to game plan how best to comfort him.

“Sometimes he doesn’t even know that he’s stressing,” Falcon said. “It takes for somebody to tell him, ‘Hey, you’re losing weight. Are you OK?’ And he’s like, ‘Dang, I didn’t even realize.’”

Colts fans began direct messaging her, which was the place she first met Baker. She read enough of the nasty ones until she broke down to him.

“’I’ve never experienced this. I’m not even the one that’s on the field. Are you OK? How are you dealing with this?’” Falcon recalls telling Baker. “And he’s like, ‘Listen, this is what comes with it. This is how it is.’

“So at this point, I’m the one that’s crying because people are saying things and I want to say things back and I’m just like, I can’t say anything back because I’m a reflection of you and he’s like, ‘It’s OK. It’s fine. We’ll get through it.’ And I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m glad you’re the one in this position dealing with this and not me because they would have canceled me.’”

As an outside cornerback, Baker can’t let himself believe otherwise.

And this isn’t just a game to him.

“I obsess over the idea of being able to dominate and impose my will against somebody,” Baker said. “It’s the idea that no matter what they do, I have an answer for everything. It’s an obsession.”

The leaders of the Colts defense checked in. This was Baker's second benching.

“I told him, ‘We still need you. You’re still a part of this team. We still need you to perform, whether that’s on special teams or when the opportunity comes again,’” said linebacker Zaire Franklin, a former seventh-round pick. “’I’m no stranger to getting an opportunity and not taking advantage of it the first time around. Just make sure you don’t miss it again.’”

Said cornerback Kenny Moore II, who went undrafted and was cut by the Patriots, “If you think it’s going to be perfect, then don’t play at all. The good will be the good and the bad will be the bad, but you’ve got to keep pushing through both to be your best.”

Baker was forced to take a step back the next week, as he didn’t practice with the first-team defense or see a single snap in the game.

The flags against the Browns felt like a nightmare, but when he would lay down to sleep next to Falcon, the dreams had a different ending. In them, he’s out there at Lucas Oil Stadium shaking as a quarterback throws his way. But this time, he’s staring at the ball, leaping at just the right moment and making the play.

“The stuff people say they dream of,” Baker said, “I literally dream of.”

Meeting Dallas

By the time he boarded the flight to Germany to face the Patriots, Baker had already rebounded. His starting job returned, thanks to a 38-27 loss to the Saints that featured 500 yards allowed without him. He’d just held his own against the Panthers, the Colts won 27-13 on two Moore interceptions.

Doctors told Baker and Falcon to expect the baby to arrive the following Wednesday, which would be the middle of the bye week. But she was induced nine days early, and he was on a dark plane in the middle of the night, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

At one point, Falcon rolled backward in pain as tears streamed down her face. Baker spoke through the phone to the nurse, asking her to sit Falcon upright.

“I literally felt like he was there without him physically being there,” Falcon said.

Then an infant started to cry. And as Baker stared into the white light illuminating his face, he felt two tears roll down his cheeks.

With most of the cabin passed out, Tyquan Lewis caught a glance at what was on the phone.

“Congrats,” he said.

A flight attendant grabbed the intercom and announced that Baker was a father to a baby boy named Dallas, and the whole team burst into applause.

Some knew how this would change his life in the game.

“When your kid’s six weeks and your wife or fiancé is getting up every night and being with him, you're missing those moments," said Zaire Franklin, who has a 2-year-old son. "You can’t come in here and not take what you’re doing serious."

Baker never slept on the flight over, and then the coaches had the players stay up the full day to adjust to the six-hour time difference. He called Falcon on every break to check in and say hi to his son.

By Sunday, he was starting at outside cornerback and held his own as the Colts defense dominated the Patriots for a 10-6 victory.

“It gives me that extra push," Baker said of fatherhood. "If I’m tired, immediately that’s my go-to thought. It’s everything that drives me to make the right decisions on the field and off the field.”

The next day, Baker arrived at the hospital in Tampa Bay — Falcon temporarily returned to Florida with Baker on the road — and held his son in his arms for the first time.

The new family of three got six days together before Dallas’ daddy had to fly back for work.

His fiancé and son will be here in mid-December. Dallas’ first game will be against the Raiders. Baker has to earn his playing time in it with second-round rookie JuJu Brents due back from a quad injury.

When Baker said goodbye that day from the airport, he and Falcon cried together.

The next time she saw him was on a TV screen the next Sunday, when the Colts hosted the Buccaneers. It was another game at Lucas Oil Stadium where an opponent was driving to come back and nearing the goal line. This time, a receiver cut across Baker's face but he followed the crossing route like a shadow, causing Baker Mayfield to pull the ball down and take a sack in a 27-20 Colts win.

Down in Tampa Bay, Falcon cheered but in silence this time.

She didn't want to wake the baby asleep on her chest.

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: How Darrell Baker Jr. met his son on a plane to Germany