"Crawdad" ex-Marine faces Giants

Giants give 33-year-old, ex-Marine Crawford shot
Giants Blog
By PAUL SCHWARTZ

Last Updated: 6:47 AM, April 27, 2010


As far as he has come, there’s still a long way to go for Brandon Crawford until he evolves from the oldest player in college to the oldest rookie in the NFL.

“I look at it as a chance, an opportunity to prove people wrong,” Crawford yesterday told The Post. “There’s a lot of doubters out there, a lot of people say ‘There’s no way that can happen.’ I guess in America you shouldn’t dream, that’s what you should tell kids. Don’t be inspired, don’t push for what you want to do.

“Everybody’s path is different. Everybody doesn’t take the same road to get to where they want to go and to where they desire to go. If that was the case, I think life would be boring. My path is different, that’s how I’ve always approached it and how I will continue to approach it.”

It’s not the path less traveled; it’s the path never traveled.

“A great story,” said Marc Ross, the Giants’ director of college scouting.

The story begins in 1996 when Crawford, a defensive end, graduated from high school. He received a handful of offers to play small-college football, but there wasn’t enough money to pay for school so he went to work in a variety of jobs, the last at an automotive assembly line. At 23 years old he needed something new and joined the Marine Corps, spending four years in the Corps — first in San Diego, then at a base in North Carolina — before receiving an honorable discharge in 2003.

“You have to be a tough-minded individual, be able to give a lot of effort,” Crawford said of his Marines experience. “You have to be unselfish, be able to get your bearings and be able to retain knowledge. The main thing that comes into my mind is team.”



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