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Woodhead's brother was a junior wide receiver at Chadron State, a school named for a French fur-trapper, in the Nebraska Panhandle. Student size: 3,000. Stadium capacity? About the same, except in Danny's years, when the overflow added 1,000 more or so. Freshman year, in his first game he gained more than 300 yards. Second year, word began to travel: Who is this kid? After the third year, when he'd averaged more than 200 yards per game, he won the Harlon Hill Trophy, the Division II Heisman. By the end of his fourth year, when he won the trophy again, he'd set the alltime yardage record for the NCAA in any division.
He and his brothers twisted the football off the top of one of his Harlon Hill trophies and used the base as a stool for three-way video game tournaments. Which more or less sums up Danny Woodhead's regard for glitz.
Quote:
Danny doesn't have kids yet. So when I ask him, "How do you want your kids to think of you?" he takes a second to answer. But when he does, the words have weight.
"I don't think I'm going to want them to look at me as a football player," he says. "I'll want them to look at me as their dad. This is my job. Not who I am. I don't look at my dad as a teacher or coach. I look at him as my dad. And the kind of man he is.
"I'm hoping that's something I'll be able to do. Think of me as the type of man I'm going to be. Or will be. Or was."
I really like this kid.
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We get what we deserve.
------------------ “On a day when they could have had impact players David Terrell or Koren Robinson..they took Georgia defensive tackle Richard Seymour, who had 1 sacks last season in the pass-happy SEC and is too tall to play tackle at 6-6 and too slow to play defensive end. This genius move was followed by trading out of a spot where they could have gotten the last decent receiver in Robert Ferguson and settled for tackle Matt Light, who will not help any time soon.”
-Ron Borges
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Danny doesn't have kids yet. So when I ask him, "How do you want your kids to think of you?" he takes a second to answer. But when he does, the words have weight.
"I don't think I'm going to want them to look at me as a football player," he says. "I'll want them to look at me as their dad. This is my job. Not who I am. I don't look at my dad as a teacher or coach. I look at him as my dad. And the kind of man he is.
"I'm hoping that's something I'll be able to do. Think of me as the type of man I'm going to be. Or will be. Or was."
"Honestly, you can't do it alone," he says. "You can't do it without those other 10 guys. That's my strength. I have bigger guys on my side, too. You gotta think about that. The other people on the field. I might make a play one time, but there're 10 other guys who are helping me. It's not about one person. It's about a team, and what they can do. It so happens that maybe I had a touchdown or something like that, so I was the one who people saw, but there're 10 other people out there."
Another nice article was written a few days ago by Bill Burt in the North Andover Eagle Tribune. Not exactly SI-level exposure, but some good stuff nontheless.
“What was great about Danny was that he had a 3.87 grade point average and he scored well on the (ACT), so he was eligible for some academic money,” said Chadron State head football coach Bill O’Boyle. “We can’t afford to give any full rides just for football. We have only 24 scholarships and 120 guys on the roster. In the end, he came as close to getting a full ride as anybody ever has here.
“The fact that he and Ben were so close definitely helped us, too. They were like best friends and ended up being roommates.”
Was there disappointment, initially, considering every Nebraskan boy dreams of playing football on Saturdays in Lincoln?
“Yes, he was a little bit,” said his mom, Annette. “But God open some doors and closes others. Danny got a scholarship and had the opportunity to be with his brother. How could anybody get upset about that?”
Danny was a few practices into his career at Chadron State and O’Boyle figured he had something special on the horizon.
“I knew he was fast and very quick,” recalled O’Boyle. “I didn’t realize how strong he was. I knew he was going to be a very good player for us. What I didn’t realize was how quickly it would happen.”
Danny had two senior running backs on the roster, both of whom O’Boyle considered among the better backs in their league.
But by the second game of his freshman season, Danny had taken over the starting role. In this third game, he rushed for a school-record 307 yards and five touchdowns.
A legend was born.
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It is what it is, so just go out there and do your job!
Last edited by Palm Beach Pats Fan; 12-08-2010 at 01:35 PM..
As I read the article...read how good he was in college, it's hard to imagine that he never got a real shot. Sure the injury had something to do with it, but the Jets had two seasons to look at him. How could so many people have missed his potential?
I'm kind of hoping that this story is going to end up in the annals of the NFL in the same way as the story of pick number 199 in the 6th round of the 2000 draft.
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It is what it is. It wasn't what it wasn't.
As I read the article...read how good he was in college, it's hard to imagine that he never got a real shot. Sure the injury had something to do with it, but the Jets had two seasons to look at him. How could so many people have missed his potential?
I'm kind of hoping that this story is going to end up in the annals of the NFL in the same way as the story of pick number 199 in the 6th round of the 2000 draft.
These kind of stories make you wonder how many other players never get the break they need. It's possible that Brady might never have gotten his chance if not for Bledsoe's bad luck and Belichick's wisdom. There's more luck in both success and failure than we like to acknowledge. So much hinges on so little sometimes. The ongoing Matt Cassell saga is another case in point: I can't imagine the scene where Pete Carroll told him he was going to start the (now) obviously vastly less talented Leinart over him, which nearly destroyed Cassell's career.
Or imagine if Danny *had* walked on to Nebraska: with his talent and Nebraska's 5 or 6 creampuff games a year Danny might have gotten his NCAA record 19+ 200+ yard games there -- and actually have been drafted in the fourth round or something
What a genious pickup.Never thought woodhead would be this productive.
It's no accident that it was Belichick that gave both Brady and Woodhead their chances. Belichick has made a career out of arbitraging the inefficiencies of conventional wisdom. I can't imagine Rex Ryan going for it on 4 and 2 like BB did last year. So it's easy to understand how he could let Woodhead slip from his grasp, even as he must have known it was a mistake. Group-think overpowers almost all of us -- but not Belichick.
Danny Woodhead
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