We Have witnessed more than a few Big Blue brave hearts across the decades — from Sam Huff relishing his bloodbaths with Jim Brown and Jim Taylor, to Mark Bavaro, the football Rambo, to Lawrence Taylor playing with one arm once in the Superdome, to Rich Seubert making it all the way back from a broken leg, to Harry Carson knocking heads much too often with fire-snorting Hog Redskins and battering rams like John Riggins.
And Ahmad Bradshaw goes right in there with the toughest Giants who ever played the game.
He won’t be remembered as the greatest running back in Giants history, only the one with the biggest heart.
Wednesday was a sad day for Giants Nation — Deja Blue and Blue.
More than any of the two-time champions, Ahmad Bradshaw was the Defiant Giant.
His teammates liked to call him a junkyard dog. He liked to call himself a bulldog. He kept coming, like a football Smokin’ Joe Frazier, and he didn’t care about the pain in his ravaged feet or the size of the defender in his path. He never stopped running like he was trying to make the team. He ran angry, as if someone had slapped his mother. One time Brian Urlacher asked him, “Why do you run so mean? Why are you so mad?” and Bradshaw snarled, “Because I’m mad at you.”
Russell Crowe would have called him a gladiator. He willed himself first into the practice field, then on the gameday gridiron, with screws in both feet to remedy a pair of cracked fifth metatarsal bones. He endured surgery to repair bone spurs in his right ankle.
“Some mornings,” Bradshaw said before Super Bowl XLVII last week, “I just don’t want to get out of bed.”
ADIOS, AHMAD: Giants RB Ahmad Bradshaw, who burst onto the scene with an 88-yard TD run to spark a win over Buffalo (above) and jump-start Big Blue’s Super Bowl run in December 2007, was cut yesterday. (AP)
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He always got out of bed anyway, to play a game he loved with the kind of joie de vivre Pete Rose always had for baseball. And he gave Giants fans more than a few magic moments when he did get out of bed and ran with that relentless, bow-legged style with which he would either run around defenders, or through them, a 5-foot-10, 214-pound power back in a scatback’s body who inspired his teammates.
The most memorable, aside from backing in with the winning touchdown of Super Bowl XLVI, was his first of his 35 regular-season touchdowns. It came with a little over six minutes remaining on a miserable December day in Buffalo, the Giants clinging to a 24-21 lead in a game they needed to clinch the wild-card berth that would position them for their Super Bowl XLII run.
From his 12-yard line, Eli Manning called 38 Power.
“I’m gonna take it to the house and end this game,” Bradshaw announced.
A startling guarantee from a rookie seventh-round draft choice out of Marshall. Then Bradshaw took the handoff, veered right, cutback left, shed a couple of tackles, and he was gone.
The salary cap, alas, is unforgiving. If Phil Simms can be a victim, then so can Ahmad Bradshaw, even if he is a month shy of his 27th birthday. Especially with David Wilson, the 2012 No. 1 draft pick, and Andre Brown ready for bigger roles. Especially when you are due $3.75 million and are coming off another foot surgery.
Bradshaw will go down as one of general manager Jerry Reese’s best draft picks. Reese was a rookie GM when he took a flier on Bradshaw, who had slid in the 2007 NFL draft because of character concerns following a pair of college arrests.
“He is going to be on a short leash,” Reese said at the time.
The short leash lasted six years, for the one Giant who always played with Antrel Rolle’s dog mentality.
“Everybody looks at me as whatever, but I plan on coming in here and making a name for myself, and helping the Giants out as much as I can,” Bradshaw said at the time. “All the character issues, that’s put behind me now, and I plan on making that a motivator for me.”
He overcame a troubled past that required him to spend 30 days in jail during two offseasons for a parole violation of an undisclosed juvenile indiscretion. He overcame fumbling issues that forced coach Tom Coughlin to bench him in 2010.
“The Giants fans will always be remembered and always loved,” Bradshaw said to ESPN.
And so will he.