NFL

Jay Bromley gets to play with the Giants, his hometown team

Jay Bromley’s never had a shopping experience quite like this.

The Syracuse defensive tackle from Jamaica, Queens was with his girlfriend looking to rent a movie and pick up juice when his phone began buzzing. It was a New Jersey area code. On the other end of the line was a Giants scout. His hometown team was taking him with its third round selection, 74th overall, in Friday night’s NFL Draft.

Bromley didn’t believe him.

“Nah, you’re lying,” Bromley told the scout.

“I was in disbelief,” the 6-foot-3, 306-pound lineman, a Giants fan growing up, said in a phone interview after becoming the second player from the city’s Public Schools Athletic League to be selected, joining Patriots first-round choice Dominique Easley of Curtis High School on Staten Island.

“I just didn’t believe it,” Bromley said. “I didn’t think I would go that high. It’s crazy. I don’t know how to feel. I never thought the Giants would pick me.”

His story is hard to believe.

Bromley, out of Flushing High, didn’t begin playing football until he got to high school. He didn’t have a single scholarship weeks before he was set to graduate high school, prior to an MVP performance in the Boomer Esiason-run Empire Challenge, an all-star game pitting the top players from Long Island against their New York City counterparts.

Word quickly spread, leading Syracuse to offer Bromley, who went on to enjoy a productive career, recording 10 sacks and 14.5 tackles as a All-ACC third team selection his senior season.

Bromley performed well at the Senior Bowl and NFL Combine, yet wasn’t ranked highly among defensive tackles by several web sites, listed as low as 19th among defensive tackles by CBSSports.com. It was high school all over again, overlooked again. Until, of course, it wasn’t.

“When I talked to Coach [Tom] Coughlin it was surreal,” Bromley said on a conference call. “Oh, the home team, my favorite team, this is crazy.”

Bromley’s childhood was difficult. He was raised by his aunt and uncle Frances and Roy Nimmons, who he refers to as his parents, because his biological parents were unfit.

Flushing coach Jim DeSantis scheduled a draft party for Saturday, expecting his former pupil to go somewhere between the fourth and seventh rounds. Instead, his phone blew up shortly after 10 p.m.

“Somebody should make a movie about him,” DeSantis said. “This is ‘The Blind Side’ all over again.
“It’s outrageous, it’s unbelievable.”

Friday night was only the beginning of a memorable weekend for Bromley, who on Saturday afternoon will become the first member of his family to graduate from college, with a degree in hospitality management. Before the draft, Bromley said graduating held a slight edge over the draft in terms of importance.

That, of course, was before he became a third-round pick of his favorite team.