NFL

Giants’ pick Bromley found success, hope after dark past

He acknowledges it is probably a defense mechanism, but that’s OK because, “It helps me cope with what I need to do.”

What Jay Bromley needs to do, more often than anyone can possibly know, is come to grips with his life knowing he was abandoned when he was 3 months old by his biological parents, with whom, to this day, he offers a “Not really” when asked if there’s any relationship there.

Bromley just completed his second week as a member of the Giants, their third-round draft pick, a defensive tackle from Syracuse. On Wednesday he turns 22 and can envision big things ahead after overcoming so much, so young.

“Probably one of my negative character traits, me as a person is I don’t have a lot of — I care who I care about, but it doesn’t bother me if you’re not in my life. It doesn’t bother me at all,” Bromley told The Post.

As the 74th player selected, he could have gone anywhere, clear across the country, down south, to the Midwest but he ended up across the river from where he started out, in Jamaica, Queens, which could be wonderful but might not be.

The Bromley familyCourtesy of the Bromley family

“I look at it as a gift and a curse,” Bromley said. “It’s a gift to be so close to people like your mom and certain family members, but it’s a curse because everybody in the city knows you, all your friends, the people you grew up with. You will get those random phone calls or text messages from people you haven’t talked to in a while. It’s just the nature of the beast. Just have to be able to have tunnel vision and know what’s important and know who’s important, who to deal with and who not to deal with.”

Born to Tyreine Bromley and James Jones, Jason Craig Bromley Jr. arrived turbulently into the world. His biological mother was a drug addict and, thus, infant Jay was a crack baby, causing him to cry incessantly. At 3 months, he was abandoned and Jones’ sister, Frances Nimmons, took him in, joining a family that already included her husband Roy, and three daughters.

Frances Nimmons at the time was in school, trying to get through her GED tests and pursue ongoing education for a career in nursing. That path came to a screeching halt when there was a new mouth to feed.

“I had to stop going to school to take him,” Nimmons said. “It was difficult, but I had to make that decision. It was hard but it’s family.”

Bromley’s biological parents were bystanders in his life.

Jones, a pimp, was sentenced to 8 ¹/₂ -25 years in prison in 1994 for manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment for beating and tying to a basement radiator one of his prostitutes, Shirley Ross, who died.

“I remember, he didn’t meet his father until he was 17 years old,” said Jim DeSantis, Bromley’s football coach at Flushing High School.

As his biological aunt and de facto mother, Nimmons said she never tried to steer Bromley away from his father (her brother), but Bromley wasn’t much interested.

“I invited him to every party, the father was in jail. The college years Jason didn’t hear from him,” Nimmons said. “I used to stress over that, but you can’t turn the boy into a man. The man was not raising none of his kids, you can’t make someone raise somebody, they don’t know how to raise themselves.”

The former Syracuse University Orange defensive end Jay Bromley (96) during a game against the Temple University Owls in 2012.AP

“As a kid his parents should have come to him. I always pushed him on them, not trying to get rid of him but I always told [Jay], ‘If I’m dead and gone you still have parents.’ Jason’s mother is around, but she might as well not be because she’s sick. She’s gone through a lot of trials and tribulations.”

Bromley said he does not speak to his biological mother. Jones recently attended Bromley’s graduation at Syracuse.

“He’s a proud father now,” Nimmons said dryly. “After all this time he’s the proud father. I ain’t worried because that’s my son. Me and my son got a relationship that nobody comes between. They can do whatever they want, I’m still the mama.”

Bromley said his biological father’s appearance at the college graduation was no big deal.

“My mom and my sister [asked] me, ‘Do you mind if he comes?’ I was like, ‘I don’t care,’” Bromley said. “You want to give a person a pat on the back you can if you want to. I don’t really need it, but if it makes you happy.”

As a youth, Bromley went through an angry stage when he was constantly getting in fights and Nimmons put up a fight herself to save her son from himself. She sent him on two buses every morning, shipping him out of the neighborhood, to Flushing High School, in search of a better environment.

“I kept him away from the people he used to fight,” Nimmons said. “I didn’t want him around the people he already dealt with and fought. I wanted to give him a change.”

Free time was not part of the deal. Nimmons found activities and sent her son to summer school, prompting him to accuse her of “getting rid of me just because.” He had enough video games and the cooking of his mother and grandmother, Kay, who passed away when he was 13.

They’re not going to give away money for sob stories, I don’t care how bad someone’s story is.

 - Jay Bromley

“Jason with my mother, me and Roy, he didn’t want for anything,” Nimmons said. “My mother gave him the top of the line, anything Jason wanted to eat, I did the same, but if I couldn’t do it she was there. She cooked, it was all about what Jason wanted. He loved home-cooked food. Fried chicken, collard greens macaroni and cheese, corn bread, cheese biscuits.”

“He never gave me no trouble with the law, since he’s been in football he hasn’t given me any trouble period,” Nimmons said. “I didn’t have to worry about him drinking, smoking. He was a really good kid.”

Grandma Kay (“Who kind of favored me, and that was a blessing”) gave Bromley a few dollars for cleaning the cat litter or taking out the garbage, but it was a hardscrabble existence. Bromley recalls rats pervading the area from a local dumpster forever filled with garbage and he jokes about all the cockroaches.

“It was tough as far as neighborhood and things around you, mentally it was tough as far as the concept of your parents and the mental struggle of these people acting like the didn’t care about you, it’s like how do you as a young person go about that?” Bromley said. “You don’t forget where you come from or the things you see growing up. It helps you adapt into the person you are today and build for the future.”

Football did not come naturally, at first. DeSantis recalls his first image of Bromley, a freshman, as “kind of a sloppy kid, chubby, more fat than muscle. On an agility drill we were doing I remember how athletic he was for a big, sloppy guy. I was kind of taken aback by that.”

Bromley grew to be tall and lanky, less than 215 pounds as a junior and played football and basketball. He dropped basketball as a senior to concentrate on football, hit the weights and bulked up to 273. He dominated in two postseason All-Star games, received some cursory interest from Stony Brook but only one scholarship offer, from Syracuse.

Jay BromleyCourtesy of the Bromley family

Expecting to go no earlier than the fourth round of the NFL Draft, Bromley was surprised and thrilled to go in the third round and to be taken by his hometown Giants. Sometimes, though, a seemingly storybook chain of events is more nightmarish than dreamy, as a returning athlete, suddenly with more money than he has ever had (Bromley’s salary for 2014 will be $420,000), back in familiar surroundings does more harm than good.

DeSantis said the other day, a “little girl” at school came up to him and informed him “Jason’s coming here tomorrow.”

The girl did not even know Bromley’s last name.

“I said ‘Who are you talking about?’” DeSantis recalled. “She said, ‘The guy who just got drafted — that’s my cousin, that’s my blood cousin.’ I said, like, ‘Wow, this is the first I’m hearing it.’

“That’s my biggest fear for him, that he’s going to have a lot of family here, more family than he was used to.”

Nimmons didn’t miss a game this past season at Syracuse and plans on going to all the Giants games, but also promises to give Bromley the space he needs.

“I’m happy to have him home but I don’t want for him to get distracted,” she said.

Bromley will live in New Jersey, near the Giants practice facility, and plans on limiting his exposure to Jamaica.

“A lot of things stay the same, you know?” he said. “As much as you change and as much as you grow a lot of things stay the same and the people that you might have once hung around with stay the same in a lot of instances. People know your name and they know who you are and they think you got something and it’s easier for them to want to take it.

“In a perfect world hopefully I will never see something like that. But it’s not a perfect world.”

DeSantis does not remember Bromley ever being in any trouble, saying he was more “jovial” than anything else. This, Bromley’s former coach cannot comprehend.

To see where he comes from, where he had to go to every day for most of his life and kind of come out unscathed, it’s historic.

 - Jim DeSantis

“To come from where he came from, from being left on a freaking doorstep, he was a special education student and graduated in four years,” DeSantis said. “He’s a quality kid. To see where he comes from, where he had to go to every day for most of his life and kind of come out unscathed, it’s historic. You know what I mean?”

“My wife keeps saying ‘They got to make a movie’ and I said, ‘They already did, it’s called ‘The Blind Side.’”

Bromley does not see his life “as drastic” as Michael Oher’s in “The Blind Side” and he knows how he got here doesn’t interest the Giants nearly as much as what he does in their uniform.

“They’re not going to give away money for sob stories, I don’t care how bad someone’s story is,” Bromley said. “They ain’t just drafting people just because they got good stories.”

“One of my best qualities is I can get away from a lot of different things and just be at one with myself and attack what I need to attack. If all I have to focus on is football and I’m blessed enough to have my own space where I can do that then I know I can cancel out all of the distractions.”