To Son Number One

From JS Online about Green Bay Packers Ryan Grant.

To son number one who sometimes frustrates the heck out of me!

To son number one who you tell him to do something and doesn't do it!

To son number one who is very intellectually smart but sometimes has no common sense!

To son number one who is highly thought of and respected by all who know him! Yes his dad respects him also.

To son number one who I hope has set some goals in life ( I do not know what they are)!

To son number one who his father thinks it is not a good idea that he goes to UWM next fall!

To son number one who his father wished he was like him when he was his age!

To son number one who drives his father up the wall ninety percent of the time.

To son number one who needs to know his father has made a lot of mistakes in life and does not want him to go through the same mistakes!

To son number one, your dad is not the worst father in the world, he is just hard on you for the right reasons!

To son number one who should read these quotes from Ryan Grant since no matter what his father says ,it doesn't matter! You have to work hard to get anywhere in life! Nothing gets handed to you!


Grant overcomes obstacles
Man with a plan had a few detours on road to success
By LORI NICKELlnickel@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Dec. 15, 2007
New Yorker Ryan Grant played for one of the biggest high school football powerhouses out East, Don Bosco Prep School in Ramsey, N.J., just minutes away from the Meadowlands.

Being the New Jersey player of the year, in addition to a being a bright and ambitious young man, Grant had a plan.
Notre Dame. Draft. The National Football League, maybe even on the roster of the New York Giants.

Funny how those plans get trashed for no better reason than just to test a man's resolve.
Academic probation was not in the plan. Getting bypassed by a friend was not in the plan. Slashing an artery, nerve and tendon and nearly bleeding out was most definitely not in the plan.

Yet here Grant is after all of that, a 25-year-old rookie basically blooming in the middle of the once dormant running game of the Green Bay Packers.
This buy had nothing but time the last two years but he's a whirling dervish right now. One day this week after practice, reporters had 45 minutes of access to players. Well, Grant was lifting weights for 30 of them. Then when he was done, he plopped down to a table with a sandwich stuffed with turkey and lettuce because he hadn't eaten

For 17 minutes, between gulps, Grant considered the various obstacles he's overcome before he was whisked away for an important team meeting for the 11-2 Packers.
"My motto is, it might not happen the way you want it, but if you keep working, hard work really does pay off," said Grant. "It may not pay off right away. Or, how you think it's going to pay off. But in the end it does pay off. I'm not the only guy that was told he was going to get drafted that didn't get drafted. You know?"

Oh yeah, that too. With Grant there are so many little twists to his story. Where to begin?
Well, the academic probation is a good place because it is so shocking. Not just in that it happened, but how Grant responded.
Grant played for Notre Dame as a true freshman in 2000 but he had to sit out the next season because his grade point average fell just below a 2.0, 'C' average, he said.
"I was working my ass off, too," said Grant. "I was playing as a freshman, so I was trying to focus on ball. Well, we weren't winning, I was frustrated, I wasn't playing as much as I would have liked to have played. And school was tough. I learned if I don't get enough sleep I can't do anything well. So it was a lot."

Grant changed direction his sophomore year. He sought individual help from professors and learned what time management really means. He didn't get straight 'A's but he graduated with two degrees - in sociology and computer science - from one of the best academic institutions in the country.

And he became good friends with Julius Jones, another running back at Notre Dame. On the field his second year of football, in 2002, Grant starred at Notre Dame with nine touchdowns and 1,085 yards, just the seventh time Notre Dame had a 1,000-yard rusher. Jones was always there to advise. But then in 2003, Jones returned from his own academic probation and, with
Grant not playing as well as before, Jones took over the bulk of the carries. Grant's total yardage dropped to 510.

In Grant's final year, 2004, he started all nine games but was also had an injured hamstring. He had just 515 yards.
So even though Grant left as the 11th ranked running back in Notre Dame history with 2,220 rushing yards with a 3.9 average per carry and 18 touchdowns, it was like he finished with polite applause rather than a thunderous ovation.

The NFL general managers took a pass draft weekend, including Green Bay's Ted Thompson, who was set with Ahman Green.
Grant landed on the Giants' practice squad as a free agent in 2005. He had taken a few detours, sure, but was still somewhat on plan.
Tiki Barber was the man in New York then and the Giants had other up and coming running backs as well. Still, Grant expected to challenge them all in 2006.
But in March of that year, Grant was in Manhattan nightclub when he said he lost his footing after being bumped in the crowd. Grant said he wasn't inebriated when he reached out to catch himself. Unfortunately, his hand came crashing down on glassware on a table.
A deep gash stretched from the middle of the fleshy part of inside forearm and snaked all the way up to his wrist six inches later. He'd cut a tendon, the ulnar nerve and an artery. Losing a lot of blood rapidly, Grant was rushed by ambulance to the hospital and then rushed right in to surgery.

"At first they were testing me, like, 'Can you move the hand?'" said Grant. "I was like, nope. I had to have my arm repaired. I had major, major amounts of stitches."
Grant's close friend, New York defensive end Justin Tuck, who came in with Grant in the same recruiting class at Notre Dame, said there was, initially, grave concern for Grant over the blood loss.

"Did he tell you I told him not to go out that night?" said Tuck. "It was my birthday and I wasn't even going out. But I kind of wish I would have I would have been there. It was definitely scary. At first, people thought he wouldn't even survive surgery because he lost a lot of blood. It wasn't a good couple of days for either one of us."
Pulling through, the concern then turned toward Grant's football future.
"I asked the surgeon, all right, shoot me straight, what's up? Am I going to be able to play again?" said Grant. "He told me, 'You should be fine.' He said if everything went alright, I might be able to come back that year but the Giants put me on IR. It was a long year, every day, twice a day sometimes, all different types of rehab."

After a year off, Grant returned in 2007 to find a Giants team loaded at running back with Derrick Ward, Reuben Droughns, Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs.
A thousand miles away, however, the Green Bay Packers had one of top three quarterbacks in the game, a crazy five-receiver formation brewing, a threat at tight end and almost no one to run the ball. The Packers didn't even wait to see if Grant would make New York's final roster cuts. Green Bay gave up a sixth-round draft pick for Grant.
"I didn't think he would get a shot as quick as he did, but I knew what kind of back Ryan was," said Tuck. "And I knew he was a smart football player, he could definitely pick up things a lot quicker."

When Grant arrived in Green Bay on Sept. 1, his head was swimming. This was a whole new playbook, peer group and environment. He had loose ends all over the place back at home in New York. But Grant had the one thing that kept him grounded from the day he got here: appreciation.

After everything he'd been through at Notre Dame and New York, he was willing to do whatever it took to make this work in Green Bay. Within in a week he was comfortable with the Packers offense.
"I think it matters to him, and that shows up. That's obvious," said Packers running backs coach Edgar Bennett. "Most guys say, 'Well, Ok, I want to make the most of the opportunity.' Well, when the opportunity comes, are you ready? He fully understood what it took when the opportunity came. From the moment he got here, he prepared like he was the guy, so there's no surprise to anyone in here that he's having this success."

Grant took over for DeShawn Wynn at Denver on Oct. 29 in the second quarter and got the first 100-yard rushing game for the Packers. Six weeks later he posted a personal best 156 yards on 29 carries (5.4 average) and a touchdown in the Green Bay Packers' 38-7 rout of Oakland on his 25th birthday.

"He was always driven but he's at another level now," said Tuck. "In college he was always the earliest to workouts. Or if we had six days off he would take two. He would show up weeks before anybody had to be there.

"It worked out the best for him and I think everybody is happy about that."

Good luck Son number one.
Work hard and good things will come to you!
When you make a mistake , try again and don't repeat the same mistake again!
You can get more with honey than you can with vinegar!
Inspect what you Expect!
The glass is always half full!
If you hang out with winners you will become a winner, if you hang out with losers you will become a loser!
The three most important things in life and always in this order,
# 1 your God, # 2 your family and # 3 your job!
If you believe nothing , you believe everything! (from Rush)
There's a big world out there, the sky's the limit!
You'll do just fine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your Dad, who is proud of you.