Crazy that Jessie Armstead went in round 8 of the draft
Knee.
http://nypost.com/2010/04/21/giants-armstead-pick-was-better-late-than-never/
Giants’ Armstead pick was better late than never
By Paul SchwartzApril 21, 2010 | 4:00am
Once considered the best high school football player in the nation, Jessie Armstead knew leading up to the 1993 NFL Draft that he would not hear his name called in the first round. As a sophomore he had blown out his right knee, came back to finish second on the Miami Hurricanes defense in tackles but realized his injury history had devalued him.
“I’m not taken in the first round because I’m wrecked up, like a wrecked up car,” Armstead recently told The Post. “You don’t expect anyone to give you same dollar for the car that’s not wrecked. But give me half the price, take me in the third or fourth round.”
Spoken like a car dealer, which makes sense. Armstead is owner of Hamilton (N.J.) Honda, in addition to his role as a special assistant/consultant for the Giants — where he is part coach, part guidance counselor, part recruiter and an important member of the football operation.
He also is perhaps the best draft pick in modern Giants history, an eighth-round selection that evolved into a five-time Pro Bowl linebacker and one of the fiercest and determined players ever to stalk a Giants defense. Getting a future Hall of Famer (Harry Carson) in the fourth round in 1976 was a steal, but he wasn’t an after-thought like Armstead.
“I look at it, it’s easy to be first-rounder,” Armstead said. “Maybe I can be an inspiration to a guy picked in the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round or a free agent. I think I can affect more people by my story than a guy who went in the first or second round. What did he do that he wasn’t supposed to do?”
Seventeen years ago this month, Armstead nearly went unnoticed. Coming out of Dallas, he was the top recruit in the country and Jimmy Johnson convinced him to enroll at Miami. A few weeks later, Johnson left to take over the Cowboys. As the draft neared, Johnson promised Armstead he would take him if he were still available in the sixth round.
Armstead was there for the taking in Round 6 and Johnson passed. By the time Armstead heard his name, it was the eighth round and 206 players already had been selected. Armstead was the 32nd linebacker taken. Heck, the Giants hardly were big believers. They took two linebackers — Marcus Buckley and Tommy Thigpen — before using their last selection on a player they figured could play special teams and maybe even safety but never amount to much as an undersized linebacker.
“My original thought was, ‘What the heck are the Giants picking me for?’ ” Armstead recalled. “You think of New York, they want those big old linebackers. The first thing you think of, LT, big linebacker. Pepper Johnson, big linebacker. Carl Banks, big linebacker. Where do I fit in? But I really don’t care. They called me, I’m going to raise **** wherever I go.”
During his first rookie camp, Armstead scanned a draft class that included Michael Strahan and determined, “I was the best player, I knew it. I was born to be a football player. That’s the difference between me and 95 percent of football players. I wasn’t taught to do this, I was born to do this.”
In his first rookie camp Armstead was given No. 98 — hardly a uniform befitting a linebacker — and remembers getting a shabby pair of cleats that screamed, “You’re not going to be here much longer.” He took no prisoners. It took three full seasons to break into the starting lineup. Once he did, he never left. He made the Pro Bowl five consecutive years (1997-2001). When he was on the field, he said it was “my time to hunt,” and he meant it.
“I know a lot of people that say they should have got drafted a lot of spots before, but I was different situation,” Armstead said. “With me, a lot of people dropped the ball. It wasn’t a situation where a diamond came out of a rough. It was a diamond the whole time.”
