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Alot of comments from the scouting people within and at the end:
A single mother’s love sparks NFL dream
John Kryk - April 11th, 2012
WINDSOR, Ont. — When he was little, NFLer-to-be Tyrone Crawford played sports all year long.
Baseball, basketball, football, track. Always something.
“Yeah, because Momma had to work!” his mother, Tara Crawford, says from her well-kept home in this struggling, rust-belt city. [That's her, above, with Tyrone in a photo I snapped last week.]
“I was a single mom, and I always had to work. And I just always wanted to know where my kids were. Leaving them with a young babysitter sitting at home? I’d always want to know, ‘What are my kids doing?’ So sports. Sports was just the thing.”
Sports sure are Tyrone Crawford’s thing.
How many people do you know who won four provincial or state championship gold medals in high school? Crawford did it at Windsor’s Catholic Central High School from 2004-07, and in two sports — shot put (three times in four years) and in basketball. And he came close in javelin and discus. What’s more, Crawford was a helluva youth-league pitcher in baseball.
And then there’s football.
Now age 22, the 6-foot-4, 282-pound Crawford is two weeks away from becoming the athletic property of a National Football League club.
A defensive end the past two seasons at Boise State University in Idaho, which followed two years at Bakersfield (junior) College in California, Crawford is a pass-rushing specialist. He’s projected by most experts to be picked in the third round of the April 26-28 draft. Perhaps even earlier.
“He’s freakishly athletic — explosive and so strong,” says Pete Kwiatkowski, the defensive coordinator at Boise State who began recruiting Crawford to Idaho back in 2007.
“The kid could excel in anything he tried,” says Jalil Khoury, Crawford’s football and field-events coach at Catholic Central High. “He’s an unbelievably gifted athlete — by far the best I’ve ever seen or coached. He was basically a man competing among boys here.”
Fourteen NFL teams have met with Crawford this year, as they do their pre-draft due diligence, including the Patriots twice. The Colts are flying him to Indianapolis on Thursday, and on April 18 he meets with the club that plays its home games just three miles north of his mom’s home — the Detroit Lions.
The Canadian Football League can only drool over him; Crawford probably won’t even be available by Day 3 of the April 26-28 NFL draft, when the final rounds, 4-7, are held.
“I know of scouts who believe he’s a third- to fourth-round prospect,” Rob Rang, senior NFL draft analyst for CBSSports.com.
“But considering the value teams place on pass rushers and Crawford’s versatility, I believe he could surprise as a second-round pick. We rank him as the ninth overall defensive end in the 2012 draft, and a second- to third-round pick.”
It’s hard for Canadian kids to realize the NFL dream. Crawford had to clear more hurdles than most to get to this position.
He grew up without a father figure, and his mom worked those long hours at a Windsor car-parts plastics plant. But Tara Crawford kept both Tyrone and his younger brother, Tarrence, on the straight and narrow. Tarrence, 19, was a redshirt freshman last fall on the Simon Fraser University football team in British Columbia, which plays in NCAA Division II.
“She taught both boys respect, how to be humble, right from wrong, when to stand up for themselves, and when not to,” Khoury says. “Tyrone was just a complete young man, because he was raised so well by his mom.
“I’ll give you a real prime example of the quality character Tyrone has. We had some special-needs kids in our classes, and he would actually tie the shoes of one kid every single day.”
For his part, Kwiatkowski — Crawford’s position coach at Boise State — interrupted me as I attempted to thank him for the telephone interview. He wanted to underscore a point he felt he hadn’t made well enough.
“Tyrone is probably a better person than a football player,” Kwiatkowski said.
“He’s extremely reliable, conscientious. Very respectful. He keeps his ego in check, big time. He’s got a boatload of talent and doesn’t let that go to his head, at all.”
Don’t get the idea that Crawford is so nice a guy on the field.
In all those sports he played as a youth — not just the organized ones, but at all his family get-togethers — a ferocious competitive desire was fired.
“My brother and I, we’re probably the most competitive people in Windsor,” Crawford says. “We just do not like losing. We have a lot of cousins, and we play them all 2-on-2 in basketball, and they try and mix and match the teams, but we don’t ever like to lose.”
Crawford competes more than a little intensely to try to see that through.
“Just ask the basketball referees about that,” his mother says with a laugh. “They used to love Tyrone, but they’d be like, ‘You CAN’T come down on someone like that!’ And Tyrone would look at them and just go, ‘Basketball’s not my game.’”
“Yeah, I was an aggressive basketball player,” he admits. “Coming off football season, I was always in the football mode. And I hurt a couple players doing the wrong thing.”
But on the football fields of Windsor, Crawford’s intensity could flow unabated — be it at running back, slot receiver, tight end, outside linebacker or inside linebacker.
“He just completely dominated a game once at running back against a team that was very, very strong,” Khoury says “He scored four touchdowns. He basically willed our team to win that game. He said, ‘Give me the ball, and I will do whatever it takes to win.’ He couldn’t be stopped.”
If Crawford had taken what is labeled in Ontario high schools as the university trajectory — the “academic” scholastic stream, rather than the “applied” curriculum — Khoury says the top NCAA football programs would have been “all over him for a full-ride scholarship.”
As it was, Crawford did not take enough core subjects to qualify for the NCAA. That’s why he played the 2008 and 2009 seasons at Bakersfield College, earning all-American junior-college status the second year as a pass-rushing defensive end. It was there that he met his girlfriend Kelsey, now a varsity volleyball player at LSU.
Kwiatkowski had kept an eye on Crawford’s progress in Bakersfield, and Boise State offered him a full-ride scholarship for his last two years of college ball.
With the Broncos in 2010, Crawford made an immediate impact. As a non-starting but often-rotated-in defensive end, Crawford recorded 13.5 tackles-for-loss and seven sacks.
Last fall as a senior, Crawford started and was often unblockable. He rang up another 13.5 TFLs, forced three fumbles, recovered two fumbles (racing one back for a touchdown) and had 6.5 quarterback sacks. He was an all-conference defender in the Mountain West.
At a post-season all-star game this past January, the East-West Shrine Game, Crawford began to turn NFL scouts’ heads.
A month later at the scouting combine in Indianapolis, he turned even more — including that of the “Godfather” of NFL talent evaluators, Gil Brandt, who was with the Dallas Cowboys from the ’60s through the ’80s.
“At the combine, Crawford had walked out of the building, and I was talking to somebody and I yelled at one of the players, ‘Hey, get Crawford back here!’” Brandt says.
“When he came back I told him, ‘You really helped yourself a lot today, and I think you’re going to be a really good player.’”
Crawford says he plans to watch the draft on Day 2 (for Rounds 2 and 3) at his mother’s home. If he has to wait until Day 3 for the phone to ring, so be it.
“I think I’ve been asked, ‘Who’s going to draft you?’ about 180 times,” he says. “No one knows. For me, every team is my favourite team right now.”
Crawford has told his mom that should he strike it rich in the NFL, he’ll fly her to all his games.
“He keeps saying that,” Tara Crawford says. “But I’m a worker, and I’ve been working all my life. I just don’t see how I could take my boy’s money like that. It’d feel like I’m robbing somebody.”
Tyrone Crawford disagrees, but understands.
It was the way he was brought up.
—————–
How good an NFL prospect is Tyrone Crawford? I asked the most respected NFL talent evaluators in the biz to rate the Canadian, a defensive end from Boise State Univeristy:
Greg Cosell, NFL Films
“I personally think he’s going to be one of those guys who’s better in the NFL. That doesn’t mean he’ll be a starter in Year 1, or be all-pro. But I think as he matures and develops, I think he’s a guy that could end up being a very good pass rusher in the NFL. I thought for a man that size he was very athletic — a really nice combination of strength and athleticism. I thought he had strong hands and quick feet. I thought he did a good job in the run game stale-mating blocks. I liked him.”
Mike Mayock, NFL Network
“The Crawford kid I liked a lot. He kind of opened my eyes at the (East-West Shrine Game in January). What I think he is from a body perspective is what they call a 5-technique, which is the defensive end in the 3-4. He’s long enough. He’s strong enough. He can line up right across from the tackle and smack them in the mouth. The 3-4 teams love to find these kind of guys.”
Mel Kiper Jr., ESPN
“(Boise State coaches) had said to me before (last season) began, ‘Watch out for this kid. He’s got a chance. Take a good, hard look at him.’ He’s an athlete. He’s got size. He’s a guy that’s very good against the run. Very good motor. A guy that’s as big as he is, and as athletic as he is, he’s going to get some attention — probably late on Day 2.”
Todd McShay, ESPN
“The more I watch of him, the more I like him … Does a good job taking on blocks and he’s strong, but he has quick feet. I think that his best football is still ahead of him. From a technical standpoint, he can get better. But he consistently is able to penetrate. He’s very disruptive. He has the natural tools you look for. The best part of his game to me is all the things he needs to improve upon, he’s capable of improving upon … I’ve given him a higher grade than most; real early third round grade. To me I wouldn’t have a problem taking him late in the second.”
Rob Rang, CBSSports.com
“Crawford possesses good size and strength. While not explosive off the snap, he does possess good balance and lateral agility, which makes him an effective pass rusher. He really caught scouts’ attention with a very quick 7.09 second time in the three-cone drill at the combine, which some talent evaluators believe is the single best combine drill for projecting defensive linemen to the NFL.”
Gil Brandt, NFL Network and SiriusXM NFL Radio
“That guy’s a good football player. I was really impressed with him. I’ve got him in my Top 100 players (No. 81 as of April 6), and I had him there even before the combine. I think he’s an ascending player. He gets better every day.”
A single mother’s love sparks NFL dream
John Kryk - April 11th, 2012
WINDSOR, Ont. — When he was little, NFLer-to-be Tyrone Crawford played sports all year long.
Baseball, basketball, football, track. Always something.
“Yeah, because Momma had to work!” his mother, Tara Crawford, says from her well-kept home in this struggling, rust-belt city. [That's her, above, with Tyrone in a photo I snapped last week.]
“I was a single mom, and I always had to work. And I just always wanted to know where my kids were. Leaving them with a young babysitter sitting at home? I’d always want to know, ‘What are my kids doing?’ So sports. Sports was just the thing.”
Sports sure are Tyrone Crawford’s thing.
How many people do you know who won four provincial or state championship gold medals in high school? Crawford did it at Windsor’s Catholic Central High School from 2004-07, and in two sports — shot put (three times in four years) and in basketball. And he came close in javelin and discus. What’s more, Crawford was a helluva youth-league pitcher in baseball.
And then there’s football.
Now age 22, the 6-foot-4, 282-pound Crawford is two weeks away from becoming the athletic property of a National Football League club.
A defensive end the past two seasons at Boise State University in Idaho, which followed two years at Bakersfield (junior) College in California, Crawford is a pass-rushing specialist. He’s projected by most experts to be picked in the third round of the April 26-28 draft. Perhaps even earlier.
“He’s freakishly athletic — explosive and so strong,” says Pete Kwiatkowski, the defensive coordinator at Boise State who began recruiting Crawford to Idaho back in 2007.
“The kid could excel in anything he tried,” says Jalil Khoury, Crawford’s football and field-events coach at Catholic Central High. “He’s an unbelievably gifted athlete — by far the best I’ve ever seen or coached. He was basically a man competing among boys here.”
Fourteen NFL teams have met with Crawford this year, as they do their pre-draft due diligence, including the Patriots twice. The Colts are flying him to Indianapolis on Thursday, and on April 18 he meets with the club that plays its home games just three miles north of his mom’s home — the Detroit Lions.
The Canadian Football League can only drool over him; Crawford probably won’t even be available by Day 3 of the April 26-28 NFL draft, when the final rounds, 4-7, are held.
“I know of scouts who believe he’s a third- to fourth-round prospect,” Rob Rang, senior NFL draft analyst for CBSSports.com.
“But considering the value teams place on pass rushers and Crawford’s versatility, I believe he could surprise as a second-round pick. We rank him as the ninth overall defensive end in the 2012 draft, and a second- to third-round pick.”
It’s hard for Canadian kids to realize the NFL dream. Crawford had to clear more hurdles than most to get to this position.
He grew up without a father figure, and his mom worked those long hours at a Windsor car-parts plastics plant. But Tara Crawford kept both Tyrone and his younger brother, Tarrence, on the straight and narrow. Tarrence, 19, was a redshirt freshman last fall on the Simon Fraser University football team in British Columbia, which plays in NCAA Division II.
“She taught both boys respect, how to be humble, right from wrong, when to stand up for themselves, and when not to,” Khoury says. “Tyrone was just a complete young man, because he was raised so well by his mom.
“I’ll give you a real prime example of the quality character Tyrone has. We had some special-needs kids in our classes, and he would actually tie the shoes of one kid every single day.”
For his part, Kwiatkowski — Crawford’s position coach at Boise State — interrupted me as I attempted to thank him for the telephone interview. He wanted to underscore a point he felt he hadn’t made well enough.
“Tyrone is probably a better person than a football player,” Kwiatkowski said.
“He’s extremely reliable, conscientious. Very respectful. He keeps his ego in check, big time. He’s got a boatload of talent and doesn’t let that go to his head, at all.”
Don’t get the idea that Crawford is so nice a guy on the field.
In all those sports he played as a youth — not just the organized ones, but at all his family get-togethers — a ferocious competitive desire was fired.
“My brother and I, we’re probably the most competitive people in Windsor,” Crawford says. “We just do not like losing. We have a lot of cousins, and we play them all 2-on-2 in basketball, and they try and mix and match the teams, but we don’t ever like to lose.”
Crawford competes more than a little intensely to try to see that through.
“Just ask the basketball referees about that,” his mother says with a laugh. “They used to love Tyrone, but they’d be like, ‘You CAN’T come down on someone like that!’ And Tyrone would look at them and just go, ‘Basketball’s not my game.’”
“Yeah, I was an aggressive basketball player,” he admits. “Coming off football season, I was always in the football mode. And I hurt a couple players doing the wrong thing.”
But on the football fields of Windsor, Crawford’s intensity could flow unabated — be it at running back, slot receiver, tight end, outside linebacker or inside linebacker.
“He just completely dominated a game once at running back against a team that was very, very strong,” Khoury says “He scored four touchdowns. He basically willed our team to win that game. He said, ‘Give me the ball, and I will do whatever it takes to win.’ He couldn’t be stopped.”
If Crawford had taken what is labeled in Ontario high schools as the university trajectory — the “academic” scholastic stream, rather than the “applied” curriculum — Khoury says the top NCAA football programs would have been “all over him for a full-ride scholarship.”
As it was, Crawford did not take enough core subjects to qualify for the NCAA. That’s why he played the 2008 and 2009 seasons at Bakersfield College, earning all-American junior-college status the second year as a pass-rushing defensive end. It was there that he met his girlfriend Kelsey, now a varsity volleyball player at LSU.
Kwiatkowski had kept an eye on Crawford’s progress in Bakersfield, and Boise State offered him a full-ride scholarship for his last two years of college ball.
With the Broncos in 2010, Crawford made an immediate impact. As a non-starting but often-rotated-in defensive end, Crawford recorded 13.5 tackles-for-loss and seven sacks.
Last fall as a senior, Crawford started and was often unblockable. He rang up another 13.5 TFLs, forced three fumbles, recovered two fumbles (racing one back for a touchdown) and had 6.5 quarterback sacks. He was an all-conference defender in the Mountain West.
At a post-season all-star game this past January, the East-West Shrine Game, Crawford began to turn NFL scouts’ heads.
A month later at the scouting combine in Indianapolis, he turned even more — including that of the “Godfather” of NFL talent evaluators, Gil Brandt, who was with the Dallas Cowboys from the ’60s through the ’80s.
“At the combine, Crawford had walked out of the building, and I was talking to somebody and I yelled at one of the players, ‘Hey, get Crawford back here!’” Brandt says.
“When he came back I told him, ‘You really helped yourself a lot today, and I think you’re going to be a really good player.’”
Crawford says he plans to watch the draft on Day 2 (for Rounds 2 and 3) at his mother’s home. If he has to wait until Day 3 for the phone to ring, so be it.
“I think I’ve been asked, ‘Who’s going to draft you?’ about 180 times,” he says. “No one knows. For me, every team is my favourite team right now.”
Crawford has told his mom that should he strike it rich in the NFL, he’ll fly her to all his games.
“He keeps saying that,” Tara Crawford says. “But I’m a worker, and I’ve been working all my life. I just don’t see how I could take my boy’s money like that. It’d feel like I’m robbing somebody.”
Tyrone Crawford disagrees, but understands.
It was the way he was brought up.
—————–
How good an NFL prospect is Tyrone Crawford? I asked the most respected NFL talent evaluators in the biz to rate the Canadian, a defensive end from Boise State Univeristy:
Greg Cosell, NFL Films
“I personally think he’s going to be one of those guys who’s better in the NFL. That doesn’t mean he’ll be a starter in Year 1, or be all-pro. But I think as he matures and develops, I think he’s a guy that could end up being a very good pass rusher in the NFL. I thought for a man that size he was very athletic — a really nice combination of strength and athleticism. I thought he had strong hands and quick feet. I thought he did a good job in the run game stale-mating blocks. I liked him.”
Mike Mayock, NFL Network
“The Crawford kid I liked a lot. He kind of opened my eyes at the (East-West Shrine Game in January). What I think he is from a body perspective is what they call a 5-technique, which is the defensive end in the 3-4. He’s long enough. He’s strong enough. He can line up right across from the tackle and smack them in the mouth. The 3-4 teams love to find these kind of guys.”
Mel Kiper Jr., ESPN
“(Boise State coaches) had said to me before (last season) began, ‘Watch out for this kid. He’s got a chance. Take a good, hard look at him.’ He’s an athlete. He’s got size. He’s a guy that’s very good against the run. Very good motor. A guy that’s as big as he is, and as athletic as he is, he’s going to get some attention — probably late on Day 2.”
Todd McShay, ESPN
“The more I watch of him, the more I like him … Does a good job taking on blocks and he’s strong, but he has quick feet. I think that his best football is still ahead of him. From a technical standpoint, he can get better. But he consistently is able to penetrate. He’s very disruptive. He has the natural tools you look for. The best part of his game to me is all the things he needs to improve upon, he’s capable of improving upon … I’ve given him a higher grade than most; real early third round grade. To me I wouldn’t have a problem taking him late in the second.”
Rob Rang, CBSSports.com
“Crawford possesses good size and strength. While not explosive off the snap, he does possess good balance and lateral agility, which makes him an effective pass rusher. He really caught scouts’ attention with a very quick 7.09 second time in the three-cone drill at the combine, which some talent evaluators believe is the single best combine drill for projecting defensive linemen to the NFL.”
Gil Brandt, NFL Network and SiriusXM NFL Radio
“That guy’s a good football player. I was really impressed with him. I’ve got him in my Top 100 players (No. 81 as of April 6), and I had him there even before the combine. I think he’s an ascending player. He gets better every day.”
