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Patriots RB Danny Woodhead finding new home in New England, newfound attention facing former team
Published: Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 4:30 AM
Conor Orr/The Star-Ledger
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Getty ImagesPatriots RB Danny Woodhead has become a contributor in New England.
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Share 4 Comments FOXBOROUGH, Mass. â€" A black winter hat on top of Danny Woodhead's shaggy head served as the only indicator there was someone inside the media circle that enveloped his locker at Gillette Stadium yesterday.
The growing horde of cameras, microphones and tape recorders had come to hear his story â€" the one about the rival team that cut him three months ago, and will visit New England Monday to see how he has become a versatile weapon with the Patriots.
After nine games in New England, the running back has gained nearly five times as many total yards (574) as he had in the year and a half spent with the Jets between their practice squad, injury reserve and a stint on the active roster.
The media wanted to know how that journey made him feel, and whether or not he hated the Jets because of it. They wanted to know why his former teammates in New York still liken him to a superhero.
"Really, I just don't look at that too much, I'm not too worried about the media or what's going on in the media,"Â Woodhead said yesterday. "Really, I'm just trying to do my job every day. If they say good things, great; it's not something I'm looking into."Â
And though Woodhead's story may become exhausting to repeat between now and Monday night's highly anticipated showdown, it's one that's still surprising to Woodhead and those close enough to him to see the body of work that got him to this point.
How he catapulted his North Platte Bulldogs from Nebraska high school football irrelevance to within a game of the state championship, and took that momentum to Chadron State, where he gained the second-most all purpose yards in NCAA history.
And how he's still turning heads, one undrafted spring and two trying NFL seasons later.
"I just mentioned something to his dad the other day, and I think his dad used the word ‘surreal,'" Rich Reinert, a friend of the Woodhead family and the athletic director at his former high school, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"To me it's interesting to be able to sit in the recliner of my family room and watch a young man in the NFL play that played for our high school, someone I've known since he was born."Â
It's the story that Reinert â€" whose daughters Amanda and Andrea used to babysit Woodhead â€" said has turned the 25,000-person railroad town into a pack of avid Patriots fans once New England claimed him just four days after he was waived by the Jets.
One that (almost) turned them against their beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers, too, when they only offered Woodhead a walk-on slot and a chance to return kicks and punts.
"That was kind of a bone of contention in this community,"Â Reinert said.
But it's also a story that doesn't surprise anyone, either.
Bob Zohner, Woodhead's high school coach, remembers vividly the way Woodhead would tear through defenses in his Wing-T offense. The "buck sweep"Â allowed him to wind up and toss his sub-200 pound body down the field.
He finished high school as Nebraska's Class-A all-time rushing leader with 4,891 yards.
"Every game he just did some remarkable things,"Â said Zohner, who taught both Woodhead and his future wife, Stacia, in high school phys ed. "Unbelievable."Â
It's the same kind of disregard for his body that allows Woodhead to lay out every week, hauling in passes in traffic, hurling his body at blitzing linebackers twice his size.
"He's come in here and he's worked hard since Day One,"Â said Patriots chief of player personnel, Nick Caserio.
"He's a smart player. There's a lot of things he's been asked to do and to this point he's had the success at doing those things. We're happy to have him."Â
And it's the story that's fun for Zohner to listen to, because it's the same one Woodhead told him before it all started. Back before anyone was there to listen.
Said Zohner: "He kept saying all along he was going to go to the next level."Â
Conor Orr:
corr@starledger.com
