New York Giants LB B.J. Goodson Is Ready to Begin NFL Journey

New York Giants rookie linebacker B.J. Goodson has a message he’d like to send to Giants fans.

“I definitely want Giants nation to know that they have another everyday hard-hat worker coming into the business and someone who is going to represent the brand the right way, he said.

“That’s my identity. At the end of the day, all I can do is be myself, so they can definitely look forward to some hard hitting.”

Those aren’t simply words from a wide-eyed rookie who starting Monday will get a chance to compete as part of a crowded field at middle linebacker for his slice of the pie.

No, the former Clemson linebacker, selected by the Giants in the fourth round of the draft, is already showing some of the qualities that Giants fans of today long for from the Big Blue linebackers.

If you fondly remember the days of the “Crunch Bunch” (Lawrence Taylor, Brad Van Pelt, Brian Kelley and Harry Carson), you’re going to love what the 22-year-old Goodson plans to bring to the table.

 

The Foundation

According to CityPopulation, the town of Lamar, South Carolina, is home to a population of less than 1,000 as of the April 2010 census. At 1.2 square miles, the city, which boasts one traffic light, is smaller than New York’s Central Park.

For as tiny of a town as Lamar is, it’s also a town that is mostly rich in athletics, a town where children become involved in multiple sports to help supplement their daily activities. 

In Goodson’s case, his first love while growing up was basketball, a game in which he played power forward and shooting guard.

That love of hoops came from his parents, Billy, a factory worker, and Deirdre, a supervisor for Florence County’s Department of Corrections, who had played basketball as youths. 

However, when it came time to choose a college, rather than pursue his first love, Goodson ultimately chose to begin a new journey down a different road. 

“Growing up, I had played AAU basketball just about all my life until high school when I started to get experience with football,” Goodson told Bleacher Report. “I was a pretty good basketball athlete, but I only had one scholarship offer for basketball.”

Football, however, was another story. With several offers to play college football, Goodson took the hint.

Goodson remembers the day he was recruited by Clemson University, the first school to come courting him and the one he ultimately went with. 

“When [former Clemson defensive coordinator] Kevin Steele stepped foot on Lamar High School’s grounds to talk to me, I decided then that [Clemson] was where I wanted to go,” Goodson said.

 

The Birth of a Linebacker

It takes a special kind of personality to play the role of linebacker in the game of football, regardless of the competition level.

Some of the greatest NFL linebackers—Taylor, Jack Ham, Junior Seau, Dick Butkus and Sam Huff, just to name a few—are well known not just for their play, but for their ability to instill fear in their opponents.

They’re the gruff type who, once they step on to the gridiron, replace words with grunts, whose icy stares would make the worst that cold-weather cities like Green Bay and Minneapolis have …

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