35-year-old Giants’ DB forges on in trying season
Let Antoine Bethea tell you something about the good, bad and ugly of the NFL.
The veteran Giants safety broke into the NFL as a rookie starter for a Super Bowl champion, but that was so long ago. Bethea now is toiling for the same franchise. Talk about extremes.
“It’s easy to come to work when you’re winning,” Bethea, 35, told USA TODAY Sports. “When it’s not going well, that’s when the true character comes out.”
This predicament also underscores one of the reasons the Giants signed Bethea last offseason to a two-year contract. In his 14th NFL season and with his fourth team, he’s a wise, steady leader for a rebuilding team. Bigger on oneon-one interactions than speeches, Bethea is like the laid-back, big brother-type that every locker room needs.
“It’s part of my role to keep guys on the right track,” he said. “But we all have a job to do.”
In a sense, Bethea passes along messages similar to those he received while breaking in with the Colts as a rookie in 2006. He pointed to the impact from two veterans in particular – Reggie Wayne and Gary Brackett – then went on to name eight other players from those teams who showed him the way. If not urging him to get in the cold tub after practices, it was, “Get your butt in the house and get your sleep,” he recalls.
“I was fortunate to come to a locker room that had a lot of veterans, to see a lot of guys doing it the right way.”
Now, beyond kicker Adam Vinatieri, he’s the last player standing from the Colts team that won Super Bowl XLI.
Bethea suited up up for his 206th regular-season NFL game in Week 14, a longevity measure that in itself reflects a remarkable journey that proves why some underdogs can never be counted out. After the Colts drafted him from Howard in the sixth round (207th overall) in 2006, he was sixth among the seven safeties on the depth chart. Then-GM Bill Polian and Tony Dungy figured they could break him in at safety, then eventually move him to cornerback for the Cover 2 scheme.
A knack for making plays during his first camp, though, altered the plan and Bethea’s personal history. The switch from safety never happened.
“I just remember that every tipped ball that was in the air, he caught it,” former Colts quarterback Peyton Manning told USA TODAY Sports. “There are just certain guys, I don’t know why, but they are around the ball, the fumble always goes to them, they catch the tipped ball. He was just like that.”
Bethea wasn’t heavily recruited coming out of Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia, landing as a walk-on at Howard, where he majored in criminal justice. Asked what he would be doing if football didn’t work out, he said, “Hell if I know. I think about that to this day. I’ve kept up with some of my former classmates with their careers, but I’m not going to sit here and lie and say that I would have pursued that.”
He seems so down to earth. While he swears by his disciplined routine and various body-maintenance measures as keys for surviving in his rigorous profession – Mike Adams, a 16th-year vet with the Texans, is the only active safety with a longer NFL tenure – Bethea will quickly acknowledge what he can’t control.
“There’s luck involved, too,” he said. “I was spoiled. Seven out of my first eight years in the league, we went to the playoffs. After winning the Super Bowl my first year, I thought, ‘I’m going to get a few of these.’ It has smacked me in the face during the latter part of my career.
“I’ve got to be real with myself, knowing I don’t have much longer.”
He’s come a long way from being a college walk-on. It’s no wonder Bethea preaches this theme to the kids who come into the NFL: embrace your story.
“Everybody’s story is going to be different,” he said. “But everything that happens, good or bad, you have to learn from it. So embrace everything that comes with it.”