SUPER BOWL STAGE
Cibola grad Alan Branch set to play defensive tackle Sunday for the Patriots
Alan Branch’s presence in Glendale, Ariz., this weekend is symbolic. The Phoenix suburb is where his NFL journey began and it has brought him, years later, to the pinnacle of American sports.
It’s a long, complex road that started in Rio Rancho. It had an amateur detour in Ann Arbor, Mich., then professional stops in Arizona, Seattle, Buffalo and now Foxborough, Mass.
Alan Branch has come back to Arizona, and he’s in the Super Bowl. For the second time. I still remember the summer of 2007, spending a couple of days in Flagstaff for Branch’s first training camp with the Arizona Cardinals.
He had been a secondround pick earlier that year coming out of Michigan a year early, and the big-as-aVolkswagen defensive lineman seemed on the path for a promising future in the NFL.
Has that career blossomed the way he, or us, envisioned? Perhaps not. He’s not a Pro Bowler, and he’s not a household name, maybe not even in Foxborough.
But still, the big guy on Sunday goes where so very few ever get to go. Branch, a back-up defensive tackle for New England who once starred at Cibola, will be in a Patriots uniform Sunday when New England takes on Seattle, just outside of Phoenix.
This finale is fitting in so many ways.
Consider that Branch’s career began with Arizona, in that very stadium.
Consider that he once played for the Seahawks.
Consider that his most previous employer, the Buffalo Bills, may — indirectly — decide the Super Bowl champion this season. How so? Well, remember that the Bills’ December win over Green Bay cost the Packers home field in the NFC playoffs, handing it instead to Seattle.
A great ride
This 2014 NFL season has been significant for the city of Rio Rancho.
Former Rio Rancho High star Chris Williams became a starting kick returner in Chicago and scored his first NFL touchdown.
And now Branch is going to play in the Super Bowl. The last prominent New Mexican to advance this far was Lovington’s Brian Urlacher, with the Bears. That was eight Super Bowls ago.
For Branch, this actually is his second go-round at the Super Bowl. Arizona got there following the 2008 season, but Branch was merely a spectator that day against Pittsburgh. He was not activated for any of the Cardinals’ playoff games that year, in fact.
But he’ll get on the field this time, thanks to the Patriots, who gave him another chance.
Branch’s falling out in Buffalo was swift. He failed a conditioning test at the start of training camp, but it was a DWI arrest that expedited his departure. That slip-up was a shocking thing to us here, simply because Branch has always been such a great kid whose reputation was largely unstained.
New England signed him midseason, and he’s been playing about 15-20 snaps a game for the Patriots (a bit more than that in the playoffs), as a run-stuffing giant in the middle. That’s what he does. That’s his specialty.
It’s been a fascinating career arc for Branch, one of my favorite all-time prep athletes. He’s a gregarious guy, fun-loving, tremendously friendly, enormously talented.
He was a skill-position athlete at Cibola. Sure, he was 6-foot-6 and 300-some odd pounds, but he moved like someone who was 6-2 and 210. He could run with it, catch it, return kicks. He even played some quarterback for the Cougars. He possessed unusually deft footwork; in basketball, he could post up and shoot with either hand.
Past and present
In August 2005, I went to Ann Arbor, Mich., to do a story on Branch. He showed me around the Michigan facilities. We eventually found our way into the locker room, and a couple of his teammates were there, as well.
Branch tried to tell them what a phenomenal athlete he was in high school. And he was. He was the state’s Gatorade Player of the Year for 2003, and played in a national All-American Game after his senior season.
His Wolverine teammates laughed, disbelieving. No way, they said.
Branch laughed, too. That is his nature. See, he said, nodding my way, no respect for New Mexico.
He’s a big kid at heart. That’s the way I thought of him then. That’s the way I think of him now, just a month removed from his 30th birthday.
At Michigan, he became an integral part of the nation’s top run-stopping unit during his junior season, his last in college. ESPN.com named him to its All-American team in 2006.
That next spring, the spring of 2007, I hunkered down at Branch’s Rio Rancho home during the first day of the NFL Draft to report on the day. Dozens of family and friends and former coaches were there, too.
It was an agonizing day, truthfully. That first round, which lasted over six hours, came and went and Branch, who expected to go in the first round, had yet to be selected.
Arizona, in a trade with Oakland, took him with the first pick of the second round and No. 33 overall.
Branch never got a ring with Arizona.
Maybe he’ll get one Sunday with New England.
You know, it’s easy to vilify the Patriots; it’s become a national sport to blast away at New England, and for legitimate reason.
But here’s a kid who has played parts of eight seasons in the NFL, far beyond the average career lifespan in this unforgiving sport.
Whatever else Alan Branch has done, or will do, in football, Sunday could very well prove to be a defining moment in his life. Who knows, maybe he’ll make a game-turning play along the way.
Rio Rancho will be watching. We’ll all be watching.