UM EDGE RUSHER EYEING DRAFT
UM’s Greg Rousseau creates messes for quarterbacks that even he won’t clean up
From Coconut Creek Monarch High to Hialeah Champagnat to the Miami Hurricanes to the upcoming NFL Draft, edge rusher Gregory Rousseau has had an exemplary career.
From Coconut Creek Monarch High to Hialeah Champagnat to the Miami Hurricanes to the upcoming NFL Draft, edge rusher Gregory Rousseau has had an exemplary career.
Former Miami Hurricanes defensive end Greg Rousseau was 4 years old when he began folding “his tiny shirts and putting them into neat piles in his drawer,” his mother Anne said.
He was “5 or 6” when he began cleaning his room, then on to the house, from “top to bottom, corner to corner,” said his father, Oscal. “This guy cleaned the house, man. And I’m not talking about the average job. If this guy swept the floor, he’d pull the couch, pull the carpets, get behind everything. Nothing just on the surface.”
A few years later it was on to painting his bedroom. “One coat was never enough,” said Oscal, a fire truck mechanic for the city of Hialeah. “More like two or three.”
By age 12, Rousseau, projected to be chosen as high as the first round in the NFL Draft that begins Thursday, had his eyes on his parents’ linen-stuffed closet. Anne, a former neuro/ICU nurse who worked with COVID-19 patients at Florida Medical Center, said she received a text image from Greg, with no words accompanying it, of her “messy closet.”
“Two hours later comes another photo of the closet completely organized,” every little thing “just perfectly fold
ed and looking beautiful,” Anne said, laughing.
Is it any wonder that when Rousseau aims for a quarterback, he wraps him up so completely there’s nowhere to go but down?
“I enjoy cleaning up,” Rousseau, who doesn’t need a hamper because his clothes go right into the washing machine for an almost daily spin, told the Miami Herald. “I don’t like messes and try to do a thorough job of everything in life.”
‘RED CARPET’ RIDE
At 6 p.m. Thursday, Rousseau will walk the “NFL Draft Red Carpet” on the plaza of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. At 8 p.m., the meticulous, friendly little boy who grew into a
6-6 1⁄2, 266-pound signalcaller’s nightmare with dimples on his ever-smiling face, massive 11-inch hands and a ridiculous 83 1⁄4- inch wingspan nearly impossible to escape, will be anxiously awaiting his name to be called. He hopes it will be by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on behalf of his lifelong favorite Miami Dolphins, who have multiple picks in the first two rounds.
This year’s draft, after a fully virtual one in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, will be set “against the backdrop of Lake Erie,” according to the NFL.
“I dream about getting the phone call, celebrating, hugging my family, walking up to the podium and shaking the commissioner’s hand before getting a picture of us together holding my jersey,” Rousseau, who turned 21 on April 5, said this week. “That will be a picture I frame and put up in my house for sure. Maybe it’ll even be my screen-saver.”
The coveted handshake might be a fist bump this year, as the NFL is still trying to maintain COVID-19 safety protocols. But Rousseau, who recently got his first of two vaccines, can handle it. Should he and fellow Hurricanes edge rusher Jaelan Phillips both get picked among the top 32 players, it will be the first time in 15 years that two defensive ends from the same school go in the first round. It happened to North Carolina State in 2006, when Mario Williams went No. 1 overall to the Houston Texans and Manny Lawson went 22nd overall to the San Francisco 49ers.
“It would be amazing,” said Rousseau, whose UM nicknames included “Groot” because his impossibly long limbs resemble those of the treelike creature in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Canes coach Manny Diaz likened Rousseau to the long, rubbery-armed animated character Inspector Gadget, who makes miracles happen with those gadgetpacked limbs.
ONE-YEAR UM WONDER
Also amazing: Rousseau has only played one full season of college football. He broke his right ankle in his second game as a true freshman in 2018. He returned as a redshirt freshman in 2019 to dominate the entire country with an astounding 15 1⁄ sacks, 19 1⁄
2 2 tackles for loss, seven quarterback hurries, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery — less than a year removed from that broken ankle.
Only No. 2 overall 2020 NFL Draft pick Chase Young of Ohio State had more sacks that year — exactly one more. The UM single-season sack record is 17 by Daniel Stubbs in 1986.
Rousseau’s accomplishments were even more astounding considering he only started the last seven of UM’s 13 games that season, something that confounded UM fans but about which Rousseau never complained. He was always a team player,
always grateful to be a Hurricane.
So when Diaz dropped the bombshell on Aug. 6, 2020 — one day before UM was to begin fall camp — that Rousseau was opting out of the 2020 season because of the pandemic, Hurricanes fans around the country were in a tizzy. But not as much as Rousseau, who said the decision was excruciating.
“Craziest day of my life,” Rousseau told the Herald that night. “Man, I’m going to miss my teammates so much. COVID does scare me. [My parents] are both at the front lines and I don’t know how that would affect me if I got sick or brought it home to my little brother who has asthma.
“I wish I could have played with them longer. It really does take a piece out of my heart. But I’m doing what’s best for my family.”
Said Diaz: “He’s relentless. An outstanding young man. I want to thank him for everything he’s done for the Miami Hurricanes.”
Anne Rousseau, 50, who came to New York from Haiti in 1987, said the family, including fellow Haitian-born Oscal, 51, and Greg’s three brothers Ricky, 28, Marvyn, 24, and Jonathan, 14, “came to a decision together.” She, too, stepped back from her job last year and plans to return to nursing in the future. “I’m a nurse that dealt with death and dying,” Anne said. “I applaud the people who have the mental strength to do this. I love nursing, but it was hard dealing with the amount of people who didn’t make it. I saw a very dark mountain and knew I wasn’t going to climb it.
“Greg had a lot of regret when he watched his teammates play last season, but that’s normal. I’m very proud of Greg. I believe in him. He’s such a good kid, so mature and so driven. Teachers would call me just to congratulate me on what a good student and person he was. Whatever team gets him is getting a gift.”
DRIVEN TO SUCCEED
How driven is Rousseau? So much so that after attending high school the first two years at Monarch in his home of Coconut Creek, he transferred with a scholarship to Hialeah Champagnat Catholic. There, his Florida Fire 7-on-7 coach Dennis Marroquin was coaching the varsity team, and Rousseau believed he could help Marroquin win a state championship.
After losing in the state final his junior year, Marroquin and Rousseau did share in a state championship in 2017, with Rousseau starting at rush end but also playing outside linebacker, free safety and wide receiver.
“Greg is an excellent human being,” said Marroquin, who has been invited to accompany Rousseau, along with his family and girlfriend and former trainer, to Cleveland for the draft. “He is being blessed because he does everything the right way. His family is amazing — mom and dad are hard workers. He never missed practice, was as loyal as they come. No one but him would have done what he had to do to get to school every day.”
Rousseau woke up by 4:30 a.m. every school day. He had his brother Marvyn drive him to the Deerfield Beach train station, then took the TriRail for an hour to MiamiDade, before transferring to the Metrorail for a short ride to Hialeah and subsequent walk to Champagnat. The timing to accompany his dad to and from work didn’t always mesh, and he enjoyed the train rides.
“I didn’t mind,” said Rousseau, who either finished homework, watched film or even slept a bit during the ride. “I really wanted to help Coach Dennis win a state championship. If we lost, that would have hurt.”
Marvyn, a Coast Guard officer in the field of search and rescue, maritime law enforcement and emergency management, is now stationed on the Mississippi River in Memphis. He was a 6-1 cornerback and safety at NCAA Division II Oklahoma Panhandle State, and said the brothers learned about football when Ricky — now a car mechanic — brought home a “Madden” video game when Greg was about 5.
“We all got intrigued and said, ‘Wow, let’s play this game!’ ’’ Marvyn said. “It became evident that we all loved football and joked around that, ‘Yo, one of the four of us is going to make it!’ None of us were slouches. We had never known anyone who went to the NFL, but we have very hard-working, working-class parents who instilled education and discipline.”
DECISION DEBATED
Rousseau’s decision to opt out has been widely debated by analysts and scouts who say that basically one year of college play — 14 complete games — is not enough for teams to judge his value. Many, however, believe otherwise.
“It’s a very scary virus,” Marvyn said. “There was a lot of uncertainty last year. And my mom being a COVID-19 nurse made it even more real and scary. She’d come back home every day with first-hand accounts of very sick people. Greg loves his team, and anyone who doubted his passion for football and his team were dead wrong and don’t understand the weight that was on his shoulders.
“It will be extremely hard to pass up on a dude with his athletic talent and length. Why would you pass up on a dude who had more sacks in one year than all those dudes in multiple years? I don’t see 32 teams passing up on him, but I know that the ones that do are going to have their quarterbacks sacked and harassed for the next 10, 15 years. He’s going to be a terror.”
Most mock drafts have Phillips, another extremely gifted rush end, going in the first round ahead of Rousseau, in particular after Phillips (eight sacks, 15 1⁄
2 TFL in 2020) aced his March 29 Pro Day and overshadowed Rousseau’s performance. Rousseau, projected by some, including ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr., to go early in the second round, ran 4.68 seconds in the 40-yard dash, according to the ACC Network. He leaped 30 inches on his vertical jump and bench pressed 21 reps of 225 pounds. He broad jumped 9-7 and had a 4.45 shuttle.
But his 1.57-second 10-yard split in his 40 — a crucial number NFL teams examine for an edge rusher aiming for the quarterback — was extraordinary. Rousseau’s versatility also was evident when he played inside at tackle in obvious passing downs, creating mismatches with his crazylong arms going against shorter guards.
“I wonder what the scouts were saying when I was coming out?” tweeted Rousseau fan Calais Campbell, the former UM defensive end who was drafted in the second round in 2008 and is a 6-8, 300-pound six-time Pro Bowler often compared to Rousseau. In three full years at UM, Campbell totaled 19 1⁄ sacks to Rous
2 seau’s 15 1⁄ for one season.
2
“Not athletic enough? Not strong enough?” Campbell said. “I am not a scout and I know they have a tough job. But I hope they don’t overthink this one. @Greg_R5 can play football. He is a playmaker!”
CBSSports.com’s NFL Draft writer Chris Trapasso wrote a story with this headline: “Why selecting Miami’s Gregory Rousseau in first round is a big mistake.”
Wrote Trapasso:
“What’s my gripe with Rousseau as a first-round prospect? That answer includes multiple layers, but to summarize at the outset — he’s too raw for my liking.”
‘LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT’
NFL Draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said this about Rousseau after he opted out: “We’re all familiar with the phrase ‘love at first sight.’ Well, that’s what happened when I studied my first tape of Gregory Rousseau. He possesses all of the traits and skills I look for in a pass rusher. He jumps off the screen. ... To borrow a line from one of my favorite sports movies, he ‘had me at hello.’... If I had to limit my evaluation to a two-word description, it would be ‘consistently dominant.’ ”
Rousseau said he is “blessed no matter what” happens in the draft, and is rooting for Phillips and fellow talented UM defensive end Quincy Roche to do well.
“I know I didn’t have an amazing Pro Day, but I know what I can do on the field,” Rousseau said. “It’s not going to define me a year from now. A year from now I’m now going to be thinking about what I did in the season. Playing football is different from running around in tights and a shirt. Football is played with pads in a stadium That’s my element.”
On draft weekend, Rousseau’s “element” will be in Cleveland, entering the big stage with his blue suit, white dress shirt, either black or purple tie (he’s still deciding) and white Dior sneakers — size 14.
“We were trying to find a tie that would match my Cinderella-blue dress,’’ said his girlfriend, Nina Sharpton, who played volleyball for N.C. State and whose first cousin Darryl Sharpton is a former UM linebacker. Nina and Rousseau had been watching old draft videos together so she could understand the process.
“Oh my gosh. I have no idea what to expect,” she said. “I don’t think he’s super worried. He’s grateful to be able to be there. Greg is just ready to play football again.’’