GREEN BAY, Wis. - Charles Woodson cannot wait for “Monday Night Football.”
Not because he and his ESPN “Monday Night Countdown” colleagues will be broadcasting from his old stomping grounds, Lambeau Field. And not because he’ll get to reconnect with some of his old Green Bay Packers teammates, like two of his closest friends, quarterback Aaron Rodgers and cornerback Tramon Williams, before the Packers take on the San Francisco 49ers.
It's because tonight, he won’t be Charles Woodson, ESPN NFL analyst. Or Charles Woodson, Packers legend.
He’ll simply get to be “Uncle Charles.”
Tonight marks the first time Woodson, after an 18-year NFL playing career and two-plus years at ESPN, will get to see his nephew, Packers rookie linebacker/special teamer James Crawford, play in person.
“It was always hard for me to see him play, simply because I was always playing,” Woodson explained, adding that the only times he saw his nephew play live were when he’d attend Crawford’s baseball games at St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “With [high] schools being on television now, their [football] games were sometimes on television, so I’d get to see him that way. But I’ve never gotten to see him play in person because I was always doing my ‘day job.’
“He would always send me practice film, so he could show me how he was doing in practice, and because he switched around positions so much [in college], we always talked about his progress, trying to fit into his system and get better. My thing watching him, it’s like how a father is to his son, you always talk about him about the plays he didn’t make.”
The 6-foot-2, 239-pound Crawford, 23, made plenty of plays in preseason to earn a spot on the Packers roster coming out of camp – making him perhaps the biggest surprise of the summer. Signed on Aug. 8 – on the eve of the Packers’ preseason opener – Crawford appeared to be merely a training-camp body at a position where injuries had thinned the roster.
Instead, Crawford did what his uncle had always preached to him and surprised just about everyone but himself.
“Here’s what I told James, and I would tell just about any kid that’s trying to make a football team: You may be good at whatever position you’re playing – corner, linebacker, offensive line, whatever it may be – but you have to go in with the mindframe that you’re going to make this team on special teams. Don’t think, ‘I’m going to take this guy’s job, that guy’s job.’ You have to get your foot in the door, come in from the ground level,” Woodson said.
“I said, ‘You go in there and make it on your own merit. You don’t have to tell anybody about who you know and who you’re related to. You go in there and go to work.’ When he made the team, I told him, ‘Everything you did to make the team, that’s all you. It has nothing to do with anything else, anybody else.’ He went in there and had to grind it out. He had to show everyone what he was about. And he went in there and did it.”
For Crawford, taking the difficult route was nothing new. He began his college career at Illinois as a safety, then moved to linebacker before Illini coach Lovie Smith moved him to defensive end last season as a senior, when he was a team captain and led Illinois in sacks (four). But he went undrafted, getting only tryout invites from the Baltimore Ravens and Chicago Bears before the opportunity with the Packers came along.
“I definitely didn’t surprise myself. I always felt like I belonged in the NFL. It just took the right team to give me a shot. And now I’m starting to make a name for myself,” said Crawford, who has seen action on special teams in all five of the Packers' games so far, registering two tackles on special teams and one on defense. “That’s life. The deck can be stacked against you. It’s just how you play the cards you’ve been dealt. I was dealt a crazy hand, but I turned it around and made it into this.”
Throughout camp, he would text with Woodson, but most of his teammates had no idea about his connection to one of the greatest players in Packers history.
“He’s been very influential, to have someone like that to call and go through film and see what he sees. He taught me so much about the game, how to break down film, how to watch film, what to look for, and how to carry yourself as a pro,” Crawford said. “We’d talk or text probably once a week. That’s somebody you’ve got to take advantage of. You can’t let that slip.”
Crawford, who was born in December 1994 during Woodson’s senior year of high school, said his first clear memory of seeing his uncle play was when he was 8 years old and watched the Woodson and the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII. He has more vivid memories of Woodson’s time with the Packers, a seven-year run that included the 2009 NFL defensive player of the year award and a Super Bowl XLV title, which likely punched his ticket to the Pro Football Hall of Fame when he’s eligible in two years.
“Of course I remember when he was here, when he won the Super Bowl. He was big-time,” Crawford said. “It’s truly a blessing to play where Charles played. But I don’t see it as me following him or anything. I want to be myself and create my own legacy.”
He’s off to a good start. Woodson was watching when the Packers opened the season on Sept. 9 against the Bears on “Sunday Night Football,” when TV cameras zoomed in on Crawford during the national anthem and showed him with tears streaming down his face as he thought about how far he’d come.
And he wasn’t the only one who got a little emotional that night.
“That’s an incredible moment, man,” Woodson said. “You make it to the big leagues after having people doubt you, and you get to line up with the Green Bay Packers? I’d have been crying, too.”
Jason Wilde covers the Green Bay Packers for ESPN Wisconsin and hosts “Wilde & Tausch” with former Packers offensive lineman Mark Tauscher weekdays on ESPN Milwaukee and ESPN Madison.