American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
for the
Washington Redskins
The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) N ...
and the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
. He played
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
at
Southern Colorado
South-Central Colorado is a region of the U.S. state of Colorado. It can be roughly defined by Chaffee County in the northwest, El Paso County in the northeast, Las Animas County in the southeast, and Conejos County in the southwest. Some notab ...
1972 NFL Draft
The 1972 NFL draft was held February 1–2, 1972, at the Essex House in New York City, New York. With the first overall pick of the draft, the Buffalo Bills selected defensive end Walt Patulski.
Player selections
Round one
Round two
...
.
Born in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Grant was raised in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.East Side High School, where he played organized football for the first time despite having been told as a freshman that he was too small, at , to play the sport competitively.Shapiro, Leonard "Redskin Grant Has Overcome Long Odds" ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', October 7, 1977. Accessed October "'If you knew where he came from, what his background was, you'd know what I'm talking about,' said Bert Nanhoff, Grant's football coach at East Side High in Newark and now a guidance counselor at a suburban school in northern New Jersey.... That determination showed up early, because Manhoff once told Grant, then a puny 140-pound freshman, that he was simply too small to play high school football."