Grant steps into the spotlight

Green Bay's Ryan Grant rushed for 956 yards as a rookie last season. Simon Bruty/SI

It's May 15, in a ballroom at The Venetian, a Mediterranean-themed catering hall in Garfield, N.J., and three professional football players, one retired and two active, sit facing a room full of well-off Don Bosco Prep alumni.

Stage right, slinked into his chair with a Giants hat on the table in front of him is New York defensive end Justin Tuck, who had two sacks and six tackles in leading the Giants to a 17-14 Super Bowl win over the Patriots in February. Standing up and trying to corral the crowd into listening to him is Super Bowl XXI MVP Phil Simms. A natural with the microphone, Simms segues from the meet-and-greet session to the night's main course -- a $200-per-plate Roast and Toast for Green Bay running back and Don Bosco grad Ryan Grant. "Good to see I'm the only one here with more than one year of success in the NFL," Simms says, poking fun at Tuck and Grant.

Simms is followed by Steve Fortunato, a fellow Bosco alumnus and former Notre Dame walk-on for the 1988 national champion Irish, who jests that Grant learned to ride both Brett Favre's coattails and private jet. "This isn't exactly the LaDainian Tomlinson roast is it?" Fortunato says. "Who's gonna be the musical guest? Vanilla Ice?"

It isn't long before Tuck takes the mike and begins explaining the closeness and career trajectory he and his former roommate have shared. "I sign with Notre Dame, Ryan signs with Notre Dame," he says. "I get drafted by the Giants, Ryan signs with the Giants. I buy a BMW, Ryan buys a BMW. I buy a Range Rover, Ryan buys a Range Rover. I win a Super Bowl ..."

With that, Tuck steps back from the podium, leaving Grant, the Packers' running back wonder of the 2007 season, to enjoy the spotlight on his own.

"If you had told me last year at this time I'd be a Packer and would have the rookie season I did, I'd have laughed at you," said Grant, who rushed for 956 yards in 15 games and helped Green Bay reach the NFC Championship game last year. Through the first six weeks of last season, the Packers were the worst rushing team in the league. But from Week 7 to season's end, only San Diego's Tomlinson ran for more yards than Grant. And despite fumbling on Green Bay's first two possessions in a divisional playoff game against Seattle, Grant bounced back to rush for 201 yards and three touchdowns in that victory, both team playoff records.

On the heels of that breakout season, his Q-rating has only risen. He served as honorary coach in Notre Dame's annual Blue & Gold Spring Game, and rotating on ESPN these days is a fantasy football commercial that asks: "Who will be the next Ryan Grant?"

How the 25-year-old came to demand such attention is a tale best understood if told from its beginning.

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They used to come out of the woods.

Back there in Nanuet, N.Y. -- a hotbed of social rest some 26 miles northwest of Manhattan -- the father and the son, each carrying a gallon of tap water for later consumption, cut their path through the trees. Moving with purpose along a babbling brook, past a baseball field and onto adjoining basketball courts, they beat their way to the blacktop on summer afternoons. Studies in motion, Vincent, the father, and Ryan, the son, paired for drills, shooting jumpers at the unforgiving, paint-chipped orange rims, and zig-zagging the court's length over and over again. "My father taught me to love the sun," says Grant. "You can sweat out all your impurities."