Player Profile: Adam Braidwood

Adam Braidwood is set to make one of the toughest leaps possible in professional sports, as the Delta native will attempt to make the National Football League.

           

Braidwood, 22, is a six-foot-four 270 pound defensive beast and was the first overall pick in the Canadian Football League’s 2006 entry draft after graduating from Seaquam Secondary School in 2002 where he was named to the provincial all-star team and also took home provincial defensive most valuable player honours in his senior year.

           

After a year of playing defensive end for the Edmonton Eskimos where Braidwood was the lone bright spot on an under-achieving team that failed to make the playoffs for the first time in 27 years, Braidwood feels that only time will tell how long it takes before he goes to “the show.”

           

Playing for the Washington State Huskies division one NCAA team where Braidwood was an All-Pac 10 freshman although he didn’t get a chance to start a game, helped his career extensively because it helped him to learn how to withstand the pressure of pro-football as he played in front of 70,000 fans week after week.

           

“It. was hard. There is no room for weakness down there and they push you really hard to see if you break. There is a pecking order and you have to be tough otherwise you’ll never play. There’s a lot of pressure to succeed,” he said.    

       

Braidwood quickly moulded into a consistent starter by his junior year at Washington State, starting all 11 games for the Huskies.           

In that year, Braidwood received the Tim Petek Strongest Man award and also shared the Leon Bender Defensive Lineman-of-the-Year award with Steve Cook.           

After all of the awards and accolades Braidwood has received, it seems that he would be an early pick in the NFL draft, but that wasn’t the case. 

“The draft was not good either because there were a lot of defensive ends that were supposed to get drafted earlier but didn’t and they took up a lot of free agent spots. Mostly it was bad timing,” said Braidwood.

The other reason that he wasn’t drafted was that he dislocated his elbow and sprained his shoulder in his senior year.

“Most of the doctors I talked to said it would be at least an eight month rehab till full recovery but I played eight days later. So I think that hurt me,” he said.

This shows Braidwood’s “laugh now, cry later” attitude that is portrayed by the two skulls tattooed onto his left arm, one of which is laughing, and the other crying. 

Braidwood has his mind set on having a season unlike the last, where he thought there were some bad roster moves and poor locker room chemistry, so he’s taking it upon himself to make the team better. 

“I’ve been training like crazy already so I plan to be a lot faster and more athletic this year so I plan on making a lot more big plays and being more of a factor in the team winning games…next season I should be a contender for the sack leader,” he said.

If Braidwood can improve on his personal success of last season, along with some team improvement, the Eskimos’ management will be hard-pressed to keep him playing north of the border.

  

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