Shaquem Griffin
Linebacker / University of Central Florida
Dear NFL GMs,
Everything you need to know about me you can learn by going back to when I was eight years old.
So let me take you there.
It was a Friday night in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I was sleeping — or at least I was trying to. My mind was going crazy because my twin brother, Shaquill, and I had a football game the next morning. He was in the room with me, and he couldn’t sleep either, because if we won the next day, we’d be in the playoffs. I had my covers pulled up over my royal blue home jersey — that’s right, I was
sleeping in it. When I was a kid, I always slept in my football jersey the night before a game. That’s how ready I was to play every Saturday.
So the next morning, when we got to the field — since it was youth football and there were weight restrictions — we had to weigh in. And I don’t know if they still do it this way, but back then, each coach would weight the opposing team’s players, and if you were too heavy or too light, you weren’t eligible to play. I had to drop a couple of pounds to make weight for that game, and I had weighed myself the night before and again that morning, so I knew I was good to go.
