Ryan Grigson barely soiled his first diaper before he achieved honorary status with his first football team.
His late father, Jeff, was an offensive lineman at Northwest Missouri State whose teammates chipped in to buy his son a $50 savings bond that has long since matured but will never be redeemed.
"Ryan was born with a football in his hand," said his mother, Juanita Grigson Price. "It's in his blood."
Grigson's current team is the Indianapolis Colts. Owner Jim Irsay hired the former Philadelphia Eagles director of player personnel as his general manager last week and entrusted him with the future of the franchise and a four-year contract with a team option for a fifth year.
Those who know Grigson promise he will be a selfless warrior whose only priority is the team.
"I worked beside him for eight years, and you find out a lot about people," Eagles general manager Howie Roseman said. "This is a league where everybody's worried about their next move. That never was what he was about. He was about, how can I make the Philadelphia Eagles a better team?"
Mike Alstott went to six Pro Bowls while playing fullback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996-2006. He prepped for the NFL as Grigson's Purdue teammate. They agonized through a 1-10 season in 1993.
"When you believe you have a good team and it doesn't go the way you hope, a lot of people step aside and point fingers," said Alstott, a co-captain with Grigson in 1994, when the Boilermakers had their first winning season in 10 years. "Ryan was a guy who said, 'It's on my shoulders.'
"He never really cared about his own well-being. He cared about the team."
Grigson has a lot on those shoulders now.
He and Irsay are in the process of deciding whether to keep coach Jim Caldwell. Then there is the issue of rehabilitating quarterback Peyton Manning and the $28 million option bonus due him March 8. There are urgent salary cap matters. There is a roster largely bereft of young stars. There are the expiring contracts of 30-something stalwarts Reggie Wayne, Robert Mathis and Jeff Saturday and the daily more pressing matter of analyzing and finalizing what to do with the No. 1 overall pick in the April draft.
All that must be done amid a comprehensive and systemwide evaluation of the Colts employees, players and processes. It's a huge job for a 39-year-old first-time general manager succeeding a legend in Bill Polian.
"I can't compete," conceded Grigson, a Highland, Ind., native. "I know I'm considerably younger than Mr. Polian, but at one time, he took his first step, too. I'm taking my first step, and I feel confident. I feel I have the support system I need to be successful."
Trial by fire
Grigson has faced a challenge before.
As a Purdue sophomore tackle in 1992, he took a blow in the stomach from a Minnesota defender during the third quarter of an October game. Grigson finished the game but collapsed afterward.
He spent five weeks in Lafayette's Home Hospital, the first three in intensive care. He suffered pancreatitis, kidney failure and pneumonia.
"The doctors told me they didn't think he would live," his mother recalled.
Grigson was so weak he could barely lift himself from his bed. Fluid began filling his lungs. His condition grew more and more grave.
"When they told him they were going to have to do surgery and open up his chest to get at the fluid, the surgeon said, 'Your football career is over,' " Juanita recalled. "Tears just rolled down his cheeks."
Good news came three days later while Grigson lay on a gurney in the surgical waiting room. An X-ray showed the fluid had moved and coalesced. His lungs could be tapped and drained with a needle.
It was a long way back for a player who had lost more than 30 pounds and couldn't keep pace with his mother walking the hospital hall, but Grigson wasn't without allies.
"I thought about moving him to a bigger hospital in Chicago," Juanita said. "They only allowed two people to visit in intensive care, but those football players didn't care. They just pushed their way in and came around his bed every night and said, 'You're going to make it. You're going to do it, Grigson. You're going to play with us again.'
"Keeping him there was the best decision I made."
It was the team, the team, the team.
Something special
Grigson has a quality that attracts people.
His interviews with the Colts last week weren't the only items on his agenda. He also interviewed for the vacant St. Louis Rams general manager position. Folks in the Rams personnel department watched expectantly.
"We were hoping," said Debbie Pollom, who as Rams director of scouting administration, recommended Grigson for his first NFL job, combine scout with the Rams in 1999. "We bonded with Ryan. We're all still very close. I think the world of him."
That's how it is for Grigson and Paul Alexander, in his 17th season as the Cincinnati Bengals offensive line coach.
Alexander worked out Grigson, then recommended him to the Bengals, who took him in the sixth round of the 1995 draft. Alexander had him only briefly, through training camp and the preseason before the Bengals waived him to clear a roster spot needed to replace an injured player.
"It killed me when we cut him," said Alexander, who required no time to understand Grigson was different.
Watching tape from the fourth quarter of a preseason game with all no-names playing for both teams, Alexander would challenge his linemen: "No. 67 there. Who's that?"
"No one would know. Then Grigson would pop up in the corner: 'That's Jimmy Dean. He's from Ohio Wesleyan. He didn't get drafted because he ran 5.2 in the 40, and they said he's a little bit of an underachiever, but he's quick-twitch, he's got long arms,' and he'd go on and on and on."
Teammates marveled. They took to calling Grigson "Rainman."
Reduced to essentials, professional football is about talent. Winning teams find evaluators who find talent and ways to keep it. Losers don't, and that quirky, uncanny, preternatural capacity Grigson exhibited as a rookie player has evolved into his foremost asset as a veteran talent evaluator.
"There are some guys who can sit at a horse race and watch the horses walk by before the race and pick the winner by the way it walks," Alexander said. "They say Paul Brown (the Bengals founder) could tell if a guy could play by the way he tied his shoes.
"I've always sensed that's how Ryan is."
Just getting started
Grigson is the man at the rudder of a 2-14 ship. Irsay has made it clear the Colts are rebuilding, and the connotations should not be underestimated.
"It's like the Pacers," offered Buddy Baker, an Indianapolis-based NFL player agent who has been Grigson's friend since they were Purdue students. "They were one of the premier organizations in the NBA for so many years of making the playoffs that I think people in Indiana kind of took them for granted.
"This is rebuilding. Whether it's Ryan Grigson or Bill Polian coming in here, this is not going to change overnight."
Grigson admits he has little experience working with the salary cap. He says he will learn and in the meantime, lean on Colts front office personnel who do. The multifaceted challenge he faces is not his first.
The Eagles played in the 2008 NFC Championship Game, Roseman noted. Of their 22 starters in that game, 15 are out of the league or backups today. Surviving in the NFL is about constantly retooling, and the Eagles have been aggressive.
"Ryan has a great ability to block out the magnitude of each move and just go through it methodically. What's going to make us better?" said Roseman, a 36-year-old in his third season as Eagles GM. "He talked about that with me; when it's step by step by step, it's not so daunting."
It's football. It's team-building. It's what Grigson knows best. Hut-hut.
Star librarian Cathy Knapp contributed to this story. Call Star reporter Phil Richards at (317) 444-6408.
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