INDIANAPOLIS -- The bond between New York Giants defensive backs Antrel Rolle and Kenny Phillips that began at an awards dinner in Miami, then cemented at a University of Miami dinner years later, could be gilded into permanence in Sunday’s Super Bowl in Indianapolis.
Championships do that, even with brothers.
They aren’t siblings in the literal sense, but they share a football lineage that leads back to Greater Miami. Both display some of the confident, direct way of speaking associated with South Florida football players (“That swag man,” Phillips laughs. “When you’re from Miami, it’s just the way you carry yourself.”); both starred with the Hurricanes, and both share a nickname (AK-47, formed by the first letters of each name and the sum of their uniform numbers, Rolle’s No. 26 and Phillips No. 21.)
“Someone wrote that on his Twitter page, I think, and we’re going with it,” Phillips said.
The similarities Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell sees and cares about most concern football skills.
“Both are extremely good athletes, coming from ‘The U’, and they allow you to have flexibility,” Fewell said. In Sunday’s game against New England, the play of either or both could be decisive. Rolle might well find himself matched up against the Patriots’ top receiver, former Miami Dolphin Wes Welker, while Phillips will likely have to contend with Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, New England’s peerless pair of tight ends.
Although they are chronologically four years apart and come from different neighborhoods, the 29-year-old Rolle says, “I don’t consider him a teammate, I consider him a brother.”
Phillips, 25, says something similar, adding with a laugh, “He’s the older brother just because he’s…old.”
They came from the same kind of home as far as matriarchal-based old school parenting.
Rolle was asked who’s the tougher disciplinarian — Giants coach Tom Coughlin, who considers his players late if they’re not five minutes early (seriously), or Antrel’s father, Homestead Chief of Police Al Rolle.
“My mother did all the disciplining,” Rolle said. “My dad, he didn’t say much. You knew whenever he said something, he meant it. My dad was very laid back. My mother was the one with the switch, the belt, the shoes, anything she could grab at that point. My dad would have to pull her off of us.”
Phillips said being raised by postal worker Taranda Wilson and bus driver Kenneth Wilson was the “same way,” adding: “My mom, she didn’t play. My dad, we used to try to run to him, so he could get us out of trouble. But Mom was very strict. She wasn’t a timeout person. Whatever it takes to get them right.”
Rolle went from Gulliver Prep to the University of Miami. Around the time he was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals, he presented a student-athlete award — neither of them can remember exactly what it was — to Carol City High student Phillips.
“We kept in contact,’’ Rolle said. “We weren’t close friends. He knew of me, I knew of him. But our paths were totally different.”
Rolle took over Arizona’s safety spot for five seasons. His fourth year with the historically moribund franchise, the Cardinals made the Super Bowl. A last-minute Pittsburgh drive to a fingertip touchdown catch gave the Steelers a 27-23 win and left Rolle 35 seconds from a Super Bowl ring.
E-Mail
Print
