Giants' Ryder Anderson eyes biggest win yet
Across his back is a tattoo that reads “Wins and Losses” over one of himself.
“I just feel like that’s life,” Ryder Anderson tells The Post.” You’re gonna go through a lot of wins and losses, and it’s about how you respond.”
In virtually every training camp, there inevitably emerges one Boy of Summer who comes out of nowhere, an undrafted free agent defensive lineman such as Ryder Anderson who kept getting knocked down and kept getting back up. And now Anderson, whose brother Rodney was a running back drafted in 2019 by the Bengals, is on the brink of realizing an improbable dream that was crystallized as a young boy by the sight of his uncle Mark sacking Peyton Manning in Super Bowl XLI with the Bears.
“I’ve had a long path of failures and trials,” Anderson tells you.
But now? Now he is entering the fourth quarter of the greatest win of his football life.
He is a 6-foot-6, 285-pound defensive end-tackle out of Katy, Texas, and Ole Miss and Indiana who has opened enough eyes to make you believe that he may have found a home with the New York Football Giants against all odds.
“Every day I come here I just feel so blessed to even be here,” Anderson says. “I just work my hardest just to stay here, you know what I’m saying?”
Everyone who knows his journey knows what he’s saying.
“I’ve always just had, like, an underdog mentality, it honestly started in high school. For whatever reason, I didn’t start my whole high school career. I felt like I was good enough to start, but that’s just the decision that was made. I always had to I feel like go the extra mile. It’s hard to get offers to a Division I school let alone SEC school without starting in high school,” he says with a laugh.
There aren’t many high schoolers who have asked to switch from quarterback to the defensive line.
“I just felt like my love for the game really lied in defensive line, and it was hard to express that at first, but it just got to one point where I was going out to practice every day and just something wasn’t feeling right,” Anderson says. “I felt like I had really good potential to get looks in college. I had the size for a college to develop.”
He tells you that Arkansas pulled its offer.
Losses.
Then Ole Miss offered him a full scholarship.
“I’m sitting in class before our playoff game and I get a call from Chris Kiffin, Lane’s brother,” Anderson says. He was starting by the end of his sophomore year and thought: “I can really do this. I can overcome. People can’t hold me back from what God has in store for me.”
Wins.
He tells you that a knee injury sabotaged his junior year at Ole Miss. A bout with COVID was next.
“I had big plans for myself that year. Up to then I had never missed a football game before,” Anderson says.
Losses.
He transferred because Indiana allowed him to play outside.
Wins.
Then the Hoosiers won two games, and he was bitten by an injury bug in the lead up to the NFL draft.
“I was disappointed whenever the phone didn’t ring, just because I had the belief in myself that I had the talent to be drafted. I mean, it really didn’t ring after the draft for whatever reason,” Anderson says.
He failed his Packers tryout.
“I was really disappointed, but it was one of those things again, can’t feel sorry for yourself, you gotta get your mind back right and then on to the next opportunity,” Anderson says.
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Losses.
On Sunday night against the Bengals, watch No. 90, Ryder Anderson, on the defensive line and on special teams.
“That underdog mentality,” his uncle Mark tells The Post, “is what you see on the field.”
Wins.
Mark Anderson recorded 12 sacks as a rookie fifth-round draft choice in 2006. He also sacked Eli Manning in Super Bowl XLVI with the Patriots. Ryder would stay over at his uncle’s home in Atlanta during offseasons and train with him.
“I was just trying to get him on a Pro Bowl level early so he already had that mentality and that mindset,” Mark says.
That mentality and that mindset has been on full display at 1925 Giants Drive.
“I just want to play fast and aggressive,” Ryder says. “I’m gonna run to the ball and make sure I’m giving 100 percent.”
It’s working. “The ball finds him,” assistant defensive line coach Bryan Cox said.
Ryder has a different personality than Kayvon Thibodeaux.
“He’s quieter, but he’s funnier,” Cox said. “He just says some stuff like a good old country boy would say. He thinks he can freestyle rap, so he’ll try to rap to you. He has a personality that he’s not intimidated by the moment, or the times.”
Mark Anderson will be in the MetLife stands Sunday night to watch. On Ryder’s left arm is a tattoo that reads “Ambition.” On his right arm: “Blessed.”
Wins.
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