Jayson Bromley - tough kid growing up in Jamaica Queens

[BleedinBlue]

Syracuse DT Jayson Bromley overcomes dark past for bright future in NFL

Born a crack baby and left on a doorstep in Queens, the 21-year-old Bromley used football to conquer adversity and anger issues.
BY Ralph Vacchiano
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Saturday, May 3, 2014, 11:21 AM
Updated: Saturday, May 3, 2014, 8:21 PM


Regardless of where he goes in the draft, Jayson Bromley considers himself among the top defensive tackles in his class.

He avoided the gangs and drugs on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, and the pimps and prostitutes that were frequent visitors to his apartment building. He sidestepped the roaches in his kitchen and the rats in the living room, too.

The only thing he couldnt avoid was the anger. So a young Jayson Bromley, long before he became a football prospect, became a fighter. He fought anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason mostly for no good reason at all.

You couldnt look at him, says Frances Nimmons, the woman he calls Mom. If somebody looked at him wrong, hed fight him. He just was a kid with problems.

I had anger problems, Bromley says. All I wanted to do was fight people. Id get mad and Id black out and you couldnt control me.
He never figured out why that happened, despite years of counseling and endless talks with his mother. Maybe it came from the knowledge that his biological mother abandoned him when he was 3 months old, or that six months later his biological father was arrested for murder. Maybe it was all the crime around him, or the rodents that had become like pets.
Wherever the anger began, there was no question of where it ended.

It didnt stop until I started playing football, Bromley says. Football really calmed me down.

Sitting in a lounge just outside the spacious weight room inside the football building at Syracuse University, Bromley, now 21 and long past his days at Flushing High School, admits hes amazed at what hes become a 6-3, 306-pound defensive tackle coming off a 10-sack season, standing on the edge of the NFL. Football was never his dream. He was just a chubby kid who liked to hit people. For years the only football he played was unorganized tackle on the street.

Yet here he is, just a few days from graduating from Syracuse the only Division I school that offered him a scholarship, reluctantly on the same weekend hell likely hear his name called by the NFL. He has been projected as high as a third-rounder, though most peg him somewhere between Rounds 4 and 6.

Bromley, though, believes he should go much higher.

Ive watched the best D-tackles in the country and I look at them and say Aint nothing that they do that I dont do that I cant do,  he says. Aaron Donald (a defensive tackle from Pittsburgh) was the best defensive player in the country this year. But I told him If me and you are on the same team, Im starting. 

Thats who hes always been, says Syracuse defensive line coach Tim Daoust. He wants to know, Where is the bar set? Who are the great ones?

He is so determined, Nimmons adds. Its scary.

There have been scarier things in Bromleys past, like the summer day in 1992 when Nimmons got a call about a baby that had been left on the doorstep of a stranger. The stranger called Child Services, but someone suspected the baby belonged to Nimmons brother, James Jones, and his girlfriend, Tyreine Bromley. Nimmons raced to Queens to pick up the 3-month-old Jayson.

Tyreine Bromley had a drug problem, Nimmons says. Jayson was born with a crack addiction, and Jones wasnt exactly the fatherly type. According to a Daily News story from 1994, testimony at his murder trial revealed Jones was a pimp and he was sentenced to 8½ to 25 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment after he tied up one of his prostitutes also the mother of his daughter to a radiator in his basement. He had beat her. The woman, Shirley Ross, later died.

That was just nine months after Jayson Bromley was born.

So Frances and Roy Nimmons, Jaysons aunt and uncle, raised him as their own. With the help of her mother Kay, Jaysons grandmother, they endured the early years when Nimmons says Jays drug affliction made his cries so severe often no one would babysit him. A testicular hernia that wasnt removed until he was six months old made him cry even more.


From problem child to team leader, Jayson Bromley is looked up to his Syracuse teammates.

As he grew up, the Nimmonses, Bromelys mom and dad as far as hes concerned he knows his biological parents, but considers them more like family friends did their best to keep him off the troubled streets of Queens. Nimmons one rule was simple: When that street light comes on, you better be in the house, she says. They put him in summer school to keep him occupied. They put him to work, too, painting and fixing up the apartment building, which was just fine with him.

I always liked to make my own money, Bromley says. So I always worked, whether it was shoveling snow in the winter time, cleaning peoples backyards, cleaning peoples houses. My brother used to buy houses and renovate them so I used to do the demolition on the houses, carrying 50-pound bags up and down the steps. I was probably like 12, 13.

Still, it was around then that the child with problems began to turn into a problem child, looking for fights wherever he could find them. His counselors suggested medication. Nimmons refused. She worried hed eventually just quit school.

It wasnt easy growing up in my house, Bromley says. I had three older sisters and none of them graduated high school. Im the youngest kid and Im not looking up to anything positive as far as going to school and doing the right thing. How do you come from that? How do you build yourself up to say I want to go to school?

He pauses. Football, he says. Football made me go to school. Because if I didnt go to school, I couldnt play.

Bromley couldnt play much when Jim DeSantis, Flushings head coach, got his first look at him. That was a few months after Bromley nearly quit before he even started. His grandmother died before his freshman year and he was too heartbroken to continue. She was his whole world, Nimmons says. So I just told him Grandma said Do what would make you happy.  

Football, it turned out, made Bromley happy. He was short, fat and raw at first, but DeSantis saw a work ethic and determination that few matched. By his senior year, Bromley had grown into his frame and DeSantis and his defensive line coach Rudy Alvarellos a father figure to Bromley, who died in February knew they had a late-blooming monster, even if nobody else did.

Late in his senior year, Bromley had no Division I offers and DeSantis had to beg the other PSAL coaches to put Bromley on the all-city team. That got him into the 2010 Empire Classic all-star game where he showed everyone what they were missing. He dominated with two sacks, seven tackles (three for a loss) and two passes batted at the line. He was named the MVP, and within days he had a scholarship offer from Syracuse.

Syracuse really got lucky, Bromley says. They found a diamond in the rough.

He went on to be a three-year starter for the Orange and broke out with a big senior season. More importantly, the once angry teenager had turned into a big teddy bear of a man a leader off the field, a captain on it, and a man who friends and coaches say is rarely caught without a big, wide smile.

Ive been with him for three years and I dont know that angry side of him, Daoust says. He is a humble, hungry young man who goes to work every day. I love him. Hes a leader. Hes somebody I dont worry about socially or with the decisions hes going to make.
Hes just a totally different kid now, Nimmons says. He became a real good man.

Through that big smile Bromley admits its crazy how my demeanor changed. Hes grateful for the influence of his mom, grandmother and Alvarellos, but he also recalls that every other man that came into my house was always coming out of jail or something. It was always something negative. So I dont really understand how I developed a mentality of actually wanting to be positive when there was so much negative around me.

I feel like the past molded me into the man I am today, taught me what I dont want in my life. A lot of people have people in their lives that are positive examples of what to do. Everything in my life taught me what not to do.

Thats why, even as he prepares for the NFL draft, Bromley makes frequent trips back to Flushing to talk to the kids surrounded by that familiar negativity.

We get a lot of kids who decide not to get into sports and stray and do stupid things, DeSantis says. Jay is a great, positive example of what sports can do.

The thought of that brings yet another smile to Bromley.

Growing up, I never saw that dude from my neighborhood that went to school and was doing something positive, Bromley says. I want to be that guy.

[BleedinBlue]

What the "experts" are saying: http://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/index.ssf/2014/05/2014_nfl_draft_what_the_experts_are_saying_about_new_york_giants_third-round_pic.html#incart_m-rpt-2

 

The Giants have made it a habit recently to turn to head coach Tom Coughlin's alma mater to fill their draft needs, and Bromley is expected to contend for a spot in the defensive line rotation right away.

 

What is the buzz regarding the pick?

 

Giants.com writer Dan Salomone breaks out the national narrative regarding Bromley, plus some other reaction from Twitter.

 

Pete Prisco, CBSSports.com

 

The Giants love Syracuse players and this fills a need. Bromley is an athletic inside player. GRADE: B- http://cbsprt.co/2014NFLDraft

10:05 PM - 9 May 2014

Doug Farrar, SI.com

 

"Bromley is a penetrating defensive tackle who should thrive in the Giants' rotation. He led the Orangemen with 10 sacks and 14.5 tackles for loss in 2013. He needs to get stronger (especially against double teams), but there's a lot of potential there."

Mike Mayock, NFL Network

 

"He's a big two-down run stuffer."

Dan Graziano, ESPN.com

 

"Bromley is a pure run-stopper and a huge defensive tackle in the mold the Giants like at defensive tackle, whereas Nix is more of a traditional nose tackle. And Bromley did go to Syracuse, which as everyone will point out is Tom Coughlin's alma mater. Feels like a reach to me, but obviously there's something about him the Giants saw and liked. We'll go talk to them and find out what it was. This is the third player the Giants took in the first three rounds who seemed as though he could have been taken later."

Paul Schwartz @NYPost_Schwartz Follow

 

Giants drafted 3 players, all 3 team captains. "It's always an emphasis," Tom Coughlin said. #nyg

10:28 PM - 9 May 2014

Ralph Vacchiano ✔ @RVacchianoNYDN Follow

 

Wow. Great third-round pick by the Giants, taking Syracuse DT Jay Bromley. Great kid and tremendous story.

10:19 PM - 9 May 2014

Nolan Nawrocki, NFL.com

 

"Good combination of size and movement skills. Flashes quick get-off and the ability to hold his ground against the run. Can work half a man, get skinny enough to penetrate the gap and closes with some steam when he has a direct bead on the QB. Is active and gives effort in pursuit. Strong tackler when he's able to wrap up ball carriers. Coachable, hardworking."

[Treehugger]

How does a "pure run stuffer" get 10 sacks from the DT position?

[Bigblue25]

He'll get to learn behind Jenkins for a year or two. Like this pick. He's more then just a run stuffer.

[Bigblue25]

How does a "pure run stuffer" get 10 sacks from the DT position?

Their saying his sack numbers are blown up, because he only gets there with a free shot on the QB. Which I don't get, he has good movement and can obviously shoot gaps. The he has to work on "beating double teams" is stupid too.

[BleedinBlue]

How does a "pure run stuffer" get 10 sacks from the DT position?

Yeah...that sounds like an oxymoronic statement. Run stuffers - especially "pure" run stuffers evokes a one dimensional game - getting 10 sacks (1 less than undersized Aaron Donald) makes little sense. And you might get a couple sacks in a year of playing where you get a "free shot" at the QB, but not ten of them.

 

I like what the Giants are doing. They are ignoring the hyped magazines and websites that "rank" players and go after who they think is going to fit best in the Giants' future.

 

I get tired of hearing, "they could have gotten him later", which has been said about all three of their picks. But they could never have gotten Odell Beckham in the 2nd round, and they could never have gotten Richburg in the 3rd round, and they might have been able to get Bromley in the 4th as long as no other team had him on their boards as a "secret steal".

 

The Giants had Beckham in the top 7 players on their board and were worried sick that Detroit would take him with the 10th overall pick, but they cheered in the War Room when the Lions took Ebron. They cheered even more when Lewan went in the 11th, because they really wanted their guy (that according to Reese's interview that can be found on NJ.com)

 

Regardless, Bromley was vastly underrated by the so-called "experts". A "pure" run stuffer who gets 10 sacks is unheard of.

[BleedinBlue]

Bromley on twitter:

 

"This is my favorite team, Big Blue, and then I get picked by 'em, that's crazy. It's amazing." #NYG

 

11:09 PM - 9 May 2014

[mastershake]

Syracuse DT Jayson Bromley overcomes dark past for bright future in NFL

 

Born a crack baby and left on a doorstep in Queens, the 21-year-old Bromley used football to conquer adversity and anger issues.

BY Ralph Vacchiano

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Saturday, May 3, 2014, 11:21 AM

Updated: Saturday, May 3, 2014, 8:21 PM

 

Regardless of where he goes in the draft, Jayson Bromley considers himself among the top defensive tackles in his class.

 

He avoided the gangs and drugs on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, and the pimps and prostitutes that were frequent visitors to his apartment building. He sidestepped the roaches in his kitchen and the rats in the living room, too.

 

The only thing he couldnt avoid was the anger. So a young Jayson Bromley, long before he became a football prospect, became a fighter. He fought anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason mostly for no good reason at all.

 

You couldnt look at him, says Frances Nimmons, the woman he calls Mom. If somebody looked at him wrong, hed fight him. He just was a kid with problems.

 

I had anger problems, Bromley says. All I wanted to do was fight people. Id get mad and Id black out and you couldnt control me.

He never figured out why that happened, despite years of counseling and endless talks with his mother. Maybe it came from the knowledge that his biological mother abandoned him when he was 3 months old, or that six months later his biological father was arrested for murder. Maybe it was all the crime around him, or the rodents that had become like pets.

Wherever the anger began, there was no question of where it ended.

 

It didnt stop until I started playing football, Bromley says. Football really calmed me down.

 

Sitting in a lounge just outside the spacious weight room inside the football building at Syracuse University, Bromley, now 21 and long past his days at Flushing High School, admits hes amazed at what hes become a 6-3, 306-pound defensive tackle coming off a 10-sack season, standing on the edge of the NFL. Football was never his dream. He was just a chubby kid who liked to hit people. For years the only football he played was unorganized tackle on the street.

 

Yet here he is, just a few days from graduating from Syracuse the only Division I school that offered him a scholarship, reluctantly on the same weekend hell likely hear his name called by the NFL. He has been projected as high as a third-rounder, though most peg him somewhere between Rounds 4 and 6.

 

Bromley, though, believes he should go much higher.

 

Ive watched the best D-tackles in the country and I look at them and say Aint nothing that they do that I dont do that I cant do,  he says. Aaron Donald (a defensive tackle from Pittsburgh) was the best defensive player in the country this year. But I told him If me and you are on the same team, Im starting. 

 

Thats who hes always been, says Syracuse defensive line coach Tim Daoust. He wants to know, Where is the bar set? Who are the great ones?

 

He is so determined, Nimmons adds. Its scary.

 

There have been scarier things in Bromleys past, like the summer day in 1992 when Nimmons got a call about a baby that had been left on the doorstep of a stranger. The stranger called Child Services, but someone suspected the baby belonged to Nimmons brother, James Jones, and his girlfriend, Tyreine Bromley. Nimmons raced to Queens to pick up the 3-month-old Jayson.

 

Tyreine Bromley had a drug problem, Nimmons says. Jayson was born with a crack addiction, and Jones wasnt exactly the fatherly type. According to a Daily News story from 1994, testimony at his murder trial revealed Jones was a pimp and he was sentenced to 8½ to 25 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment after he tied up one of his prostitutes also the mother of his daughter to a radiator in his basement. He had beat her. The woman, Shirley Ross, later died.

 

That was just nine months after Jayson Bromley was born.

 

So Frances and Roy Nimmons, Jaysons aunt and uncle, raised him as their own. With the help of her mother Kay, Jaysons grandmother, they endured the early years when Nimmons says Jays drug affliction made his cries so severe often no one would babysit him. A testicular hernia that wasnt removed until he was six months old made him cry even more.

 

From problem child to team leader, Jayson Bromley is looked up to his Syracuse teammates.

 

As he grew up, the Nimmonses, Bromelys mom and dad as far as hes concerned he knows his biological parents, but considers them more like family friends did their best to keep him off the troubled streets of Queens. Nimmons one rule was simple: When that street light comes on, you better be in the house, she says. They put him in summer school to keep him occupied. They put him to work, too, painting and fixing up the apartment building, which was just fine with him.

 

I always liked to make my own money, Bromley says. So I always worked, whether it was shoveling snow in the winter time, cleaning peoples backyards, cleaning peoples houses. My brother used to buy houses and renovate them so I used to do the demolition on the houses, carrying 50-pound bags up and down the steps. I was probably like 12, 13.

 

Still, it was around then that the child with problems began to turn into a problem child, looking for fights wherever he could find them. His counselors suggested medication. Nimmons refused. She worried hed eventually just quit school.

 

It wasnt easy growing up in my house, Bromley says. I had three older sisters and none of them graduated high school. Im the youngest kid and Im not looking up to anything positive as far as going to school and doing the right thing. How do you come from that? How do you build yourself up to say I want to go to school?

 

He pauses. Football, he says. Football made me go to school. Because if I didnt go to school, I couldnt play.

 

Bromley couldnt play much when Jim DeSantis, Flushings head coach, got his first look at him. That was a few months after Bromley nearly quit before he even started. His grandmother died before his freshman year and he was too heartbroken to continue. She was his whole world, Nimmons says. So I just told him Grandma said Do what would make you happy.  

 

Football, it turned out, made Bromley happy. He was short, fat and raw at first, but DeSantis saw a work ethic and determination that few matched. By his senior year, Bromley had grown into his frame and DeSantis and his defensive line coach Rudy Alvarellos a father figure to Bromley, who died in February knew they had a late-blooming monster, even if nobody else did.

 

Late in his senior year, Bromley had no Division I offers and DeSantis had to beg the other PSAL coaches to put Bromley on the all-city team. That got him into the 2010 Empire Classic all-star game where he showed everyone what they were missing. He dominated with two sacks, seven tackles (three for a loss) and two passes batted at the line. He was named the MVP, and within days he had a scholarship offer from Syracuse.

 

Syracuse really got lucky, Bromley says. They found a diamond in the rough.

 

He went on to be a three-year starter for the Orange and broke out with a big senior season. More importantly, the once angry teenager had turned into a big teddy bear of a man a leader off the field, a captain on it, and a man who friends and coaches say is rarely caught without a big, wide smile.

 

Ive been with him for three years and I dont know that angry side of him, Daoust says. He is a humble, hungry young man who goes to work every day. I love him. Hes a leader. Hes somebody I dont worry about socially or with the decisions hes going to make.

Hes just a totally different kid now, Nimmons says. He became a real good man.

 

Through that big smile Bromley admits its crazy how my demeanor changed. Hes grateful for the influence of his mom, grandmother and Alvarellos, but he also recalls that every other man that came into my house was always coming out of jail or something. It was always something negative. So I dont really understand how I developed a mentality of actually wanting to be positive when there was so much negative around me.

 

I feel like the past molded me into the man I am today, taught me what I dont want in my life. A lot of people have people in their lives that are positive examples of what to do. Everything in my life taught me what not to do.

 

Thats why, even as he prepares for the NFL draft, Bromley makes frequent trips back to Flushing to talk to the kids surrounded by that familiar negativity.

 

We get a lot of kids who decide not to get into sports and stray and do stupid things, DeSantis says. Jay is a great, positive example of what sports can do.

 

The thought of that brings yet another smile to Bromley.

 

Growing up, I never saw that dude from my neighborhood that went to school and was doing something positive, Bromley says. I want to be that guy.

Excellent story.

 

By any chance, do you have the link to the article? Can't seem to find it in the NY Daily News site.

[BleedinBlue]

Excellent story.

 

By any chance, do you have the link to the article? Can't seem to find it in the NY Daily News site.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/syracuse-bromley-overcomes-dark-bright-future-nfl-article-1.1778112

[mastershake]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/syracuse-bromley-overcomes-dark-bright-future-nfl-article-1.1778112

Thanks!

[JMFP]

I'll pull for any Giant from Queens...my old hood

[Nas]

I'll pull for any Giant from Queens...my old hood

I gotta admit that for a white guy.., you're pretty fly.

[Giants Shredder]

I'll pull for any Giant from Queens...my old hood

Yeah, me too....Elmhurst Baybay!!!!!!!!

[fishgutmartyr]

He was drafted by my team: so I was rooting for him anyway. That article just makes it so much easier.

[JMFP]

Yeah, me too....Elmhurst Baybay!!!!!!!!

Sweet......I'm a product of Booth Memorial Hospital in Flushing

[JMFP]

I gotta admit that for a white guy.., you're pretty fly.

Lol!!!!

[TaylorBanksCarsonVanPelt]

Sound like he probably grew up on South Road...which is in South Jamaica. To use the old County system...he probably lived in the Village of South Jamaica, Town of Jamaica, County of Queens. South Road is mostly warehouses, the LIRR rail yards, housing projects and multi-family homes. The Infamous 40's Projects are in that area...

 

I was born in Queens as well... at home... I came early... 221-04 121st Avenue Cambria Heights, Queens... My Mom and I were taken to Queen General Hospital where she worked as a OB/GYN head nurse.

[mastershake]

What the article failed to mention is the only people he fought were Eagles fans, so it's not that much of a problem.