Antwan Raymond slides behind a desk in an office at Rutgers University’s athletic complex and settles in for a Zoom interview sporting grey sweats and a scarlet hoodie with a Nike swoosh near the right collarbone.
It’s shiny and a tad baggy but still doesn’t hide Raymond’s spherical deltoids and bulbous biceps, body armour he’s been building since he first enrolled at Dalbé Viau High School in Lachine, Que., six years ago.
On the eve of his third season at Rutgers, Raymond, a 5-foot-11, 205-pound running back, wears team-issued gear as comfortably as he does the no-nonsense expression of somebody skilled at blotting out distractions to focus on a task.
Last season Raymond, who grew up in the Montreal suburb of Pierrefonds, rushed for 1,241 yards, which ranked third in the Big Ten, the NCAA’s most competitive conference, while his 15 total touchdowns tied for third. Those numbers earned him a spot on the All-Big Ten second team, and made him a semifinalist for the Doak Walker Award, which honours the NCAA’s best running back.
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Raymond enters the 2026 season with even bigger goals, like helping Rutgers improve on last year’s 5-7 record, and propelling the program into the Big Ten’s upper echelon, alongside name-brand programs like Ohio State. Doing his part means boosting his football IQ, which will mean treating that afternoon’s position group meeting less like a mundane chalk talk than a for-credit class.
“I wanted to become a smarter football player,” says Raymond, a human resources management major who earned Academic All-Big Ten honours last year. “Mastering our offence, understanding defences, just slowing the game down.”
Last year Raymond won the Jon Cornish Award, which honours the most outstanding Canadian player in NCAA football. But in carrying the offensive load for Rutgers, a historic program that tends to dwell in the bottom half of the Big Ten’s standings, he has also remained one of the better-kept secrets in Canadian sport.
That status will change if Raymond keeps improving.
Surpassing last year’s breakthrough season means building on a foundation laid down in Montreal, where Raymond was a high school star, and where a long line of Canadian football standouts grew up. The stats database Pro Football Reference lists 23 Quebec-born players who have played in the NFL since 1922, and Raymond knows how loudly his success will resonate back home if he joins that group.
“It means everything to me,” says Raymond, who was also named a third-team pre-season All-American. “I’m happy to be that staple for Canada. I’m happy to be that staple for Dalbé, just showing youth that it’s possible.”
Except, in the days before Rutgers’ season opener, NFL speculation qualifies as the kind of distraction Raymond excels at ignoring. Ask him about his pro football future and he’ll tell you he’s focused only on the Scarlet Knights’ next game.
As of Monday, the website NFL Draft Buzz listed Raymond as the eighth-best draft-eligible running back in the NCAA this season, and ranked him 108th overall. Their scouting report describes him as a “workhorse back,” and, for people fluent in football jargon, offers both praise and room to improve.
“Pro-ready vision, but ordinary burst clouds the three-down fit.”
We’ll translate the opening half of that sentence first. If keen peripheral vision, and the ability to scan the depth and breadth of the field for openings and threats, is a job requirement for NFL running backs, the Montreal native is already set for the next level.
Source: Read the original article on www.cbc.ca
Written by https://futureknowledge.in/
