Cushing getting ready for week 5!

wreck · Oct 5, 2010

psingh34 said:

did u notice how so many of the catches the raiders TE made were on adibi.. i think cushing will shut down some of those ..
Click to expand...

He may be able to slow down most tight ends but he wasnt able to stop Dallas Clark last season, but then again no player can it seems.

I fully expect Cushing to crush some tight ends and Qbs and make them cry.

david_rocket · Oct 6, 2010

Get ready Eli, you are going to get crushed by Cushing!

DonkeyMagic · Oct 6, 2010

Fyreball · Oct 6, 2010

ROXRAN · Oct 6, 2010

This is awesome, we already have Superman (Andre), recently we added the Juggernaut (Arian)...and now the Hulk comes back ...angry at that...poor Giants

wreck · Oct 7, 2010

I fear that Cushing will hit players so hard that he may be charged with a crime.

vinsensual · Oct 7, 2010

psingh34 said:

did u notice how so many of the catches the raiders TE made were on adibi.. i think cushing will shut down some of those ..
Click to expand...

Zach Miller has been the most targeted guy on the Raiders for a few years now. And that's with Jamarcus, so he should be pretty good with a non moron QB, regardless of whose (who's?) zone it is.

vinsensual · Oct 7, 2010

gucci888 said:

But we were playing a lot of zone which typically allows the underneath throws.
Click to expand...

It's almost always a zone with Bush and his "bend but don't break" philosophy. Hopefully with Cushing back there'll be some blitzes especially for him.

Fyreball · Oct 7, 2010

I think with Cushing back, Bush doesn't have to rely so much on zone coverages across the middle of the field. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some defenses run hybrid man-zone coverages where certain members of the defense stick to their man, while others cover a zone?

J.R. · Oct 10, 2010

HOUSTON - The telephone on the end table rang around 10:30 p.m. on May 10, the Monday following Mother's Day weekend, and Antoinette Cushing answered it. That afternoon, her sister-in-law, Linda, was buried in a nearby cemetery, and now she mourned with her husband, Frank, and son, Brian, a Houston Texans linebacker, at home.

Their worries were twofold. News had recently broken that Brian, the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year, would be suspended four games for violating the NFL's performance-enhancing drug rules. The family learned of the positive test for elevated levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, a fertility drug commonly used in conjunction with steroids, seven months earlier, but now word spread through his hometown of Park Ridge, N.J., and across local newspaper message boards. She greeted the caller casually.

"Your son is a (expletive) drug addict," the caller, a male, said.

The words sent a chill through her. She asked the man's name, but her son ripped the phone's handle from her fingers before she could listen any longer.

"I'll (expletive) kill you," the son shouted into the mouthpiece.

Her husband called the Park Ridge police, but they were unable to trace the call. He also contacted NFL security, fearful that more drastic backlash might follow.

"What's next?" the father asks. "A garbage can through the window?"

Remembering the incident, Cushing's mother said, "It hurt me so much.

I can't even talk about it. You know what? People forget the good, especially when jealous."

"If we had traced it, I don't know that he would be on this earth or I would be a free man," says Brian Cushing, who stands 6-foot-3, 260 pounds. "Family is off limits."

Cushing, 23, always had a fuse that others looked to light. In high school, rival fans chanted "Ster-oids! Ster-oids!" starting when he was a junior, the year he made the most noticeable jump in size, an increase of 30 pounds, from a tall, spindly safety to a look-the-part linebacker.

Suspicion trailed him across the country through four Rose Bowls at USC, then button-hooked to Texas when he was drafted as the No. 15 pick in 2009. Still, no results substantiated the whispers before the NFL meted out its suspension. He will wear the stain on field for the first time Sunday when the Giants visit Reliant Stadium.

"We live with the results everyday now," his father, a retired marketer, says.

The son has branded his name with violent hits and outsized performances, flipping 600-pound tires, jumping 64 inches off two feet and landing a two-year Under Armour endorsement. All the while, he has manipulated his muscles and diet with the input of chiropractors, acupuncturists and nutritionists. Never, he insists, has he indulged performance-enhancing substances, but detractors continue to question his means.

"That's what gets me through the fourth quarter," Cushing says. "The suspension is going to motivate me until the day I die."

The family maintains his innocence. He passed a lie detector test, arranged by his lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, and administered by a retired FBI agent in Denver. He has expressed regret only for the negative attention the positive test has brought on the Texans, issuing an explanation of "Overtrained Athlete Syndrome" as the cause for the high count, but when pressed, refused to give doctors' names that diagnosed him. Laurence A. Cole, the Distinguished Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of New Mexico and director of the USA hCG Reference Service, debunked the theory as "absolute garbage".

"There's no basis for it," Cole says, "no backing."

Texans Owner Bob McNair, in turn, paid for further testing and pleaded with commissioner Roger Goodell to lessen the penalty, but the league, consulting with outside medical professionals, did not waver."When the game is taken from you, that hurts the most," Brian Cushing says.

For the last four weeks, Cushing, who was banned from contact with the Texans, lived in his childhood bedroom on the second floor of his parents' two-story house. Every morning, a vacuum bag of varying colors, filled with dry ice, appeared on the stoop outside. It was delivered by The Fresh Diet, a subscription service based in Surfside, Fla., that Cushing has used for years to prepare his six meals totaling 7,000 calories per day. He has his first one at 8:40 a.m., then the remaining meals at set times.

"When I first saw him peeping at his watch in a meeting last year I thought he was antsy about it being over, but he was making sure he had his meal on time," Texans linebackers coach Johnny Holland says. "I told him, ‘Hey man, if it's that important to you just bring it in here.'"

His mother, meanwhile, questioned part of his regimen. Having recently broken several ribs while reaching behind the washing machine, she has been limited in her mobility. With her son home, she found it difficult to maneuver around the kitchen.

"Brian needs to get his own place up here," she says. "His bottles of supplements are all over the place. It's driving me nuts!"

* * *

The warehouse gym, located in the back right corner of the Garden State Industrial Park of Hawthorne, N.J., does not register on GPS screens or MapQuest. It stands over 5,000 square feet, an all-encompassing facility replete with battle ropes, a 30-yard strip of turf for sprints and an equipment cage with a sign on it that reads: "Please don't feed the animals."

On a wall, Dallas Cowboys All-Pro wide receiver Miles Austin, a Garfield, N.J. product, has written his note for the space's owner, Joe DeFranco.

"Thank you for turning me into a freak," Austin says.

Cushing, the gym's poster boy, prepares to lift by loosening up on the training table. It is the last Friday of his suspension. His red shirt is emblazoned with the words "Rare Breed" and he removes his sneakers before doing squat repetitions, a show of his obsessive-compulsiveness. He takes time to place his sneakers together, making sure that the left one is slightly in front of the right, as if displaying them in a shoe store window.

"My OCD comes together with his OCD to build the NFL's best linebacker ever," says Joe DeFranco, his trainer since 2003.

DeFranco, 35, has a shaved head and is given to wearing camouflage outfits. He played football for two years at Trenton State before debilitating back pain ended his career, and earned a degree in exercise science.

He started his gym in February 2003, and met Cushing that June at a teammate's graduation party. The player was taken with the trainer's approach and began working with him in a warehouse half as large, where he attracted clients like Giants lineman David Diehl and, linebacker Dhani Jones, then a Giant, now with the Bengals.

"It's not a country club," Diehl says, "you have to be mentally ready in there."

Cushing showed the professionals no courtesies. When Jones went through a "farmer's walk" drill, which is designed to carry heavy objects over measured distances, the prep star challenged him. The two nearly came to fisticuffs after Cushing won out.

"People think he's some lunatic who takes steroids, but it's BS," DeFranco says.

In the days before a game against rival St. Joseph's in 2004, word made it back to Cushing that players planned to injure him. After his Crusaders ran onto the field, he stood at midfield by himself, an army of one, staring down the opposing Green Knights.

"He's going to (expletive) murder people today," DeFranco, standing on a sideline, said to Giants fullback Jim Finn.

Cushing scored five touchdowns that afternoon. Finn, then in his fourth pro season, says, "If you put me in a high school uniform today I couldn't do that."

Of the 75 scholarship offers that Cushing received, he chose USC so he could work with former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Ken Norton, Jr. As a Trojan, Cushing grew so nervous before games that he frequently vomited during stretching. Norton Jr., his position coach, kept him on edge, telling him he was no better than a third-round NFL pick to scouts, that teammate Clay Matthews was more advanced than him and other times not saying a word, leaving Cushing to wonder what Norton Jr. wanted.

"Are you satisfied?" Cushing screamed at Norton Jr. after hits.

Roommates remember his routines. San Francisco 49ers safety Taylor Mays, a USC teammate, called their apartment "a house built of protein." Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez roomed with Cushing freshman year. The volume of B12 vitamins that Cushing kept struck Sanchez as odd, but the scent of fish oils repulsed him.

"It would reek," Sanchez says, wincing at the memory.

Cushing was instinctual from the start, able to play rover, scraping off offensive linemen around the edge or bulling through interior gaps. He could spin, rip and release or maneuver through an up and under as a defensive end with uncommon meanness.

"He's unquestionably the toughest kid you've ever played with," Norton Jr. said.

Against the Indianapolis Colts last season, he collected 12 tackles, a career high. The most impressive sack was erased due to Antonio Smith, a defensive lineman, jumping offside away from the play. Cushing came on a blitz up the middle, reached his arms over the guard's head and pulled down quarterback Peyton Manning.

"The play's never over with him," says Arizona Cardinals tight end Jimmy Dray, a high school teammate.

The bodywork goes on, too. While suspended, Cushing saw his chiropractor, Dr. Brian Shannon, daily during the week, either before or after his workouts with DeFranco. Shannon, using untraditional techniques, synchronized his treatments to maximize Cushing's performances, cycling through intensity levels.

"With Brian, it's like an art," Shannon says. "His body leads us."

DeFranco collaborated with Shannon on workouts and treatment. One day two weeks ago, Shannon opened up Cushing's hips and lower extremities to allow him maximum leaping ability for the next workout. For a new high, Cushing took two steps and jumped 64 inches, measured next to a hurdle on top of two cinder blocks.

"No 260-pound man should be able to do that," DeFranco says.

DeFranco's career has taken leaps too. He has grown into an NFL combine guru, peddling a video called "Mastering the Football Combine Tests." In recent years, he expanded to clients in the NFL and MLB as well as wrestlers from the WWE, including Triple H.

He is closest with Cushing, whom he has never asked about the failed test.

"I know him on a different level," DeFranco says.

On the floor, behind his desk is a framed Texans No. 56 Cushing jersey. On the No. 5 is his script autograph. On the No. 6 is their mantra: "Lift until you see God!"

* * *

The text message arrived on Cushing's phone after the Texans took their opener over the Colts last month. It was from Norton Jr., now with the Seattle Seahawks.

They're better without you.

"With or without Brian, the NFL goes on," Norton Jr. says.

On Wednesday morning at 7:45, Texans coach Gary Kubiak stood in front of his team for a meeting, and made an announcement.

"I want to welcome a new player," he said, "Brian Cushing, Southern California."

He was razzed by teammates, told that he was on vacation the last four weeks.

"My favorite Cushing moment was when he became the first two-time rookie of the year," says Antonio Smith, referring to the fact that Cushing retained his award when writers revoted after his suspension was revealed. "That got a lot of laughs."

Cushing has created an enclave in the 7,000-square foot home he bought for $1.3 million on the Sienna Plantation of Missouri City, Texas, a master planned community 20 miles southwest of Houston. Inside are the amenities of a billiards room, eight-seat home theatre and five bedrooms. There are also the signs of his obsessions, most notably the hyperbaric chamber in an office winged off the entrance, a massage table and a closet just for supplements.

"He don't need the team facility," Texans linebacker DeMeco Ryans says. "He has it all."

Ryans, the 2005 Defensive Rookie of the Year, remembers what Cushing is like on game day. As at USC, he vomits before each kickoff, making his way into the bathroom to do so out of habit. He emerges with a reddened face and blood-shot eyes.

"I'm like, ‘Well, he got that out of his system,'" Ryans says. "Let's go hit somebody."
Click to expand...

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...rns_to_texans_sunday_fr.html?print=1&page=all

Air Langhi · Oct 10, 2010

Does B12 make you big and strong? It seems to have worked wonders for roger and cush. Might need to start taking that stuff.

ChievousFTFace · Oct 10, 2010

Air Langhi said:

Does B12 make you big and strong? It seems to have worked wonders for roger and cush. Might need to start taking that stuff.
Click to expand...

Try eating 7000 calories a day and training like an animal... I promise you that it would work more than B12.

solid · Oct 10, 2010

I guess he is still getting ready.

MadMax · Oct 11, 2010

solid said:

I guess he is still getting ready.
Click to expand...

the fallacy was pretending it would matter. the linebackers weren't the problem.

emjohn · Oct 11, 2010

solid said:

I guess he is still getting ready.
Click to expand...

Aside from overcommitting on at least one run play (he left the cutback WIDE open and they tore off 15+ yards), he was fine. He didn't get Eli, but his blitzes were awfully effective and he tore through like a mad dog.

He looked fine, if a touch overeager.

He's one of the very last folks I would pan, along with Ryans and the receiving corps.

HillBoy · Oct 11, 2010

solid said:

I guess he is still getting ready.
Click to expand...

Well as I posted before: Looking good on YouTube is one thing, looking good against live football players on the field is another thing entirely.

BucMan55 · Oct 12, 2010

HillBoy said:

Well as I posted before: Looking good on YouTube is one thing, looking good against live football players on the field is another thing entirely.
Click to expand...

Sherrick McMannis should be thanking Cushing's pursuit of Manning that led to his interception. One of the few times all game that Manning was in trouble. If the offense could have done something with the ball that might have been a turning point. Instead, it was just a bump in the road for the Giants. Cush looked fine.

rpr52121 · Oct 12, 2010

Fyreball said:

I think with Cushing back, Bush doesn't have to rely so much on zone coverages across the middle of the field. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some defenses run hybrid man-zone coverages where certain members of the defense stick to their man, while others cover a zone?
Click to expand...

Yes, but more often than not, you are playing man with your CB's on the edges with a zone down the middle. I don't think anyone here is wiling to let the Texans' current CB's play man at the moment.

brian_chapman · Oct 12, 2010

brian cushing will be a jet before his career is over.

1.his personal trainer is the players trainer for the jets

2.his good friend sanchez is the qb and better than matt

3.jets run a scheme that fits cushing better,lots of blitzes and different packages to maximize his athletism unlike the vanilla texans

4.being in NY automatically will make cushing a more popular player and possibly to HOF and change his rep that he has on the texans as a drug user (braylon edwards did dwi and is forgiven immediately,cushing would be a hero in NY)

5.jets are simply better than texans,and will be for a loooooog time since they are younger,and cushing wants to win, better chance on jets

6.cushing spends all offseason in NJ ,very close to ny

7.mcnair wants to have a good football image,i disregard what he says publicly about cushing,thats just to save face...one more screw up by cushing and hes gone ,and that means a trade or released to jets(and if cushing wants out of here bad enough to play for jets, all he has to do is purposley get caught ,lose a season,and then sign with his buddy sanchez , sometimes its worth it to lose 1 season instead of waste your career on a perennial losing texans)

all these clues lead me to believe cushing will be a jet within 4 years.

marks0223 · Oct 12, 2010

brian_chapman said:

all these clues lead us to believe brian chapman is a troll.
Click to expand...

fixed

Forums

Cushing getting ready for week 5!

wreck Member

david_rocket Member

DonkeyMagic Member
Supporting Member

Fyreball Member

ROXRAN Member

wreck Member

vinsensual Member

vinsensual Member

Fyreball Member

J.R. Member

Air Langhi Contributing Member

ChievousFTFace Member

solid Member

MadMax Member

emjohn Member

HillBoy Member

BucMan55 Member

rpr52121 Sober Fan
Supporting Member

brian_chapman Member

marks0223 2017 and 2022 World Series Champions
Supporting Member

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!

Cushing getting ready for week 5!

wreck Member

david_rocket Member

DonkeyMagic Member Supporting Member

Fyreball Member

ROXRAN Member

wreck Member

vinsensual Member

vinsensual Member

Fyreball Member

J.R. Member

Air Langhi Contributing Member

ChievousFTFace Member

solid Member

MadMax Member

emjohn Member

HillBoy Member

BucMan55 Member

rpr52121 Sober Fan Supporting Member

brian_chapman Member

marks0223 2017 and 2022 World Series Champions Supporting Member

Share This Page

DonkeyMagic Member
Supporting Member

rpr52121 Sober Fan
Supporting Member

marks0223 2017 and 2022 World Series Champions
Supporting Member