He was a standout quarterback, wide receiver, running back and kick returner at Desoto High School, and at age 20 he was coming into his athletic prime. Patrick Crayton was a football player, plain and simple.
So it was odd, then, that Crayton wasn't playing football. Instead he was living at the house he grew up in, working two jobs and watching other people with less talent play football on television. While his former teammates and friends were playing on Saturdays, Crayton was splitting time between Enterprise Car Rental and the call center of Providian Financial, a credit card company.
The world needs people to vacuum the carpets of the Ford Focus we'll be pushing around town for the weekend, and someone has to answer the phone when we have billing issues-someone has to do it. But Crayton had talents that were going to waste, and he knew it.
"I actually loved the job," Crayton said of his "Thank You For Calling, This Is Patrick, How May I Assist You" position. "But it was just the fact of being at home, watching TV and seeing guys I played against or went to high school with, and I was like, this is enough of this.
"I hated it. Hated it. I was just working, staying at my mom's house and you've got to abide by her rules, and I just learned that if I wanted to do something I had to take some initiative and get some drive to do it."
Looking back a decade later, it's easy to see Crayton found that motivation, harnessed the energy of the hard times away from the football field he had to endure and made the most of what could have been a bad situation. He's a starting wide receiver on the Dallas Cowboys, with one of the most important roles on the team.
He has good hands, he runs good routes, he's smart, he knows what the quarterback knows, he has enough speed to make game-changing plays, and enough athleticism to get open against NFL cornerbacks. He's a fighter, a team player, and off the field he's so much more. He's a husband and father, a volunteer, a mentor, a growing young entrepreneur.
Even five years ago, in his first season in the NFL and with the Cowboys in 2004, all this would have seemed unlikely. Crayton was a seventh-round pick from a tiny NAIA school in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma. He didn't seem to do anything remarkably well, though he was pretty good at just about everything. He was the runt of a receiving corps that featured two former top 10 picks, Keyshawn Johnson and Terry Glenn.
Plucked from Northwestern Oklahoma State, Crayton fought through the training camp battles at his position to make the 53-man roster. But he didn't play at first, finding himself on the inactive list the first three games of the season. Then, with injuries mounting and needing help elsewhere, the Cowboys released Crayton on Oct. 2 of his rookie year.
No one caught on, and Crayton went straight to the Cowboys' practice squad, spending a month there before returning when Glenn and third receiver Quincy Morgan were lost to injury. Finally, in a late October win over the Detroit Lions, Crayton made his NFL debut and caught his first pass, a 30-yarder from Vinny Testaverde. He was a bit player the next two games, but made no impact the next three weeks, and coach Bill Parcells made him inactive for two games in December.
Finally¸ on the day after Christmas, Crayton had his moment. The Cowboys, just 5-9 on the season and with their playoff hopes long ago dashed, were playing for little more than pride against their archrivals, the Washington Redskins. Trailing 10-6 in the last minute of the game, the Cowboys were driving in Redskins territory when Crayton ran a corner fly route toward the back pylon of the end zone at Texas Stadium. Testaverde saw he had beaten his man by just a hair, and fitted a perfect pass right into the rookie's hands, propelling the Cowboys to a win and probably their only truly great moment of what was ultimately a disappointing season. It was Crayton's first touchdown catch in the NFL, and the first time he proved he could be a playmaker in the big league.
"It was the culmination of a long rookie year that ended pretty well," Crayton said. "I think it just showed that some of the hard work I had put in, and the patience I had put in throughout that entire season paid off."
Crayton kept up the hard work and maintained his patience, and over the course of five seasons has grown into the effective player he is today. Often overlooked because of the star power the Cowboys have had at the same position, Crayton's abilities are not lost on the people who see him working every day, his teammates and coaches.
"No one in our room has been here longer and he goes about it that way," Kevin Ogletree, an unheralded rookie receiver himself, said. It's a testament to the journey Crayton has taken that youngsters new to the team see him as an example, and someone to follow. "He's a real pro. His knowledge of the game is at such a high level, he sees things and lets us know. He's like a second coach in there. He's pretty vocal, but within himself. If he has something to say, he'll say it to you. He's a good teammate, he's developed and you have a respect for him right away because of what he's done."
As far as Crayton has come, something everyone with the Cowboys understands and appreciates, the team still felt it could improve the position in 2008. And they did so, trading for Roy Williams and bumping Crayton from Terrell Owens' sidekick to No. 3 receiver, less than 12 months removed from what had been his career season in 2007, when he had 50 catches and seven scores.
Williams had his problems right away, catching just 19 balls in his half-season with the team. Owens was a different story. Though it was a down year statistically, considering the expectations he had created for himself in 2007, Crayton remained steady, though in the minds of some he was an afterthought.
But Crayton never saw it that way.
"I never felt like the forgotten guy," he said. "I just thought, 'Well now I've got to take my game to another level.' Obviously what I've done in the past needs to go up some. If it wasn't good enough, OK, let me take it to another level, step it up and increase my play and production on the field."
The fact is, though, that Crayton has been overlooked by media and fans since he got here, the tendency to look for scintillating rather than solid in wide receivers, ignoring what the Cowboys have in Crayton as a good football player, and a guy that does a lot of things for the team.
That's why they took a chance on him in the seventh round in '04, seeing a guy who played all over the field, just as he had in high school. They also saw a guy who had overcome several obstacles on his way to the big time, and wouldn't take his opportunity for granted.
"It's just different from being a rookie to now actually understanding and learning the game," Crayton said. "When you're a rookie you're still confused by some defenses. Now when I'm sitting there watching film, most of the time I know when a blitz is coming, when it's not coming, what blitz they're coming with, who's blitzing, what coverage they're going to roll behind it, where the open spots are in zones, the different tendencies of the different cornerbacks you go against. That's the difference.
"Between my second and third year I made a pretty huge jump. I was able to really come around and recognize a bunch of defenses. I still didn't know how to really watch film correctly sometimes. But then I started to watch it and picture us running a play against this (defense), what would happen in that situation, would I have to break off and run a hot route, or could I just keep on going and not have to make an adjustment, different things like that."
When an adjustment is in order, Crayton has shown he knows when to make it-specifically the life audible he called a decade ago. After signing with Texas Tech out of high school, Crayton never made it to Lubbock, failing to meet the Big XII passing academy's classroom standards. He went the junior college route for a year, but when that was finished he found himself at a cubicle taking phone calls about billing statements.
"I was lazy with my books," Crayton said in describing his road to Northwestern Oklahoma State of the Central States Football League. "I was actually sitting out of school a year when the coach up there gave me a call. I just wanted the opportunity to get back in school somewhere and play ball and get my degree.
"My thought was just going to school and playing ball. I told my mom that once I went back to school I wouldn't leave until I got my degree. And that's what happened."
It took Crayton four years to complete his health education studies, and he spent the same amount of time there schooling opponents on the football field. An all-conference selection each of his four seasons with the NWOSU Rangers, Crayton gained 5,688 all-purpose yards, including 3,718 of total offense and 46 touchdowns. In 44 games, mostly as a receiver and return man, Crayton caught 80 balls, 17 for touchdowns.
By necessity, Crayton was moved to quarterback his senior year and he responded by throwing for a then-school record 19 touchdowns and rushed for 13 more, earning Little All-America second-team honors as well as the conference player of the year award.
Now Crayton and the Cowboys believe his experience under center is one of the things that has helped his growth in the NFL.
"I think Patrick's history as a quarterback as a college player helps him understand what the quarterback is thinking," offensive coordinator Jason Garrett said. "He runs good routes and understands the difference between man and zone, and settles and gives the quarterback good body language, so he has a good feel. He's a guy our quarterbacks love to throw to."
Crayton agrees that his year orchestrating a college offense taught him a lot of things that have helped him with the Cowboys, but considering his circumstances before heading north of the Red River for school, Crayton took something even greater from his alma mater-the diploma he had promised his mother when he left home.
"I think it was a pretty proud moment for her," Crayton said. "She saw what I went through and saw me accomplish what I set out to do."
Sheepskin in hand, Crayton again focused his efforts on the football field. Feedback Crayton and his agents received from scouts around the league had Crayton believing he would be a fifth-round draft choice. Perhaps it was the small school ties, but Crayton was again overlooked on draft day 2004. The Cowboys, who had brought him in for their local athlete scouting day, saw something they liked, trading up to make sure they got him. Other teams weren't so excited about the steady-not-flashy Crayton, and they combined to pick 215 players before him. Half a decade later, he's still exceeding expectations, having emerged now as one of the best gems from that draft class.
Like the crossroads where Crayton once found himself in his year away from football, the humble entrance to the league has served to motivate him ever since.
I saw a few receivers go in front of me, and I was thinking I was better than those guys," he said. "Everybody starts at different places. It's what you do once you get there. We all got to the same level, so we've all got the same opportunity now. It's how you take advantage of your opportunity.
"I don't think you can ever top out."
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