They may only be distant cousins by marriage, but Dravon Askew-Henry and Darrelle Revis consider each other family. And that is exactly why Revis opened his home to Askew-Henry for four months ahead of the 2019 NFL Combine.
“We’d just sit on the beach for hours talking football,” Askew-Henry told NJ Advance Media. “Out of nowhere, he’d say, ‘Let’s go run,’ or ‘Let’s go watch this game, I want you to tell me what you think of this player right here and how he moves.’ It was all mental and he was helping to take my game to the next level. Darrelle’s mentality is similar to Kobe [Bryant] in a way. How he approached the game. I really want to copy that from him. That’s the majority of the battle. That mentality is something I’ll take with me forever.
“He had ‘Revis Island.’ Hopefully, if this continues, we can get an ‘Askew-Henry Island.'”
There was certainly an ‘Askew-Henry Island’ during his brief stint with the New York Guardians of the XFL, but will that translate to the NFL?
Jamar Summers, a Guardians teammate and roommate of Askew-Henry certainly thinks so.
“[The Giants] are getting a versatile football player who is always going to compete,” Summers said. “He’s always going to look for something to improve, someone he can latch onto to help him improve mentally, physically, and he always puts a smile on your face because you know he’s going to give his all every single rep and have fun doing it.”
Meanwhile, the level-headed Askew-Henry is determined to focus on one workout at a time, never taking the opportunity he has ahead of him for granted — something that will certainly benefit the Giants.
“Waking up with a chip on my shoulder, being thankful for where I was [with the XFL] but knowing it was not where I wanted to be, made me humble every day,” Askew-Henry said. “I wanted to go in and dominate anyone I came across. I know going into this [with the Giants], I’m not going to take anything for granted, not one workout, not one rep in practice, not one game.
“I’m just going to control what I can control. I can come in and play safety, nickel or corner, and I feel like I’ll be a very valuable piece to them.”
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