Florida LB has Toledo offer

Linebacker Edward Bradwell had his season end in strange circumstances, with an ineligible player costing his Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) Dillard team a spot in the playoffs. Still, he says that his recruiting is heating up, with an offer from Toledo and considerable interest from a couple other schools.

“I’ve been talking to Toledo, Minnesota and Southern Illinois,” Bradwell said. “I have an offer from Toledo, and they’re my favorite right now because they’re the only school that has offered me. I appreciate their interest. They came to school and got some of my film, and after the coach saw me on one big running play he called my coach right back and told offered me.”

Regardless of where he ends up, Bradwell said all the teams recruiting him plan to suit him up at linebacker, where he racked up close to 100 tackles as a senior.

“They all talk to me about playing linebacker,” he said. “And I want to leave state for school and start new again. I try to let the game come to me and make plays for us to win. I play my role and I tackle when I can make a tackle, but also just support other teammates when I need to.”

While football is important to Bradwell, he said that other things in life have helped him cherish how valuable the sport can really be.

“I’m going to be the first one in my whole family to go to college, and my family expects so much from me,” Bradwell said. “Most of the rest of my family has made a lot of mistakes. They either dropped out of high school or took the wrong road selling drugs or something, but they always kept me out of trouble.

“Football kept me out of a whole lot of bad things growing up, and now that’s what drives me on the field. After what has happened to me with Toledo and everything, I hope that’s an inspiration to some of the other players on the team. I think it proves to them that if you make one big play on the field it might be the play that gets you into college. I think that will help them to go hard all next year, because now they’ll see how important every play can be.”