Aug 6th 2008 12:28PM by Tom Mantzouranis (author feed)
Filed under: Jets, AFC EastIt’s not easy being on the bubble of an NFL roster this year. Most often, you’ve invested your entire life into football, and it’s not easy to confront the emotional and practical hardships that come when a team delivers a blow to your dream. Unless you’re Paul Raymond.

Raymond, an undrafted receiver from Brown, has a long way to go, and a lot of places on the depth chart to jump, to make the Jets roster. Yet Raymond moved from Haiti to inner-city Miami when he was 14 months old and lifted himself out of the dregs to get a 3.5 GPA in Business Economics at one of the most prestigious schools in the world. So, yeah, he’s not sweating it either.

You’ve got to admire the guy — he could be making a lot more money on Wall Street without the sweat and pain of football, but he put that aside to accept a meager, non-guaranteed deal in order to maybe be the fifth receiver on a team not known for strength at that position. The guy loves football, and while many football players claim to be about the game more than the money, how many would have made the same choice?

Still, Raymond’s chances are slim. While his first chance at proving himself in a game situation will come Thursday, Raymond sits very literally at the bottom of the Jets’ depth chart, meaning it might not be too long before they send him towards the cold reality of a great salary in a great city while being able to retain long term brain and muscle use.