Rudy? Rocky? Brian Henesey's real-life NFL pursuit with Cardinals remains epic tale
Brian Henesey is 53 years old, but you can’t tell him there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. There is and there was, and his name is Buddy Ryan.
“For me,” Henesey said, “Buddy Ryan was Santa Claus.”
It was nearly 30 years ago, right around Christmas time, when Henesey, then a 25-year-old, undersized 5-foot-9, 215-pound fullback three years removed from a productive college football career at tiny Bucknell, got it in his mind to attempt the impossible.
After sending dozens and dozens of letters, faxes and video tapes of his college career to every head coach in the NFL and getting absolutely no feedback or responses from any of them, Henesey decided the only way to get one last shot at continuing to play football was to do something drastic.
Maybe you remember his story. Perhaps you don’t. But to this very day, it remains one for the ages and it’s a tale that bares worth retelling all these years later after The Republic chronicled it first. It probably should have been turned into a movie by now; maybe someday it still will.
It was in the winter of 1994 and Henesey, then a clinical research specialist for a pharmaceutical firm not far from his modest hometown of Manayunk, Pa., walked out of his parents’ home with his cleats and a small bag under his arm and told his father, Richard, he was flying to Arizona to talk to Ryan into giving him a tryout with the Cardinals.
Richard Henesey, a roofer by trade who has since passed on, along with his wife, Helen, told The Republic at the time he didn’t believe his son was serious.
“He said, ‘Yeah, right,’ ” Brian Henesey said. “He thought I was going down to the New Jersey shore to have some fun.”
But Brian was all business. Having finished his career as Bucknell’s all-time leading rusher, he was confident he could make it in the NFL, especially for a coach like Ryan, Arizona’s general manager and head coach, whom Henesey had adored as the head coach of the Eagles from 1986-90.
So, he borrowed a friend’s frequent flyer account to get to Phoenix, disguised himself as a FedEx deliveryman, talked his way into the Cardinals’ Tempe training facility, and told the receptionist he had a person-to-person package for Ryan’s eyes only.
Henesey got lost “seven times” trying to find the place, but after waiting for hours in the lobby, he eventually was able to drop off the VCR tapes of his college highlights and then staked out the facility the following day in hopes of meeting Ryan face to face.
After having rehearsed his speech for weeks, Henesey was at a loss for words when Ryan came up the elevator and strode by him to his office. Ryan said good morning, Henesey acknowledged him, and that was it.
“That’s what happens when you get the big audition and then you fail,” Henesey said, recalling the moment with a laugh.
But that wasn’t the end. Turns out Ryan had watched Henesey’s game tape the previous night with some of his assistants and about 20 minutes after seeing Henesey in the team’s lobby, Ryan told the receptionist he wanted to see Henesey in his office. It was now or never, Henesey remembers.
“He always used to say you can tell a con artist by looking them in the eyes and that there are a lot of pretenders in this business,” Henesey said. “When I got in there, I just told him I know I can play in this league. Growing up in Philadelphia, people always told me I was a Buddy Ryan-type player.”
After a brief workout on the practice fields below, Ryan signed him to a one-year contract on the spot worth $108,000, the league minimum at the time. Imagine something like that happening in today’s NFL. Or anywhere, really. No one did then. No one probably does now.
“It’s amazing how he got here,” Steve Beurlein, the Cardinals’ starting quarterback, said at the time. “Here’s a guy who shows up on Buddy Ryan’s doorstep saying, ‘Please give me a chance.’ I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
Ryan, who passed away in 2016 at the age of 85, said at the time he had seen quite a few undersized players from small schools come down the pike before, but noted of Henesey, “He’s probably one of the most gifted. He might be one of the best running backs we have here.”
Henesey was immediately crowned with the nickname “Rudy” after the movie that had come out the previous fall depicting the life story of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger, who harbored dreams of playing football at Notre Dame despite similar obstacles. A walk-on, Ruettiger made it to the Irish scout team exactly 20 years earlier, but he only appeared in one game for three plays his senior season.
Everybody was rooting for this “Rudy” — well, up until some of his veteran teammates read a quote from Henesey in "Sports Illustrated" when he told Ryan, “I’ll rip someone’s head off in your honor just covering kickoffs.” He had been hitting everyone in mini-camp as hard as he could without pads on but noted, “They’re going to get you back when you get to Flagstaff (in training camp).”
He was right, but like nearly everything in Brian Henesey’s life, he bounced back, persevered and turned things into a positive.
“I remember (linebacker) Seth Joyner saying, ‘Yeah, we keep trying to knock ‘Rudy’ out but he keeps coming back for more,’ ” Henesey recalled. “I was lucky I was able to get their respect. Seth Joyner, he’s like the guy in the prison yard, the guy nobody messes with, and he doesn’t say much to anyone. But when I would pass him, he would actually call me ‘Ru-Dog,’ so once he started calling me ‘Ru-Dog,’ I felt I actually belonged.”
Henesey had 10 carries for nearly 50 yards in a preseason-opening win over the 49ers and against all odds, he made the Cardinals’ 53-man active roster as a running back.
“He’s definitely an inspiration to me,” fullback Larry Centers said at the time. “After you’ve been in the league for a while, you tend to lose a certain amount of determination. The flame has a tendency to flicker. But all you’ve got to do is look at Brian, and a guy like that can inspire a whole football team.”
Henesey appeared in the season opener against the Rams, coming in for one play on a two-point conversion attempt, but after the game his father went into congestive heart failure. Brian told Ryan he needed to fly home to be with his dad. Ryan told him he would hold his spot on the team until he returned — and he did — but it was a spot on the practice squad.
As the weeks ticked by, Henesey went upstairs and knocked on Ryan’s door again.
“The team was struggling and I went into Buddy’s office and said, ‘I know I can help this team,’ ” Henesey recalled, adding, ‘I told you when I met you, I’ll rip someone’s head off in your honor covering kickoffs.’ And he was like, ‘No, I think I’m going to have you return kickoffs.’ And I was like, ‘Holy (expletive!).’ ”
Henesey had never returned kicks before, not even in college. To get himself ready, he had Cardinals kicker Greg Davis kick him 300 or more kickoffs on the side before and after practice. He blew out his back because of all the extra work, but that wasn’t going to stop “Rudy.”
“I couldn’t even walk,” he said. “I got an epidural (injection) on my own on Friday so I could play on Sunday. I figured, ‘Well, that’s my luck. I finally get activated and I can’t walk.’ ”
Henesey kept the epidural a secret and returned a few kickoffs that week against the Steelers in what would become a 20-17 overtime win for the Cardinals. He would appear in two more games as a kick returner, finishing his NFL career that season with six returns for 108 yards.
He was fortunate to sign with the Eagles the following year, but never got a real chance to showcase his skills and was among the team’s final cuts in training camp.
Dejected, but knowing he at least got to realize his dream, Henesey returned to the pharmaceutical business for the next 15 years. In 2010, after dealing with chronic back problems, he opened up his own gym and began inventing new workout equipment. He calls it his “mid-life crisis.”
“I should have got the Corvette and the girlfriend,” he says now, “but yeah, I opened up a gym.”
Catering mostly to high school and college athletes, more than 5,000 members have trained at Henesey’s OverAchieve Sports and Speed, based in King of Prussia, Pa. He estimates that at least 500 or so have gone on to become successful Division I athletes, and several of his clients are now pursuing careers in professional baseball and Olympic-level sports.
One of his most famous clients was former major leaguer Raul Ibanez, who worked out at Henesey’s gym religiously before signing for a third time with the Mariners in 2013 at age 41. On July 2, he hit his 20th home run to become the oldest player ever to hit 20 homers before the All-Star break. He finished with 29 home runs that season, tying Ted Williams for most homers in a season by anyone 40 or older.
Henesey might be closing his doors, however, as that business venture spurred another idea that is making him more money. He began tinkering with how to make squat machines and other training apparatus more conducive for people with back and spinal issues, such as himself.
With the help of some fabricators, he came up with the Squatmax-MD and The Henny power rack attachment. The squat machine is now available in 35 different countries and retails for about $1,700. The Henny device goes anywhere from $189 to $340 depending on how many attachments are added.
None of it, perhaps not even his two children, Kate, 22, and Brian Jr., 20, earning athletic scholarships to Delaware and Lafayette, would have happened had Henesey not pulled off the upset of upsets and talked himself into an opportunity with Santa Claus, er, Buddy Ryan.
It was a one-in-a-million shot and nothing like it may ever happen again.
“Absolutely not,” Henesey said. “I don’t think you’d even get an audience with the head coach. Yeah, no way. We were only 1-9 my senior year at Bucknell. I wasn’t even all-league my senior year. I tell people all the time, a lot of people look and take opportunities; I actually made an opportunity that I’m not sure could ever be duplicated.
“Remember, I’m not a 6-foot-7, 350-pound run D-lineman, I’m a 5-9, 215-pound running back from Bucknell, three years removed.”
Henesey hopes his “Rudy” story will help inspire other young athletes to keep pursuing their dreams, no matter the odds. If you work hard enough and want it bad enough, he says, you can achieve almost anything.
All these years later, Henesey has only one regret.
“Yeah, the only thing I’m mad at is that it was always ‘Rudy,’ ” he said. “That was the movie that summer. We even watched it on the bus ride up to Flagstaff. But I always tell people I was more of a ‘Rocky’ type because ‘Rudy’ wasn’t squatting 700 pounds and bench-pressing 400 pounds. I could hang with the champ; I just needed a chance to fight the champ.”
The nickname wasn’t all bad.
“Buddy used to only call players by their numbers,” Henesey noted. “But he always called me ‘Rudy,’ not No. 39. (Wide receiver) Ricky Proehl was always jealous of that.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: One-time Cardinal Brian Henesey never quit believing in a dream
