C.J. Anderson thrives off hard work. And when the chips are down, he just keeps pushing.
With all the talk of Montee Ball’s collapse and Ronnie Hillman’s rise, Anderson hasn’t gotten much attention heading into the 2015 NFL season. Which is fine. Because the C.J. I’ve grown familiar with over the last few years doesn’t care much about that sort of thing.
As C.J. would say, “I just keep my head down and keep pushing.”
In the summer of 2014 when I was hosting a weekend show on The Fan as well as my weekday show on Mile High Sports Radio I remember how C.J. was one of the only Broncos players I could get on a regular basis because he never left the city. While his teammates were on vacation avoiding the media, C.J. was training and focused on football. I think the only substantial amount of time he had away from football was when he went back to California to visit his family for about 10 days. The undrafted free agent from Cal was determined to become a starter and vacation simply did not fit into that equation.
Fast-forward a full calendar year and Anderson is the same guy. Low-key, calm and focused. He prefers grind over spotlight, wins over stardom and prides himself on accountability. He has the blue-collar mentality that many in this city expect from a Bronco.
As C.J. would say, “I just keep my head down and keep pushing.”
I caught up with C.J. this past Sunday morning after breakfast and asked him if he remembered where he was last year at this time. I told him, “Remember when you weren’t sure if you were going to make the team before final cuts?” Before he could answer I added, “By the end of the year you were playing in the Pro Bowl, man.” After a short pause, we both laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it was amazing and special and it was everything that you ever needed to know about hard work.
As C.J. would say, “I just keep my head down and keep pushing.”
But in the NFL, the feel-good story quickly turns into a war of attrition. Earning the starting job is not good enough. Longevity calls for protecting your turf, fending off competitors on your own team and even sharing the spot you’ve earned with another player that may offer a different skill set. C.J. was asked to do all of the above throughout camp and has no qualms with it.
I asked him about sharing the ball with Ronnie Hillman. “I don’t care about sharing reps as long as we’re winning,” Anderson said. “If I’m lowering my shoulder and grinding the defense down and Ronnie can come in and use his quickness to change the pace, that’s a good thing. He can do some things that are not in my game and I understand that.”
C.J. won’t be handing carries over that easily though. “I’ve shown that I can catch passes, make tough runs and do all the things that a three-down back has to do in this league,” he added.
Anderson was pretty much named the starter before training camp ever began, but he approached it the same way he approached the seasons before this. So as Hillman was shining against reserves and Ball was falling out of favor with the coaching staff, Anderson just kept pushing. Because that’s the one thing he knows how to do as well as anybody else.
“The work is the same,” Anderson said. “Starter or not, you work the same. The thing that nobody tells you about is how to handle the starting role in camp, how to take care of your body and how to deal with all the reps.”
It was almost as if a guy who gave every ounce of everything he had, on every play and every opportunity, during every day of the last two years, had to tone it down for camp this year. He was no longer the fresh relief guy with something to prove. He was now the workhorse who had to manage himself because the entire offense depended on him.
Anderson has been solid this preseason but the offense hasn’t quite given fans the firepower they’ve come to expect from a Peyton Manning-led attack. “You’re going to see a lot more in the regular season,” Anderson told me. “We are doing a lot of things in the preseason just to get stuff on tape to see how guys respond. We have some things to clean up but we’re gonna be just fine.”
He uttered a similar notion the night before when he exclaimed to the local media how, “We’ve moved the ball well but we’re just not finishing. We’ll go back and look at the tape, we’ll get better and we’ll definitely be finishing week one. I promise you that.”
It’s no surprise C.J. Anderson believes his team can overcome its current issues through hard work. So when I asked him what the solution is, he said, “I just keep my head down and keep pushing.”
