After playing for two seasons with the Giants, Kenyon Rasheed was able to continue his gridiron career without having to pack his bags and move when he joined the neighborhood's other NFL team – the Jets.
"I worked out for the Eagles, Patriots, and I believe Cleveland," said Rasheed, a fullback from the University of Oklahoma. "I stayed in the Jersey area and was hoping somebody would pick me up, and the Jets ended up picking me up. So it ended up working out pretty good for me."
Looking for a strong blocker to play on special teams and backup Brad Baxter, the Jets signed Rasheed with four games left in the 1995 season.
The following year, the two were competing for the starting job.
"They expected me to be a large part of the offense but I ended up hurting my neck in camp, and that was pretty much it for me," Rasheed said. "Being a fullback, I mean, anytime we were in camp, we used to hit back in the day. Used to be a lot of contact.
"And so the question was, did I get hurt in camp or was it a previous injury? Because it looked like a previous fracture in the neck. When did that occur? No one really could figure it out. I was probably playing with a fractured neck for a little while and didn't know it.
"So the options were to have it fused and try to make a comeback or retire. And every guy I know that had the fusion didn't last but about four games. I figured as a fullback with a fused neck, I probably wouldn't have a lot of value. So I got a second opinion and ended up just going ahead and retire."
Credited with four seasons, Rasheed is part of a small fraternity who played for both the Jets and the Giants.
"What I'll tell you is that Jet fans like to have more fun. They celebrate things that Giant fans typically didn't celebrate. You know, like wins in the regular season and good plays," Rasheed laughed. "I'd call it the non-corporate fanbase. They seemed to have a little bit more time like you would expect football fans to act, where I thought Giant fans were more corporate. I just thought their fan base was a little bit more passionate than the Giants."
While Rasheed's time with the Jets was short-lived and not filled with a whole lot of wins on Sunday afternoons, he enjoyed and appreciated the camaraderie he was able to share with his teammates.
"This is going to sound crazy, but my fondest memory as a Jet is playing with Boomer's [Esiason] Jets team in the basketball game against the Giants," Rasheed said. "I know that doesn't really equate to football, but I think the relationship with Boomer and just really the personal relationships with the Jets are really what stood out to me. The Aaron Glenns, the Brad Baxters, the Nick Lowerys. I just think there was a very unique set of guys."
To begin his post-playing career, Rasheed went from the football field to the field of technology and worked for Oracle as an account executive. He later became a senior consultant, director of athlete relations with Opendorse, and then a senior director of business development with Global Payment, Inc.
In 2021, Rasheed co-founded EDGE3.ai, an athlete intelligence and advisory platform. It combines data aggregation and enrichment with artificial intelligence and one-on-one coaching to assist the next generation of athletes find success.
"Going through the recruiting processes with my kids and listening to other players talk about their kids and their recruiting experiences, and seeing what was happening and knowing what was coming in college sports, having been on the business side of the industry for so long, I got to understand what the inefficiencies were with the schools and the athletic departments," Rasheed said.
"And one of the things was, how could we help both sides? How do we allow schools to look at kids and evaluate them with limited budgets and old school football coaches? And then how do we help kids and parents select what schools are more appropriate for them?
"All of that is rooted in history and data. And how you scale history and data is through AI. When I tried to tell everybody in 2021, I knew nothing about AI. I was literally trying to bring together a bunch of former athletes and give the younger athletes access to the intelligence that we've gained through years of playing the sport, being around it. Having to make decisions about agents and financial planners and everything else that comes with being a professional athlete.
"All of that information sits in our brains and we never get a chance to really share it unless you put us into coaching or broadcasting, which is a limited amount of positions that are available like that."
Rasheed brought together former NFL players Warren Sapp, Brian Jones, and Jonathan Hayes, along with former NBA players Horace Grant, Gary Payton and others to create the EDGE3 platform and make information available to high school athletes entering college and college athletes entering the pros.
"It's been a heck of a journey for me, just from a personal standpoint, because it's really allowed me to work with college recruits," Rasheed said. "I've literally sat in home visits and went on recruiting trips and saw what the difference is today, and built a solution from the ground up.
"I think EDGE3 is a unique vehicle that is really a risk assessment against both sides making bad decisions, and we're using data and athlete intelligence to help kind of facilitate that. No one has gone to an athlete and said, 'Tell me how you've done things,' and then take that and create templates for the next generation. That's what we're attempting to do with EDGE3 in addition to figuring out the recruiting.
"At the core of it is, I believe that the former athletes like myself who no one's heard of, probably wouldn't know Kenyon Rasheed from a hill of beans, but you know who Gary Payton and Horace Grant are, and what I tell people is, the network that we collectively have has a ton of information that could be worth a lot of value to those who are having to make decisions in today's world."
Making their home in Southern California's Orange County, Rasheed and his wife, Traci, have three children: Noah, who played football at Cal Poly; Kaden, who played basketball at UC San Diego; and Aubrie, who played soccer at Oregon State.
And besides being a husband and dad, the best thing about being Kenyon Rasheed today is…
"I feel like I've never left sports, and don't feel like I've had to go outside of who I know and what I do," he said. "It's the best feeling in the world because I found another path to work in sports that no one identified to me. I'm not a coach. I'm not a broadcaster. But yet, I've been working in sports for the last 25 years and nobody knows about it because I'm finding all of these different channels that intersect with sports and learn them.
"And I've done that from the courtesy of working out of my house, taking ownership of what I've done, and coaching all my kids. To me, that's what success looks like. It is being able to be there for my kids and not miss a practice and control my schedule while working in sports and still enjoying that side of the business.
"I feel like I've been extremely fortunate to have some people around me and companies and clients that have all contributed to where I think I'm in a very lucky position today, and very fortunate and grateful for where I'm at."
