BY NICK ST. DENIS
It just so happens that Marquise Goodwin is good at a couple things: He's an Olympian and an active NFL player.
No big deal.
The 23-year-old Texas product, who competed in the 2012 Olympics after winning a pair of collegiate national championships in the long jump, is entering his second season with the Buffalo Bills. As a rookie, Goodwin snagged 17 receptions for 283 yards and three touchdowns in 12 games.
Despite showing promising flashes in Year 1, he's still trying to shake the supposed track star stigma.
"A lot of people look down on it—they think I’m just a track guy,” Goodwin told Sports Illustrated earlier this summer. "But that’s cool because I’m looking to prove them wrong. They say, ‘There’s that track guy,’ and try to downplay the fact I’m an Olympian and that it’s just something anyone can do.
"But it’s tough to be a dual-sport athlete, especially on the pro level. I think a lot of people don’t respect it because they never had to go through it.”
Goodwin, in fact, thinks his participation in his second sport is an advantage, not a detriment--pointing to his training, which includes plyometrics, sprinting and jumping drills.
“I’m definitely doing stuff no other wide receiver does—unless they were jumpers and believe in [the training], too,” he said. “I definitely feel sprinting and jumping correlate to football training, as well. Guys who have never competed in track or never ran will never understand it, but you can’t coach speed.”
Goodwin insists he's all-in with football but is leaving the door open to compete in the next summer games. That is, of course, if his employer gives him the OK.
"If I have the opportunity to go in 2016 [to the Olympics], I’d like to do it if the Bills allow it," he said. "If not—if it’s an issue at all or if there’s any question whether I like football or not—I won’t, because football is what I chose at the end of the day, and I want to be a football player.”
