ATLANTA - Bradley Chubb has carved up quite the career at North Carolina State, last week winning the Nagurski Award signifying the nation’s top defensive player.
However, when you’re the second cousin of Georgia running back Nick Chubb, it can still be hard to gain top-dog status.
“Oh, it’s all good,” Bradley Chubb said during an interview at the College Football Hall of Fame. “He deserves it. He’s one heckuva player.” The two players are close, although it wasn’t always that way, despite the fact their fathers are first cousins.
Even growing up in Marietta, Bradley Chubb was in high school before he met cousin Nick.
“As kids, I didn’t know him at all but once we got into high school, he started getting recruited heavily and a lot of guys at my high school asked me if we were related. I reached out to my dad to see if we could set up a meeting before my auntie actually set up the meeting,” Bradley Chubb said. “It was the middle of my senior year, we were about to head off to college when we met each other. He was going to the Army All-American game and we’ve just been keeping tabs with each other ever since then and tried to stay as close as possible.”
Weekly calls and texts are now part of the every-week routine.
Despite being in different conferences, Bradley Chubb said he’s paid close attention to Nick’s games with the Bulldogs, and is quite aware of the many different accolades he’s been able to achieve.
“We check on each other, I text him just to see how he’s doing,” Bradley Chubb said. “We encourage each other. He told me congrats the other day after I won the Nagurski, I told him congrats the other day for winning the SEC, stuff like that. We joked all the time if we played each other, it’s definitely a fun family level.”
He only has one regret – the two never got to play against each other.
“We actually talk about that all the time,” Bradley Chubb said. “I really wish we could have played each other on this level.”
He’s also very proud, particularly of the way Nick Chubb bounced back from his major knee injury as a sophomore to finish as the second-leading rusher in the history of the SEC.
“It’s amazing to see because after an injury like that, a lot of people would count you out,” Bradley Chubb said. “A lot of people would have given up on themselves, and to see him work so hard to get back as dominant as he was before is definitely good to see.”
Cousin Nick isn’t Bradley Chubb’s only connection to the Georgia football program.
His dad Aaron graduated from UGA, and Bradley – along with brother Branden who played at Wake Forest – attended numerous football camps as a youngster.
However, despite a very good career at Hillgrove High, major SEC schools never came calling, not the Bulldogs, or Alabama, which Bulldog head coach Kirby Smart told the audience at last week’s Nagurski ceremony was a fact he always regretted.
“(Smart) kicks himself in the butt for not getting me. But I don’t blame him,” said Bradley Chubb, who did have an offer from Georgia Tech. “When I was in high school, I was 6-1, 190, so I would have looked over me too.”