New York Giants Draft Pick Colton Hood: From 6 A.M. Hill Runs to the NFL
New York Giants Draft Pick Colton Hood: From 6 A.M. Hill Runs to the NFL
Cornerback Colton Hood, selected by the New York Giants with the 37th pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, arrived at the team’s facility on Saturday for his introductory press conference — describing a lifelong obsession with professional football that began before most children have set foot on a field.
A Childhood Built Around the Game
Hood, who played college football at Tennessee, credits a punishing early training regimen for laying the foundation of his career. His father began waking him at 6 a.m. at the age of nine to run hills and complete over 20 repetitions of 200-metre track sprints.
“With steel-toed boots, so that was pretty hard,” Hood told reporters, recalling what he described as the most difficult thing he did as a child.
The discipline was deliberate. Hood comes from a football family — his uncle, Roderick Hood, spent a decade in the NFL as a cornerback and later trained All-Pro Patrick Peterson during Peterson’s time with the Arizona Cardinals.
A Lineage of Lockdown Corners
The younger Hood named a precise list of influences when asked which players shaped his development at the position.
“Pat P is a big one, someone I looked up to since I was 13, 14 years old,” Hood said. “I would also say Pat Surtain, Darrelle Revis, Jaycee Horn — all those guys are great man-to-man lockdown corners, and they also go get the ball.”
He reserved his highest praise for the two men closest to him. “My uncle, to the more technical side of playing the position — he taught me almost everything I know about it,” Hood said. “Somebody I still go to to this day if I need any advice.”
Dreaming of a Storied Franchise
Hood described the Giants specifically — not just the NFL — as the realisation of a childhood ambition that stretches back two decades.
“I’ve been dreaming about this since I was six years old, looking at my ceiling, dreaming about playing in the NFL,” he said. “To get to play for such a storied franchise as the Giants in this great city of New York is just something that even I couldn’t have dreamed of.”
When asked to name his favourite Giants players, Hood answered without hesitation — and at length.
“Michael Strahan, Eli Manning, Odell Beckham, Lawrence Taylor — there’s so many players that have come here, did the right thing, and the city loves them for it,” he said. “I’m a football guy. That’s all I know. That’s all I do.”
What the Giants Are Getting
Hood joins a Giants secondary under head coach John Harbaugh — the same coach his uncle played for with the Philadelphia Eagles. The overlap is not lost on Hood, who described the connection as another reason the fit feels natural.
For a franchise that has struggled for consistency in recent seasons, Hood’s combination of pedigree, positional training, and evident hunger for the game represents precisely the kind of cultural investment the organisation is seeking to rebuild around.
