Sports & Recreation

Comments (0) Best Dolphins Player - 2011

Cameron Wake

All Miami football fans have watched Cameron Wake find a way to get to quarterbacks, but most don't know how the sudden Pro-Bowler got into the NFL. It was a long road. For starters, he sat through the entire draft after graduating from Penn State as a linebacker in 2005 and never heard his name called. The New York Giants picked him up as an undrafted free agent but soon released him. Then, inconceivable as it may sound considering his enormous talent, Wake spent nearly two years out of football. What did he do? Well, he was a stockbroker, of course. He got a chance in the Canadian Football League in 2007, and it was immediately apparent he was meant to be not on the trading floor but the football field. Wake was 25 when he played in his first-ever professional game in British Columbia — and he quickly began to make up for lost time, getting 16 sacks and becoming the first player in CFL history to be named both Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season. He repeated the latter award in 2008, ringing up another league-leading 23 sacks. Coaches in America, slow as they apparently were, began to catch on that this guy was special, and in 2009, he signed with the Dolphins. The rest is now part of the history of another place he clearly belongs — the NFL.

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