East Orange Cheering For Rasul Douglas In Super Bowl

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Are you an Eagles fan in Essex County? Love it when the underdog wins? You've got a local success story to cheer for during the Super Bowl.

Rasul Douglas, a cornerback with the Philadelphia Eagles, attended East Orange Campus High School and was a graduate of Cicely L. Tyson Community School of Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange.

He was selected by the Eagles in the third round of the 2017 NFL draft, and played two years of college football at West Virginia, co-leading the country with eight interceptions as a senior in 2017.

According to the Eagles' media guide, Douglas is one of seven siblings raised by his grandmother. He took the bus to and from Nassau Community College and often went hungry. Douglas would wait until the end of the day to eat and often ordered off of the dollar menu at McDonald's.

"Every time I eat, I always think I'm making up a meal that I missed in junior college," Douglas said in the media guide. "It definitely fuels me all the time, just thinking about what I went through, practicing on an empty stomach, going to school on an empty stomach. You can't even focus. So that definitely makes me want to play all-out all the time."

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“I took the long route,” Douglas told the East Orange High School Campus football team last summer, encouraging the student-athletes to take their grades seriously and work hard.

“It isn’t always about being first in, last out,” Douglas said. “It’s what you do when you’re here.”

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With previous reporting by Daniel Hubbard, Patch staff