Getting to see his dream of college football realized is testament to his heart and work ethic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve worked for for a long time. A lot of people doubted me. I had just as many doubters as I did people supporting me. If you watch me play, I play with this huge chip on my shoulder and that\u2019s what led me to get here,\u201d Bridges said. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m a big believer in outworking people. I\u2019m not the most talented kid. There are kids bigger than me, maybe a little bit faster, but no one\u2019s got the heart and that\u2019s what got me where I\u2019m at.\u201d<\/p>\n
That heart is evident on and off the gridiron. Bridges stood out as one of the top defensive linemen and overall football players for the Rebels in each of their three consecutive state championship seasons, a leader in a talented senior class. Head coach Jason Allen describes Bridges as the \u201cheart and soul\u201d of the football team, with Bridges carrying his heart on his sleeve off the field, too. <\/p>\n
\u201cGabe is a special kid and he\u2019s been a joy to coach for three years. One of the better football players I\u2019ve had the opportunity to coach in my career, just unbelievable work ethic, unbelievable character. Then to put on top of that, he has a great desire to play. He just loves ball. Those are the kind of kids you want to see to be able to go on and play in college and I\u2019m looking forward to great things for him and his college career,\u201d Allen said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great leader. Any kid that works as hard as he does, his teammates notice and they follow. He really worked hard on his craft. He\u2019s one of the better defensive linemen I\u2019ve had as far as using their hands, getting off blocks, and he loved the physicality side of football. He loved to hit, which is something you\u2019ve got to have to be a really good football player, and he was one of the best we\u2019ve had. It\u2019s going to be a great loss losing him. He\u2019s been kind of the heart and soul of our team for the last three years.\u201d <\/p>\n
Allen also got to coach Bridges in basketball, and Bridges was part of this year\u2019s state championship team in that sport as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything you get to coach Gabe in is joy,\u201d Allen shared. \u201cObviously he didn\u2019t contribute in basketball the way he did in football, but he played a huge role in our team and he was a great leader for our guys and the kind of guy you\u2019ve got to have on your team to win championships with, and he won a lot of them in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getting to see his dream of college football realized is testament to his heart and work ethic. \u201cIt\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2026],"tags":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-824089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116264255340292758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}