CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The message came in a three-word text: "They signed me."
That’s how Greg Kragen, who in 1995 was a 33-year-old nose tackle playing for the first-year Carolina Panthers, learned on Saturday that his 24-year-old son, Kyle, had been signed by the same organization following a rookie minicamp.
"Oh, my gosh! I wanted to cry," the elder Kragen said by phone from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is the defensive line coach for Foothill College.
That the message came in a text naturally made Greg, 55, feel old. Texting was in its infancy when he was the 18th player selected in the '95 expansion draft, a process in which each NFL team had to make six players available to Carolina and Jacksonville.