Broken foot doesn’t slow Giants’ Bradshaw

INDIANAPOLIS – Ahmad Bradshaw is playing in pain and loving every second of it.

The New York Giants running back has played the last eight games with a broken bone in his right foot, and there is no way the injury is going to keep him out of Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Patriots.

“It’s just the love of the game, man,” he said. “I don’t like missing games for nothing. I have been fighting pain for a long time. No matter what it is I got that niche, man. I like pain.”

Bradshaw hasn’t put up big numbers this season, but statistics aren’t what he brings to the offense.

The fifth-year pro brings a toughness that teammates respect. His foot hurts so much during the week that he practices only one day.

When he shows up on game day, though, he’s a different player. The pain is blocked out and he bites his lip and runs at, around and through defenses.

“The guy has an unbelievable threshold of pain,” running backs coach Jerald Ingram said. “His game is football. That’s what he has been doing all his life. When he gets on the field, he is mean. He takes that pain.”

This isn’t the first time, either. Bradshaw played most of the 2009 season with two bad feet and had surgery three times after the season to insert screws in the fifth metatarsals of both feet and clean up some junk in his right ankle.

Bradshaw broke the fifth metatarsal in his right foot again against the Miami Dolphins in late October. He was X-rayed during the game, and returned despite a fracture.

That’s Bradshaw.

“He is a junk yard dog that wants to fight on game day,” Ingram said. “He doesn’t care. There was a linebacker who said to him: ‘Why do you run so mean? Why are you so mad?’ ”

Ingram remembers Bradshaw’s answer.

“ ‘Because I am mad at you,’ ” Ingram recalled. “That’s just Ahmad. He loves his toughs. He makes everybody tough because you look at him and say, ‘I don’t know if I can do that.’ We stub our toe on a bedpost and want to die. He walks around with it all day long.”