Croudip and Drugs? Falcons Bewildered

The Atlanta Falcons, depressed over the death of teammate David Croudip, are bewildered over how one of the supposedly most health-conscious men any of them had known could die from an apparently massive dose of cocaine.

Croudip, a 29-year-old defensive back and special teams captain, has been depicted by his teammates as a fitness fanatic. His philosophy, as far as they knew, was “my body is my temple.” He would try to steer teammates away from the huge junk-food table inside the Falcons’ locker room. Several of the players could hardly envision him eating a potato chip, much less taking cocaine, the drug that killed Len Bias and Don Rogers. Croudip wouldn’t even let his father smoke cigarettes in his apartment.

“If somebody pinned me in a corner and said to me, ‘You have to pick one guy on this team you think would be on drugs,’ I’d find it highly unlikely that any of us would pick David,” lineman Bill Fralic said.

John Scully, a veteran guard, said: “I suppose everybody, in his own mind, makes up a list of most likelies and least likelies in everything. He’s just the least likely guy you can imagine in this situation. That’s what makes this so difficult to deal with.”

Tight end Ken Whisenhunt said Croudip was “a conditioning guy . . . David was almost like a bodybuilder, he was so conscious of his body and what he ate. It makes the whole thing so much more shocking. I’ve been out with a lot of the guys on the team, and I’ve seen most everybody out (around the town), but I’d never seen Dave partying. And I always attributed that to his being so conscious about his health.

“There are guys who are crazy, who are just wild, and you think if this happens to them you would be sad but not surprised, either, that it happened. But David? Not in my wildest dreams. Not to David Croudip. I’m just very confused about what’s happened.”

Croudip suffered a seizure at his apartment in Duluth, Ga., at about early Monday morning, less than 12 hours after he and the Falcons had lost a home game last Sunday to the Rams. His wife, Holly, called medics, but Croudip was pronounced dead an hour later.

A preliminary blood analysis by a private laboratory indicated that cocaine and another unidentified drug were present in his system, according to Dr. Joseph Burton, the medical examiner for five metropolitan Atlanta counties.

Falcons officials have said Croudip had passed all previous drug tests and had never shown signs of having a drug problem. Holly Croudip has not spoken publicly of what she knew about the last hours her husband was alive.

In another strange twist, Croudip’s father, James Croudep (the son, who moved from Indianapolis to Southern California to live with his mother after the parents split, changed the spelling of his surname) had just seen his son play for the first time in the National Football League.

Croudip wanted his father to stay overnight after dinner, but Croudep decided to drive to Raleigh, N.C., to visit his daughter. He heard the news of his son’s death on the car radio.

“I stopped four or five times,” Croudep told the Atlanta Constitution. “The way David was talking he seemed real happy. All he ever wanted to do was sit around and watch football plays and look at television. He doesn’t talk like a person who used that stuff. He wouldn’t let me smoke in his house.”

Piecing together what happened with Croudip is something officials assume will take many days, unless someone comes forward.

But, this week the Falcons were unconcerned about the whys. Clearly, they were still in mourning. Last Tuesday Coach Marion Campbell and his staff canceled practice, and in the afternoon the team held a private memorial service here at the practice facility.

Croudip apparently wasn’t especially close to any one player or small group of players, but was friendly with just about all of them.

“You feel even worse,” Fralic said, “because he was a really great guy. Everybody on the team thought the world of him. He always had a smile. I don’t think you could find a guy in that locker room who’d say a bad word about him.”

On the field, Croudip was best known for his special-teams play. He could best be described as a journeyman, a player always on the fringe. He had played for five professional football teams since leaving San Diego State. In the U.S. Football League he had played with the Los Angeles Express and Houston Gamblers. Since then, he had tours of duty with the Rams and San Diego Chargers.

But he had established himself here for coach Foge Fazio, who ran the special teams. “Physically, he wasn’t big,” Whisenhunt said. “But he never backed down an inch and he earned your respect.”