On the rise

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- It wasn’t long ago that word spread around the Green Bay Packers that the team had traded for a young running back. The veterans heard his name -- Ryan Grant -- and pretty much drew a blank.

“Guys didn’t even know me,” Grant recalled. “They didn’t know my first name when I got here.”

Who could blame them?

Grant spent his first two years in the NFL buried deep inside the New York Giants organization. Green Bay traded for him out of desperation, low on healthy bodies for the season opener.

“I looked at the positive in it,” Grant recalled. “It was an opportunity to play for this team that wanted me.”

Four months later, the Packers are no longer desperate. And they know his name.

Heading into the NFC championship game against his old team, the Giants, at Lambeau Field on Sunday, Grant ranks among the league’s newest stars.

His 201 yards and three touchdowns in a snowy playoff victory over Seattle last weekend were no fluke. Since becoming a starter at midseason, he has averaged more than 100 yards and ranks among the league leaders in runs of 20 yards or more.

In the process, the Packers’ woeful ground game has become a reliable complement to Brett Favre’s arm. The transformation has Giants Coach Tom Coughlin talking about “the whole package” that Green Bay’s offense presents.

“Ryan has had an outstanding year and played extremely well with all kinds of big plays,” the understated Coughlin said of a player his team swapped for a sixth-round draft pick.

Teammates tend to be more effusive, using words such as “phenomenal” and “explosive” about a back who has run for 1,157 yards and 11 touchdowns in 215 carries, a 5.38-yards average.

Grant, 25, might seem to be an overnight success, but the last few years have been tough and he doesn’t seem ready to get too excited. Not just yet.

Coming out of Notre Dame in 2005, Grant ranked as the school’s 11th all-time rusher but, with nagging injuries, had played in the shadow of Julius Jones and Darius Walker. He wasn’t drafted.

The Giants signed him as a free agent and put him on the practice squad. Grant calls it “a humbling experience” -- and worse times awaited.

At a nightclub with teammates in March 2006, he slipped and fell on a table and shattered glass that severed an artery, the ulna nerve and a tendon in his left arm. Not realizing the severity of the injury, he walked outside and might have bled to death if someone had not called 911.

Eight months of rehabilitation kept him on the non-football injury list last season. It isn’t something he cares to talk much about.

“A freak accident,” he said recently. “Once I was told that I was going to be OK, I just moved forward.”

If nothing else, hardship appears to have strengthened his quiet determination. Grant says he cares little for personal acclaim, explaining, “I’ve learned that if you don’t win, it really doesn’t mean anything.”

In the bad days, he never saw himself as a mere backup, remaining confident in his abilities. And now, he doesn’t hold himself as a star.

His prospects took an upturn in Giants training camp last summer, when his performance in exhibition games could not move him up a crowded depth chart, but did get noticed. A thousand miles away, Green Bay needed help.

“We talked to other teams about different guys,” Packers General Manager Ted Thompson said. “We liked what we saw in Ryan during the preseason.”

The Packers got a 6-foot-1, 218-pound straight-ahead runner who fit nicely behind their zone-blocking line.

“His body type where he’s taller, he has a longer leverage than the other running backs,” Coach Mike McCarthy said. “He runs with a natural forward lean.”

The new guy offered a glimpse of his potential in a mid-September game at Giants Stadium. Catching a screen pass, he spun past a New York defender and raced down the sideline for 21 yards. The next day, “we were watching the film and we were like ‘Geez, that’s a phenomenal move,’ ” Green Bay offensive lineman Mark Tauscher said.

Five weeks later, when yet another Packers running back was injured, Grant entered a game at Denver in the second quarter and ended up with 22 carries for 104 yards. At the postgame news conference, McCarthy said it was “safe to say” that Green Bay had found a new starter.

There were more 100-yard games to come -- Minnesota and Detroit, Oakland and Chicago -- all of which strengthened his case in a rough start against Seattle last week.

On the Packers’ opening drive, Grant caught a swing pass thrown slightly behind him, slipped, got up and fumbled. On his team’s next possession, he fumbled again. Seattle converted the turnovers into a quick 14-0 lead.

McCarthy decided not to make a substitution, saying: “I know I’ve pulled players in the past for turnovers, but he was a big part of the way we approached this game.”

So coaches reminded Grant to keep his shoulder pads low on impact. Teammates told him not to worry. They were preaching to the converted.

Grant bounced back with the resolve that had seen him through tough situations in the past, the same calm approach he is taking for this week’s big game against New York.

“I’ve been playing football for a long time and I understand there are ups and downs,” he said. “I’ve got to keep fighting no matter what.”

So he doesn’t want to talk about being a star. Or about gaining revenge against the team that let him go.

He just wants to play.

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david.wharton@latimes.com