Bob Chesney was overbooked.
In 2019, the Holy Cross football coach was running late after a typically full day. His wife, Andrea, was traveling and suddenly he needed to be in two places at once. One of his daughters had just finished gymnastics, while his son, Bo, was being dismissed from school on the other side of town.
Chesney turned to his graduate assistant, Ashton Grant, for help.
Grant, who starred for Chesney as a wide receiver at Assumption, made the jump into coaching under him at Holy Cross. Asked to retrieve the 5-year-old from school, he was admittedly conflicted by the assignment.
“I was struggling with how to look at it,” Grant said. “Man, I want to be a football coach and this guy has me going to pick up his kids. Then as I think about it more, it’s like, well what’s more important to him, football or his kids?”
It wasn’t until later that Chesney realized he’d forgotten something important.
Scatterbrained with so much going on, he’d never called ahead. Bo’s school had a strict pickup policy — fingerprinting and an ID was required, according to Chesney — and nobody had any idea Grant would be picking him up.
However, when Chesney returned to the indoor facility with his daughter in tow, Bo was sprinting around catching passes from Grant.
“I was like, how did he do this?” Chesney said.
It was simple. Grant struck up a conversation with a parent while he walked in, said hello to the receptionist at the front desk, and because he’d volunteered at the school before, Grant knew where Bo’s classroom was. The 5-year-old was happy to see him, grabbed his stuff, and they were off.
“He’s like, ‘What’s up, Ash?’” Grant recalled.
Another realization hit Chesney. He’d never given Bo’s car seat to Grant. The explanation for that wasn’t quite as smooth.
Apparently, just like the graduate assistant picking him up, the 5-year-old had played it cool. Bo walked to the front seat and opened the door as if he’d done it a million times. He was so convincing that Grant, who was in his early 20s, believed it’s what Bo always did.
Riding shotgun and messing with the music, Bo told Grant that Walk The Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance” was his song, so the two blasted that as they cruised to Holy Cross.
“Probably kidnapped him in theory from the school because he didn’t sign him out,” Chesney laughed. “He was like his big brother.”
Resourcefulness is a Grant trademark. The 29-year-old figures out how to get jobs done.
His next assignment, in his new role as the Patriots quarterbacks coach, is getting the most out of Drake Maye.
‘One of one’
Grant’s skill set had the coaches at Division II Assumption in Worcester salivating in 2013. A standout wide receiver from Manchester, Connecticut, Grant caught eyes as well as passes while being scouted during a post-grad year at East Coast Prep in Great Barrington.
“If we can get this kid, this will change the entire culture,” Chesney said.
That’s exactly what happened. Grant committed to Assumption and showed surprising maturity from the jump.
“His work ethic, it’s unnatural,” said Drew Canan, Grant’s position coach at Assumption. “He’s one of one.”
Early in his career, the Greyhounds were playing Southern Connecticut. Given its proximity to Grant’s hometown, a number of his friends and high school teammates played for the Owls. Trash-talking text messages were flying all week. Grant was hellbent on playing well.
“He said to me, ‘This week man, I can’t wait. All my boys are over there. I’m going to go so hard this week,” Chesney recalled. “I said, ‘Wait a second. You’re in the front of every single line. You give absolutely all you’ve got at every single practice. You know your playbook inside and out… so how can you even go harder?’”
Grant thought for a moment and realized his coach was right. He couldn’t prepare any harder. Now a decade removed from that moment, that mentality is something Grant tries to instill in his own players.
“I think about that all the time,” Grant said. “There should be no external factors that can change or move your needle one way or the other. You should be going at 100% all the time.”
With great effort came great production. Grant rewrote Assumption’s record book. He set school records in receiving yards (3,204) and touchdowns (36) and was named the NE10 Offensive Player of the Year in 2016.
“You just could not leave him by himself,” Chesney said. “Every run play had a tag that he could signal the quarterback what route he wanted, and if he got 1-on-1, we were going up top to Ashton.”
Grant wasn’t just productive on the field. He raised the bar off of it, too. His strength coach at the time, Chris Grautski, keeps diligent notes from the weight room and still has Grant’s max lifts:
- Squat: 460 pounds
- Bench press: 310 pounds
- Hang clean: 305 pounds
“That’d put him as the top of any receiver we had had there at Assumption,” Grautski said. “He made me believe that he loved the work… knowing him the way I know him now, that’s just who he is. That phrase: How you do some things is how you do everything. If he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it at 100%.”
Cleveland Browns offensive assistant and quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant (C) watches during in an 11-on-11 drill with quarterbacks Deshaun Watson (L) and Joshua Dobbs during Day 3 of training camp held at The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, July 24, 2023.John Kuntz, cleveland.com
‘Demanding but never demeaning’
After graduating, Grant received training camp invites from the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears, a rarity for Division II players, but didn’t catch on. He knew he wanted to coach, so he joined the new staff Chesney was assembling at Holy Cross.
As a graduate assistant, Grant’s tedious tasks went beyond chauffeuring Bo Chesney. He was writing hundreds of notecards, breaking film down, running scout teams, and clocking long hours.
Grautski and Canan — Assumption’s strength and wide receivers coaches — also made the leap to Holy Cross with Chesney, so they all saw their former player’s transition to coaching. Detail-oriented and curious about all phases of the game, Grant’s evolution was natural given his work ethic.
“He’s a very demanding coach, but he’s never demeaning,” Canan said. “He’s going to know how to get the best out of that person.”
During his two seasons as a graduate assistant, Grant served as a bridge between the players and the coaching staff. Relationship-building is a hallmark of his.
Whether it’s with teammates, coaches or colleagues, Grant has a knack for forging bonds.
“I recruited him, I coached him, and then I coached with him,” Grautski said. “I consider him a friend now.”
As the Patriots quarterbacks coach, he still got lunch with Canan earlier this month and he visits all of the Chesneys when he can.
“He’s like part of our family,” Chensey said.
A lasting message
With strong recommendations, Grant landed the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship with the Cleveland Browns in 2020.
He spent two seasons in that role before Kevin Stefanski promoted him to quality control coach (2022) and offensive assistant/quarterbacks (2023-24). It was there that Grant first crossed paths with Mike Vrabel, who arrived in Cleveland as a consultant.
Vrabel’s role was on offense, but one of the main responsibilities Stefanski tasked him with was developing younger coaches. Grant checked both of those boxes and spent a lot of time under Vrabel’s wing.
“We would do mock interviews with each other. I would have to get on the board and teach him concepts and he would give me feedback,” Grant said. “I just remember one day I was doing that type of exercise and I turned around and it’s Vrabel in one chair, it’s Kevin Stefanski in another chair, it’s Jim Schwartz up top. I’m like ‘Holy Crap!’ This is pretty neat being able to do that in front of three former and current head coaches.”
When Vrabel took on the task of rebuilding the struggling Patriots, he put Grant, just 29, in charge of one of the most important parts.
He’ll be asked to keep budding franchise quarterback Drake Maye on track following a promising rookie season. It’s a high-pressure job for a young coach, but in the Cleveland quarterback room, Jameis Winston and Deshaun Watson were both older than Grant.
As he tried to soak up everything he could as a graduate assistant, Grant attended the 2020 Big New England Football Clinic in Rhode Island. The keynote speaker was one Grant is going to become awfully familiar with, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.
“He talked about how he was here in 2001 and 2002 and he was 24 years old telling (veteran Pro Bowler) Lawyer Milloy different coaching points,” Grant said. “I remember being like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty neat.’”
The message from McDaniels was simple: Players don’t care how old you are, as long as you can help them get better.
“That’s stuck with me,” Grant said. “I’ve just tried to stay true to that.”
Grant is eager to apply that principle, and all the others he’s picked up in his short, but well-stocked coaching career to Maye.
“In terms of the talent, I think he can do everything you would want out of the quarterback position,” Grant said. “He seems like a super smart kid. I’m excited.”
