Terry Crews has built a public career that extends well beyond professional football. Before his later creative and publishing work, he played in the NFL after captaining Western Michigan’s football team and being selected in the 1991 NFL Draft.
His later work has included furniture design with Bernhardt Design, books for adults and younger readers, and public advocacy connected with survivor rights. In interviews, Crews has also spoken about how lessons from football, creativity, preparation, vulnerability, and recovery influenced the way he approached later stages of his professional life.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| College football | Western Michigan team captain in 1990 |
| NFL Draft | Selected by the Los Angeles Rams in 1991 |
| NFL record | 32 regular-season appearances |
| Furniture work | Designer for Bernhardt Design |
| Memoir | Tough: My Journey to True Power, published in 2022 |
| Public advocacy | Testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018 |
| Recent publishing | Terry’s Many Hats released in the U.S. on April 7, 2026 |
How His Football Career Shaped His Early Professional Years
Western Michigan University records Crews as a defensive end and one of the football team’s captains in 1990. The university also lists him as an 11th-round selection by the Los Angeles Rams in the 1991 NFL Draft, taken 281st overall.
His professional football record includes appearances for the Los Angeles Rams in 1991, the San Diego Chargers in 1993, and Washington in 1995. NFL records credit him with 32 regular-season games.
Historical NFL stat displays are not fully consistent on his tackle totals, so the 32-game figure provides the clearer measure of his documented playing career.
Years later, Crews offered his own assessment of that period. In a 2025 Men’s Health interview, he said he had relied too heavily on natural ability while playing football and had not paid enough attention to smaller elements of preparation.
He said that experience shaped how he approached later professional opportunities. He began treating preparation more deliberately, rather than assuming ability alone would carry him through.
How Art Led Him Into Professional Furniture Design
Crews’ involvement in design grew out of an interest in art that predated his professional furniture work.
In a 2017 Fast Company interview, he described becoming increasingly involved with the design community while supporting designer Ini Archibong and attending design events in Milan and New York. Through that environment, he met Bernhardt Design president Jerry Helling.
According to Crews, Helling later looked more closely at his artistic background and invited him to develop his own furniture. Bernhardt Design subsequently established Crews as one of its professional designers.
That transition was not presented as a simple celebrity licensing project. Crews described actively developing ideas and learning how to turn them into finished furniture.
His working process also involved accepting unsuccessful early attempts. Speaking to Architectural Digest in 2019, he said he often disliked his first sketches but had learned to keep drawing until the idea developed.
Why His Furniture Work Became a Serious Creative Career
Bernhardt Design credits Crews with multiple furniture lines and individual designs, including RKC, Becca, Belmont, Float, Elevation, and Crews.
The company continued to maintain active product pages for his work through 2026. Those listings establish his continued presence in Bernhardt’s catalog, although they do not mean every listed design was launched that year.
Crews has described furniture design as appealing partly because it gave him a different relationship with competition. In his Fast Company interview, he contrasted creating something new with environments centered more on defeating a competitor.
One of his most personal collections was Becca. Crews told Architectural Digest that he named the collection after his wife, Rebecca King-Crews, and developed its softer forms around qualities he associated with her.
The collection therefore connected his professional design work with a personal source of inspiration, while remaining part of a commercially produced Bernhardt line.
How Writing Expanded His Work Beyond Design
Crews’ creative work later expanded into publishing.
Penguin Random House published his memoir, Tough: My Journey to True Power, on April 26, 2022. The book centered on his changing understanding of strength, vulnerability, and personal growth.
Around its release, Crews discussed those ideas directly in a McKinsey interview. He explained that his definition of strength had shifted from projecting toughness to greater emotional openness, self-control, and a willingness to be vulnerable.
He also moved into books for younger readers. Hachette Book Group lists him as the author of the middle-grade graphic novel Terry’s Crew.
His publishing work continued in 2026 with Terry’s Many Hats, illustrated by Tanisha Cherislin. The book was released in the United States on April 7, 2026, through Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Its central idea closely matches a theme visible across Crews’ own professional history: a person does not necessarily have to limit himself to a single interest or role.
How Public Advocacy Became Part of His Work
Crews also entered a public policy discussion around survivor rights.
On June 26, 2018, he appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing focused on implementing and advancing the Survivors’ Bill of Rights.
The committee’s official record identifies him as a witness alongside Rise founder Amanda Nguyen. He served as a witness and advocate rather than an author or sponsor of the legislation.
In written responses submitted to the committee, Crews discussed some of the pressures that can affect whether survivors report misconduct. He pointed to physical, financial, and emotional consequences as well as power imbalances that can make reporting difficult.
His comments focused especially on safety and the unequal positions that can exist between a survivor and a more powerful person or institution.
That testimony added a public advocacy role to his professional record and gave his discussion of vulnerability a concrete policy context rather than leaving it only within personal interviews or memoir writing.
What His Recent Interviews Show About His Approach to Growth
Crews’ more recent interviews provide a clearer picture of how he now approaches work, training, relationships, and personal development.
In his June 2025 Men’s Health interview, he said he schedules Wednesdays and Sundays as active-recovery days instead of training continuously. Sunday also has a family component in his routine.
In the same interview, he connected his current approach to preparation with lessons from his football years, when he said he had relied too heavily on natural ability.
He has applied similar language of reassessment to his personal life. In a February 2025 PEOPLE interview, Crews said that he and Rebecca had reached a serious crisis roughly two decades into their marriage and eventually chose to rebuild the relationship.
He described love as something that requires continued work and said he had to reconsider the difference between loving someone and trying to control them.
Those comments fit with themes Crews has discussed elsewhere about vulnerability, preparation, personal responsibility, and changing his understanding of strength. His career therefore includes several periods in which he has publicly described rethinking how he approaches work, preparation, creativity, and personal responsibility.
From college football and a 32-game NFL career to furniture design, publishing, and Senate testimony, Terry Crews has worked across several distinct professional and public roles.
Crews’ move beyond professional football also parallels Dave Bautista‘s, whose documented career developed beyond professional wrestling into other pursuits and public advocacy.