Ravens fan and college student Gordon Cartnail turned his passion for rug making into a lucrative business.
Ravens fan and college student Gordon Cartnail turned his passion for rug making into a lucrative business.
The Baltimore Ravens were coasting.
They garnered over 500 yards while holding the Seattle Seahawks to just 151, dominating for a 37-3 win in November 2023. Lamar Jackson outgained Seattle himself, accounting for 247 yards as he embarked on another MVP-winning season.
Baltimore had found a groove. The win marked the Ravens’ fourth straight, strengthening their case as a Super Bowl contender.
As Jackson roamed the sideline, something in the crowd piqued his interest.
Hours earlier, Ravens equipment manager Jordan Brown had been approached by Gordon Cartnail, a Ravens fan, with a custom rug for Jackson. Handmade using acrylic yarn, it depicted Jackson in a throwing motion. Cartnail made it with the intention of giving it to the Ravens quarterback at a game and told Brown about it.
“He’s my favorite player in the NFL. Favorite athlete of all time, basically,” Cartnail told ESPN.
Brown grabbed Jackson and pointed out Cartnail, who stood grinning ear to ear in the stands while proudly boasting the rug. Brown explained that Cartnail was going to give it to him, but before Brown could finish his sentence, Jackson interrupted.
“I want that,” he said. “Tell his ass. I want that damn carpet.”
And Jackson got that damn carpet. Brown grabbed it for the two-time MVP, who found Cartnail after the game, dapped him up, signed his jersey and thanked him.
NFL Films posted the entire sideline exchange of Jackson spotting the rug and it quickly went viral on social media. The jubilation in the quarterback’s reaction is exactly why Cartnail knits.
The Houston Texans flew Cartnail out to NRG Stadium to deliver a rug for C.J. Stroud, who stopped in his tracks to acknowledge the work.
“The Texans DMed me on Instagram from the actual Texans page themselves,” he recalled. “They said they wanted to do C.J., so I sent them a couple of ideas. We agreed on a photo, and then I made the rug. They flew me out, I met them at the game, talked to them on the sideline, and yeah — it was just completely crazy. That was my first time ever being on a plane and everything. It was amazing.”
Houston flew Cartnail out on his birthday to deliver the rug during its wild-card game against the Cleveland Browns last season.
In all of his collaborations, Cartnail’s mission has remained constant: spreading positivity and honoring athletes’ accomplishments in a unique form.
“If there’s anything that I could do to bring somebody some happiness, put a smile on their face, whatever it is that I could do to bring some kind of positivity in this world amongst all the negativity, I’m most definitely willing to do that,” Cartnail said.
The rugs serve as a way to solidify “everything they’ve done in a moment.” Whether it’s the throwing motions of Jackson or Stroud, his intent remains clear.
Cartnail described the work as “one-of-one” because the rugs are handmade. A rug he made for Ravens running back Derrick Henry took him 36 hours.
The running back’s reaction to it gained traction, similar to Jackson’s. Ravens linebacker Marlon Humphrey has one waiting for him also.
The NBA reached out to Cartnail about a rug for Los Angeles Lakers guard Bronny James during the Las Vegas summer league. ESPN contacted Cartnail for a piece before the Army-Navy game in 2023 that was displayed on the set of “College GameDay.” Carmelo Anthony reached out for one too — though Cartnail didn’t indicate if something came to fruition.
But no matter who receives his custom rugs, Cartnail yearns for the same goal.
“I just want to put smiles and bring smiles on people’s faces through the art that I make,” he said.
Referred to as “112rugs” — inspired by his birthday, Jan. 12 — he’s known within the Ravens community as “the rug guy.” As a die-hard Ravens fan, the majority of his rugs have been Baltimore-centric, but Cartnail isn’t opposed to making a rug for a rival.
“Business is business, at the end of the day,” he said.
He stayed true to his word when he delivered one to Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Quez Watkins this season.
Cartnail, a Baltimore native, is currently a graduate student at Stevenson University in Maryland. He’s studying criminal investigations with the hope of joining a police academy then eventually the FBI. It’s a far cry from the tufting and acrylic yarn he deals with on the side.
“It feels like I’m kind of here, there, everywhere,” he said. “But it’s like wherever God calls me, that’s where I’ll go.”
His education was the spark that influenced his rug-making journey. While in school, he began considering business ideas and stumbled upon a YouTube video of someone creating custom rugs. Intrigued, Cartnail used a college refund check to buy supplies and taught himself how to knit by watching social media videos.
When the materials arrived in March 2023, Cartnail — who had no prior artistic background — threw himself into learning.
The basics proved to be an immediate issue. Tufting wasn’t working, yarn kept snapping and a lot of rugs went in the trash.
But the challenges didn’t derail Cartnail’s vision.
After long days of school and shifts at Home Depot, he came home and worked on a rug.
“It was a couple days where I was like… ‘I kind of just want to throw this up and just try something new,'” Cartnail said. “But I just kind of stuck through with it.”
The trial and error phase lasted every day for a month and a half. Eventually, he learned the craft.
A rug for Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman ended up being his first for a professional athlete. Soon after, he collaborated with the Orioles on a rug of shortstop Gunnar Henderson.
From there, Cartnail’s business entered a word-of-mouth phase. While he worked to advertise himself to potential clients and navigate the business side of things, he was equally focused on ensuring the quality and authenticity of his work.
“I don’t want to just sell people crappy rugs,” he said. “I want to make sure that if I make something, it’s something that people enjoy and it catches their eye.”
The attention from Baltimore’s quarterback changed everything.
Two weeks before the viral exchange happened, Cartnail ran into Ravens wide receiver Zay Flowers at a gas station. Cartnail told him about his work and Flowers requested one for his new house. Cartnail said he would make one in exchange for Flowers spreading the word, which the wide receiver agreed to do.
The rugs for Flowers and Jackson were made with the intention of giving them to each player. But Cartnail couldn’t predict the response to Jackson’s piece. He had no idea that NFL Films captured the moment.
Cartnail revealed he was at his aunt’s viewing when a friend informed him about the Instagram post going viral. After stepping outside to watch the video, he returned moments later, and what had been a somber day turned less so.
His social media stopped working. His follower count soared from 9,000 to 32,000 in hours. His parents advised him to soak it in and enjoy the moment. He still has thousands of unopened direct messages from that “surreal” day.
“I’m not saying I didn’t have anything [before], but only having maybe one to two orders here and there that I had to fight for …'” Cartnail said. “To thousands and thousands and thousands of people just flooding my DMs. It kind of was like an overwhelming feeling.”
Clientele started coming in and the business grew. Cartnail finally began selling his rugs.
It has been much of the same this NFL season, highlighted by an emotional moment when he gifted a rug depicting her late son to the mother of former longtime Texans and Ravens wide receiver Jacoby Jones.
“That one was really special to me … Whatever it is that I do, I always wanted to do something that’s special in something and that can touch somebody more than just seeing a custom rug,” Cartnail said.
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