Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (10 page)

Slo-mo.

—And keep those elbows high and tight and them arms pumping. Pull that elbow through, get your fucking head around, and come
downhill.
You got me? Come downhill at a sharp angle and
attack
the football. C’mon, Ash. We gotta get better at this.

It is a difference in schools of thought. One school, Blade’s school, trusts the instincts of the pro football player, because he trusted his own when he played. He allows more improvisation. He supplies the general parameters and steps back. The nuance of the game’s technique is decided by the player’s athletic instinct.

The other school, the one more common in the NFL, is the more rigid, systematic assembly line of angularly identical patterns. It believes that every football play has one right answer. If you choose the question you get to choose the answer. It is a tightly structured philosophy and has evolved steadily over the years. Blade and Kube both played in the NFL, but they had very different experiences. Blade was a wide receiver and played in every game. Kube was a career backup quarterback who knew the system inside and out but rarely got to play. With all of that studying and no playing, the game becomes conceptual, and as a coach, Kube trusts the concepts over the instinct of the player, who comes and goes. But Kube skillfully toes the line between player-speak and coach-speak, and knows how to communicate in terms we understand. And he serves as the perfect buffer between the rigid offensive system and our often unsystematic instincts as players.

They’re always hard on Ashley because he’s a first-round pick. They expect a lot out of him. They also expect a lot out of Darius. He’s a rookie second-round pick. And he’s up next. He runs a skinny post versus off coverage. The ball’s slightly behind him. Incomplete pass.

—Okay, D. You know what I’m going to tell you here, right?

—Catch the ball?

—No. Well, yes, but no. How many steps do we take on a skinny post?

—Seven.

—Right, seven. Now let’s watch your steps.

Slo-mo.

—How many did you take?

—Five.

—Yep. That’s why the ball was late and behind you. That quarterback is taking his drop and letting it fly on time. Look, you broke at nine yards. This is a twelve-yard route. Remember, guys, there’s a rhyme and reason for everything. The skinny post is a seven-step route, ideal against Cover Three or Quarters, but it takes timing. First off, your inside foot has to be forward. Make sure your inside foot is up or else you’re gonna be breakin’ on your sixth or eighth step, and the timing’ll be thrown off. It’s seven steps. So your inside foot is up, seven steps hard up the field and break to the near goalpost. And don’t take yourself across the field. Remember, it’s called “skinny” for a reason. We are staying in that seam. Right up the sidewalk. Got me, D?

—Yes, sir.

—And you’re right, catch the fucking ball.

Next up is Charlie. He runs a “sluggo”: a slant and go. The corner bites on his slant fake and Charlie runs right by him. Pass complete for a touchdown.

—Charlie, great work here. You guys see this? This is textbook stuff right here. What’s the most important thing on the sluggo, guys?

—Sell the slant.

—That’s right. You gotta sell the shit out of it. And that doesn’t mean a half-assed head fake. Run the slant for three good steps. Make him believe you. Give the quarterback your eyes. Then come out of it hard and give your quarterback a throw. Be a friendly target for him. You have time to win on this route. We are going to protect it up front, but you gotta beat your man. This is a home run if we do it right. Great work, Charlie.

Then our other rookie, Triandos Luke, is on-screen running an “acute”: a twelve-yard comeback. Champ jams Tri off the line and lets him go, indicating that he’s in a Cover Two. Tri runs his twelve-yard comeback but the quarterback, seeing Champ sitting in the throwing lane, goes elsewhere with the ball.

—Tri, you know what I’m going to tell you here, son?

—No, sir.

—What coverage do you see here?

—Cover Two?

—Yes, Cover Two. And what do we do on the Acute versus a Cover Two?

Rod leans over and whispers to Tri. Tri relays it to Kube.

—Convert it.

—That’s right, you gotta convert this to a fade. There’s a hole shot there if Jake wants to take it but with you out there running your own shit, we don’t have a chance. See how Champ is sitting in that window? This ain’t a Cover Two route. We gotta have our heads up and be payin’ attention out there. Don’t get locked in, boys. Every play depends on what they give us. We gotta know that we can count on you guys to know your shit. You got me?

—Yes, sir.

—Okay, fellas, that’s enough for tonight.

It was a two-hour meeting to end a thirteen-hour day.

—Good job out there today. Look, I know y’all are tired. This shit ain’t easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We’re going to be hard on you in here so you can improve as players out there on the field. You got me? Just keep on fighting, one day at a time. Let’s get a little better every day. Break it up with your coaches.

We stay in the room with Blade, and the QBs, running backs, and tight ends leave to their respective position rooms. Every position group has its own meeting room. We have fifteen minutes to kill before he can let us go. At 9:30 p.m. our day’s over. I stop by the cafeteria on my way to my car and fill up a Styrofoam to-go box with whatever late-night snack options I can find: corn dogs, taquitos, burritos. I drive home in pain and silence: another day of training camp in the books.

T
he first ten days of training camp are the roughest. Each day feels like a week. Each step feels like my last. The pain is constant and comes from everywhere, pushing up from the bottom of my feet and down from the top of my rattled skull. But soon there is a preseason game that breaks up the monotony of the ritual lashings. Then after the second preseason game, we prepare for the first of two rounds of cuts. One is after the third preseason game and one is after the fourth and final. The first cut chops off about twenty guys. I look around the meeting room after the first cut and feel the weight of their absence, knowing damn well I’ve just witnessed twenty football funerals. Flip makes it official as he goes from locker to locker removing their nameplates and filling up his rolling bin with helmets and shoulder pads.

The night before the last preseason game that will set the final roster, Kube excuses the starters from the meeting room and lets them go home and rest. They won’t be playing in this game. They’ve already made the team. Must be nice. The rest of us are just hoping for another few weeks of free shoes.

—Now I know this isn’t where you wanna be sitting, boys. You wanna be out there with those guys. But don’t get discouraged. We brought y’all here for a reason, and you guys played your asses off for us all summer. Don’t think we didn’t notice that. There are some great football players in this room. So tomorrow night, when you get out on that field, leave it all out there. Think of it like this: it’s a job interview for thirty-one other companies. All of them will be watching. If it doesn’t work out here, another one of those thirty-one teams might snatch you up. Put it on tape. Put it on tape. The eye in the sky don’t lie, boys. That tape lasts forever. Be proud of what you’ve done here, but finish it off the right way tomorrow. Believe me when I say it, I wish we could keep all of you guys. I really do. But we all understand this business. This is the hardest part of the job.

A lot of coach-speak is bullshit, but I believe Kube when he says this.

—I’ll leave you with this: whether or not this is the last game you ever play, understand that by making it into this seat at all, you have beaten the odds. You should feel proud of yourselves for that. Now go out there tomorrow night and have some fun. Pin your ears back and have some fucking
fun
out there, boys. Good luck.

T
he next night I run out of the tunnel and look up in the stands. My mom and dad are sitting a few rows back with Alina. They wave down at me as I jog to the sideline. Coach said we’d get plenty of playing time in the game. That’s good and bad. Football game shape is different than football practice shape. And I’m on every special teams unit. I brace myself for a long evening.

We rest our starters but Arizona plays theirs in the first half. Matt Mauck and Bradlee Van Pelt have been locked in a solid backup QB battle all camp. They are very different quarterbacks, trying their best to adapt to the demands of a new system. The over-coaching and attention to detail that NFL quarterbacks must deal with is stifling. For a rookie QB, it can be overwhelming. But Bradlee and Matt have made it through the hardest part. Now it’s time to play. Matt starts the game and takes the bulk of the snaps. Charlie, Triandos, and I play the whole game at wide receiver, rotating as much as we can but often stepping to the line of scrimmage horribly out of breath. In the middle of the third quarter I run a backside post on a pass play designed to go to the other side. The backside post never gets the ball in practice, but shit happens during games. Matt scrambles and finds me running across the field. He throws a low strike across his body and I go down to the ground to secure the catch. Touchdown. Triandos smacks me on the head. I hold the ball up high in the air. Matt and I share a quick embrace on the sideline and I’m back in the huddle for kickoff.

We lose the game but who cares. I played well. Charlie played well. Triandos played well. Matt played well. Bradlee played well. But some of us will have to go. Vic Lombardi, CBS’s main sports anchor and the face of Denver sports media, interviews me after the game.

—How do you feel you did out there tonight?

—I feel pretty good about it. There’s nothing I can do now, though. Coach said to be near our phones tomorrow morning. That’s when they’re doing the cutting.

—So you’re saying I shouldn’t call you tomorrow morning then?

—No. Please don’t.

He turns to the camera.

—You heard it. If you know Nate Jackson, do
not
call him tomorrow. From the Broncos locker room, I’m Vic Lombardi, CBS Sports.

T
he next morning my phone doesn’t ring. I check it to make sure the battery isn’t dead. The following day I tiptoe into work and look around. My locker’s still here. No one is looking at me funny. I made the fucking team. Triandos is here, too. So is Charlie. So is Matt. So is Bradlee. We all made it, for now.

Coach Shanahan takes the podium at the first team meeting of the regular season.

—Look around the room, guys. This is our team. Looks pretty empty in here, doesn’t it? Well, you guys made it. And you all deserve to be here. You’ve earned that seat. And I couldn’t feel any better about the guys in this room. We have a chance to do something special here. Now it’s up to us to see if we can put it all together. We know what we’ve got to do; let’s go get it done.

That night I talk to Ryan, my agent. He congratulates me and says this is just the next step.

—Keep doing whatever they ask you to do. Get in tight with the special teams coach. The more you can do, the better.

We also talk about my contract, but there’s not much to discuss: it’s minimum wage. There’s also a “split” clause in the contract stipulating that if I get put on injured reserve, my pay gets cut in half for the remainder of the season. Much like the waiver I signed in San Francisco, the split is a product of having no leverage. Whatever. I’m on a team. That’s all that matters. And teams play games. But games only take up sixteen days of the year.

The other 349, I’m still a professional football player. Those days don’t make it on television, but they are what the job is all about. With all of that time around the games, football becomes a science project in technical perfection. That means execution. The NFL is about execution.

But it’s not hard to figure out how to do things right. I just watch Rod. He’ll let me know when I’m messing up. He cares too much about the team not to. That week we win our home opener against the Chiefs. Then we travel to Florida the next week to play the Jacksonville Jaguars. I’m the number four receiver. My job’s to give Rod, Ashley, or Darius a rest if they get tired. Sometimes I’ll stand at attention for a whole quarter and not get on the field; others I’ll have a flurry of plays.

I
n the locker room at halftime, Jake’s pissed. We’re down 7–6. The offense isn’t clicking. The receivers aren’t producing and look tired on the field.

—We need someone in there who can fucking run! We need some fresh legs! Fucking put Nate in! At least he’ll
run
!

Late in the fourth quarter D-Watts is slow getting up after he fails to come down with a ball on the sideline. Blade looks at me.

—Get in for Darius!

I flag him down and run on the field. There are just over two minutes left in the game and we’re on our own thirty-two, down a point. I run an “Omaha”—a five-yard out—and Jake throws me the ball. I catch it and am tackled immediately as the clock strikes the two-minute warning. My first NFL catch. They honor the moment by going to a commercial break.

Coach motions for me to stay in the huddle. We’re in our “zebra” package—three receivers, one tight end, and one running back. Our first-down pass falls incomplete to Rod. On second down, Jake hits Ashley for eight yards. The clock ticks. We run up to the line of scrimmage. I’m in the slot. Jake yells out the play and snaps the ball. I run 10 yards straight up the seam and bend it in toward the middle to see the ball spiraling toward me. It sinks into my chest as the free safety pops me on the left side of my body. I fall to the ground with the ball in my arms. First down at the Jaguars’ thirty-five: field goal range for our Pro Bowl kicker, Jason Elam.

We call timeout. I jog off the field, replaced by a running back in our base package. My teammates high-five me and slap my head.

On the next play Jake runs for nine yards, then Quentin Griffin for two yards and a first down. Jake spikes the ball with 1:07 left. The next play’s a one-yard gain down to the twenty-four. We just have to center it up for Jason. But on the next play—with forty-four seconds remaining—Q takes the handoff and fumbles. Jacksonville recovers the fumble and we lose, just like that. We hang our heads and walk across the field to the locker room. Blade puts his arm around me on the way in.