Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (13 page)

Pull it out and wipe it clean, Rico. Now stick it in the next guy.

I
’m stuck on the bench all season. There are fifty-three players on each team but only forty-five suit up for the game. On game day I walk into the locker room and Chris Trulove, one of our head scouts, finds me and gives me a thumbs-down sign and tells me that I’m “down.” That means put on your sweats, not your uniform. We don’t need you today. You suck at football.

After sulking for a few minutes, I go out to the field to run the 16x100’s required of inactive players by Rich. Then I set in on the doughnuts and coffee. Knowing I’m not playing immediately relaxes my stomach. I stand and eat sunflower seeds on the sideline while my friends play. At halftime I solicit one of the ball boys to steal me a hot dog from the equipment room. I make sure to reward him with an important sideline chat. There’s this thing called a “vagina.” Come here. I take him over to the dry-erase board and uncap a pen. He walks away.

Bobby was right, I’m a worthless piece of shit. Compounding my feelings of inadequacy is the success we are having as a team. Jake’s our undisputed leader and has us on a roll. We lost our opening game in Miami, then we won five in a row. We lost against the Giants in New York then won another four in a row. We have a complete team: offense, defense, and special teams. The locker room is a happy place. Charlie’s playing a lot and catching passes. Kyle’s our starting fullback. Rod’s healthy and playing well. Everyone is smiling and high-fiving and having a grand old time. The city of Denver is ecstatic. I stand on the sideline and clap my hands like a fucking fanboy.

A
s our success increases, so does the media presence at our facility. Every day at lunch, they mill around the locker room, creating an obstacle course of people holding cameras and microphones, trying hard not to look at our genitalia. During one of the lunch media sessions, Frank Schwab, a beat reporter, asks Charlie for an interview. Charlie knows all his plays, never drops the balls, is always on time, runs good routes, and so on. He’s a reliable player and everyone on the team knows it. The previous game, though, Charlie dropped a tough catch in the fourth quarter. Frank decides to turn it into a story.

—How bad did it feel when you dropped that pass in the fourth quarter?

—Did you think you let your team down?

—What did Coach say to you when you came to the sideline?

—Do you expect those opportunities to come again after that drop?

—Do you think Jake lost confidence in you after that play?

Charlie answers them all calmly and professionally. But my locker is right across from Charlie’s. I’m listening to the whole thing. After the last question about Jake losing confidence in him, I interject.

—What kind of question is that?

—What?

—I said what kind of question is that?

—What, you didn’t like that question?

—No, I didn’t.

—I’m trying to do my job, Nate.

—Oh really? That’s your
job
, Frank? Please.

—Yeah, that’s what . . . I’m . . .

He stands up and stomps off. Then he pops his head around the corner.

—Mind your own business, Nate.

With that, he’s off again. We laugh loudly, our cackles reverberating through the locker room and chasing him out the door.

Rod doesn’t take any shit from the media. He runs the show. He only answers questions on Thursdays for ten minutes before practice. Everyone knows it so they don’t bother him otherwise. At the allotted time, twenty people crowd around him and shoot questions at him, a hectic scene. Rod is in total control. If he doesn’t like the question he simply won’t acknowledge it, or he’ll give the reporter a look that sends him or her retreating to the other side of the locker room. I have a front-row seat for the Rod Show because his locker is next to mine. I have to climb over cameramen and reporters to get to my stuff. To make it extra awkward for them, I wait until they arrive before I change. Nudity is the one power move that the media have no answer for. Sure, you can ask that question when my clothes are on, but how about . . . now?

Our offensive line doesn’t speak to the media at all. They have an internal policy enforced by fine and degradation that no offensive lineman is to speak to the media at any time for any reason. It’s common knowledge around the locker room. The media members know it and never bother asking any O-linemen any questions, unless there’s a new guy or a rookie. Then they try to catch him before he learns the rule, just to get him in trouble.

A
s the season progresses, our playoff prospects come into view. If we win our division we’ll have a home playoff game no matter what. If we have the best record in the AFC we’ll have home field advantage for the whole playoffs. We travel to Dallas to play the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. It’s a big game and we’re very focused. But we also have penises.

My friend has a lady there that he wants to see. But the hotel for away games is like Fort Knox. No nonplayers can get on our floor. And we can’t leave the floor after 11:15 p.m. So he books a separate room at the hotel that will serve as their lion’s den. He puts it under her name and she checks in and waits for him. He scopes out the exits and decides that a stairwell on the east side of the building will be his best bet. There’s security at every exit so it amounts to choosing the friendliest-looking guard. He tells the rent-a-cop that his fiancée is in the hotel and she’s pregnant and he wishes he could spend the night down there with her. Then after bed checks he goes back to the same exit and asks the security guard if he’ll let him pass.

—No dice.

—Really?

—Nope. Sorry.

—Seriously?
She’s pregnant, man.

—Sorry, strict orders.

—One hundred dollars.

—No.

—Two hundred dollars?

—Nope. Can’t do it.

—Wow.

He goes back to his room and calls her and explains why a grown man is not allowed to leave his hotel room. He tells her he’ll get down there as soon as he can. He goes to sleep and sets his alarm for 5 a.m. When it goes off he puts on his clothes and goes to the elevator for “breakfast,” nodding to the prison guard.

—Good
morning
! Can’t wait to eat
breakfast
! Really been thinking about those pancakes all night. Gosh, I’m hungry.

Ding.

He gets off at the lion’s den floor and slides into bed with her for as long as he can before he has to catch the late bus. He tells me the story at the stadium and I’m tickled. All of this talent, all of this work we go through to get here, all of the sweat and the blood, and a man can’t even get laid without cutting through miles of red tape. We beat the Cowboys. Ron Dayne breaks a 55-yard run on the second play of overtime, setting up the game-winning field goal. I watch the game in sweats. The sunflower seeds are delicious.

T
he next week we go to Kansas City to play the Chiefs. I walk into the locker room and get the old thumbs-down once again. It’s very cold outside. My sweats go back on and I pace the sidelines trying to stay warm. I stand in front of the industrial heater and drink hot chocolate. Then one of my inactive friends hands me a Gatorade bottle with white athletic tape wrapped around it.

—Go on. This’ll warm you up.

I take a swig. Cognac. I pass it back. He laughs at the face I make. By the fourth quarter he’s drunk, running all the way on the field between plays, stomping around and cursing at opposing players. No one notices. Probably because there’s blood splattered all over the sidelines.

Running backs coach Bobby Turner got a bad nosebleed before the game started. Our team doctors did what they could but it only got worse. They urged him to relax in the locker room but he wasn’t listening. Bobby T’s not going to sit in the locker room while his boys are out there going to war. We need him. He’s a calming force on the sidelines. Most coaches freak out on game day because they can’t control anything. But Bobby T is calm. He is also in charge of substitutions on the sidelines. All of the offensive skill position players gather around him and await his word. Before every play, he yells out the personnel group—Base, Tiger, Zebra, Eagle, Trey, Empty—which determines how many receivers and running backs and tight ends are on the field for the play. So he stands on the sideline in the Kansas City cold with a cup full of blood in his hand and does his job.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the bleeding, the doctors stuff gauze up his nose. There’s dark blood splattered on the sideline. He’s coughing it up because it’s backed up through his sinuses and it’s drowning him. I stand next to him and keep watch. Then he blinks heavily a few times and blood trickles from the corners of his eyes and runs down his cheeks. I nudge our physician, who’s standing next to me. He shrugs. Yeah, he sees it. But what’s he going to do? Bobby T’s a grown man who knows what’s important to him. And the game rolls along, oblivious to the pools of blood.

It means a lot for me to see Bobby T bleed. As a player, it sometimes feels that the coaches who radiate toughness are only play-acting. They don’t really mean it; they never have to prove it. But on the sideline in Kansas City, Bobby T proves it with every bloody tear.

We lose 31–27. It’s our third and last loss of the season. After that we win four straight, finishing the season in San Diego against the Chargers, our division rivals. John Lynch sacks Drew Brees near his own end zone late in the game, dislocating Brees’s shoulder and sending the Chargers into the off-season, Brees to the New Orleans Saints, and us to the postseason with a 13-3 record. As we pull out of the stadium, the Chargers fans in Black-Fly sunglasses and brand-new powder-blue jerseys, drunk and stoned on hydroponic weed and Percocets, line our path and urge us to go to hell. Really they’re just checking themselves out in the reflection of the bus.

We’re the second seed in the AFC, behind the Colts. After our first-round bye, the Patriots come to town, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions. They have considerable moxie. They have chutzpah. They have Bill Belichik! And Tom Brady! We have Champ Bailey. He picks off Tom Brady in the end zone in the fourth quarter and returns it 100 yards for a tugboat, sending the Patriots home shy of their quest to three-peat and us on to the AFC Championship game against the Steelers, who have just beaten the Colts in Indy. As Champ runs alone down the sideline, [Insert Corporate Logo Here] Field explodes. It’s the loudest I have ever heard the Denver fans. We’re one win away from the Super Bowl.

Almost immediately my phone starts ringing. Everyone I know wants to fly out for the game. Eight friends end up coming, even though I assured them I won’t be playing. That’s not the point, I soon realize. They want to come to Denver and party.

I’m living in a one-bedroom apartment with an office. Four of them stay at my place and four get a hotel room around the corner. There are empty bottles and pizza boxes and odious dude smells clinging to the ceiling fan after just one night in town. I’m thankful to have some peace and quiet in the hotel the night before the game.

The morning of kickoff, I come home and pick them up and we drive downtown. I laugh as they recount the previous evening and make a mental note to steam-clean my futon. The drive into the stadium is a psychedelic trip on an orange-and-blue carnival ride. The Broncos are back and Denver is in a state of euphoria.

But in the locker room there is a different vibe. Since I’m not playing, I’m hyperaware of how the locker room atmosphere translates onto the field. I usually know if we’ll win before the game starts. I sit in my locker and savor my chocolate doughnut. I know it will be my last of the season. The locker room is dead.

We come out flat and go down 24–3 in the first half. It’s all we can do to claw back and make it interesting, but we lose 34–17. It was never even close. My mind flashes to my eight friends who insisted on coming even though I wasn’t playing. In addition to them I got another fifteen tickets for Denver people. I can only imagine the friends and family of my teammates who are actually playing the game. Charlie’s family from Pennsylvania was staying in his house with him all week. It was the same way for everyone. We were stretched thin by the love. By the time the game came around we were wiped out. Sometimes home field advantage can be a distraction.

The Steelers, who had squeaked into the playoffs, go on to win the Super Bowl. The airwaves light up in the days that follow our loss. Despite three straight post-season appearances, the fans are unhappy. The big finger points at Jake Plummer. Yeah, I guess it was a good season. But not good enough. Now someone has to pay.

6

Plummer’s Crack

(2006)

T
he next week Gary Kubiak is hired as the head coach of the Houston Texans. It was only a matter of time before he got a head-coaching gig. Kube was a rising star in the coaching world. But Jake and Kube are very close. Kube has served as the buffer between Coach Shanahan’s offensive philosophy and Jake’s unwillingness to be stuffed in a box. With Kube gone, something has to give. As the draft approaches, the talk of the town is not about our team’s success; it is about Jake. Coach trades the 15th and 68th picks to St. Louis for their 11th pick in the draft. Roger Goodell walks to the podium and delivers the news.

—With the eleventh pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, the Denver Broncos select Jay Cutler, QB, Vanderbilt.

The local media rejoice. They are still under the hypnotic effect of a powerful sedative, street name: JEN. John Elway Nostalgia isn’t fading with the years. It’s growing. There is Joe Montana nostalgia in the Bay Area but it’s different. Joe was traded when his health began to deteriorate. Steve Young was given the job and didn’t miss a beat. They’re both in the Hall of Fame now. They both won Super Bowls for the city, with contrasting styles of play. Niner fans learned several valuable lessons about the NFL through the trade of Joe Montana. One, there is no loyalty. Two, there are no storybook endings. Three, there is more than one way to play quarterback.

John Elway was the exception to almost every NFL rule. He was one of the most highly touted college athletes ever. He was the first pick in the draft. Then he played sixteen years for the same team. He avoided major injuries. He went to a million Pro Bowls. He won league and Super Bowl MVP, respectively, the latter in one of his five World Championship games. He won two rings, at the ages of thirty-seven and thirty-eight. Then he retired. That won’t happen again.

But in Denver, it fucking better!

T
he drafting of Jay is met with a powerless shrug in the locker room. We have no quarterback controversy. Jake is our guy. But we could see it coming. And it only serves to hammer home some points that most of us already understand. The NFL is not your friend. Your job is not guaranteed. Your life is under scrutiny. You play until they replace you.

We all have our own position battles to worry about, too. Jeb was released in the off-season, freeing up a tight end roster spot. I got excited for a moment, then the draft happened and I regained my perspective. After Jay, in the second round, we draft tight end Tony Scheffler. Then Brandon Marshall, a wide receiver, then defensive end Elvis Dumervil, wide receiver Domenik Hixon, and guard Chris Kuper. In addition to the draft, we trade for standout wide receiver Javon Walker. For every man who comes, one must go. Someone is always getting the old squeeze.

Tony is a pure pass-receiving tight end: freaky size and speed and great hands. A quiet, dark-haired, six-foot-five Michigan native, he is carrying the hopes of his family and his town and his school on his back. Add Brew to that load. Wes has injured his knee in our first minicamp, freeing up all of Brew’s time for Tony. Brew is mainly a run-blocking coach. He has only a nominal interest in the passing game. His bailiwick is biting someone in the fucking neck! He likes to get dirty. By that I mean that he likes for us to get dirty. Tony was a wide receiver coming out of high school and got bigger in college so he switched to tight end. But he has a receiver’s skill set. That’s what attracted scouts to him and that’s why we drafted him in the second round. But Brew wants to turn him into a road grader, a no-nonsense smashmouth run-blocking monster truck. “Attitude and effort are nonnegotiable,” Brew always says. Once we get to training camp and put on the pads, he shows Tony what he means.

—Tony, do you like how you look on film?

Silence.

—Well, do you?

—No.

—Fuck, you better not! You look like a fucking pussy, Tony. Look at this shit. You call that a fucking block? Stick your fucking face in there. You look like you’re playing patty-cake, Tony. Look at the weeble-wobble off the line of scrimmage.

—What the fuck is that? Be a fucking man, Tony!

—Fuckin’ bite him, Tony! Stick a fuckin’ knife in his hip! Tie his dick in a fucking knot, Tony!

—Oh, fuck me gently, Tony. What the fuck is this?

S.A., who played for Brew in San Diego, reminds Tony after meetings that Brew doesn’t even hear the words that he’s saying. He doesn’t realize he’s being a dick. In his mind he’s being tough but fair. But I can see it in Tony’s eyes: he’s taking it all personally. He’s chained to the wall in the dungeon of Brew’s sadistic football mind. Every day Tony’s eyes are getting wider and sinking farther back in his head. He is losing weight. He is cracking up. He needs to find a ladder and get the hell out of the tank.

Every night at our seven o’clock team meeting, we start things off by having a few rookies entertain us. One at a time they’re called to the front of the room to be harassed and humiliated. They must state their names, position, school, salary, anything anyone yells out, etc. Then they entertain us with a joke, a song, an impression, anything. If the performance sucks, he is booed off the stage and must return another night until he gets it right. A good performance wins your freedom, and more important, it wins over your teammates.

Tony, Jake, S.A., and I are eating dinner before meetings one night. Jake asks Tony if he has a joke ready. He says he has a few ideas but isn’t sure. He runs them by us. The one we like the most is the one he’s most reluctant to tell. We tell him that’s exactly why he has to tell it. But he’s not sure. He thinks he’s going to tell the one about the priest and the push-pop. Jake tells him that would be a mistake. Go with the one about the genie in the bottle.

In fifteen minutes we are all in our seats as the digital clock hits 7:00. We start the drumroll on the desks. Coach Shanahan yells:

—Tony!

He looks at me and stands up, then squeezes behind me, S.A., and Brew on his way into the aisle that takes him down the stairs and up to the podium. The team fires questions at him.

—Who are you?

—Tony Scheffler, tight end, Western Michigan.

—No! Who are you?

—Oh . . . Rookie.

—What was your signing bonus?

—Umm . . .

Boo and hiss.

—Okay, I have a joke for you guys.

He glances at Jake.

—So I’m out on the field the other day at practice and I missed a block, and I look over at Brew and he has that look on his face. You know, that
look
.

Chuckles from the audience.

—And when I walk back behind the huddle, he grabs my face mask and says ‘Tony! What the fucking fuck are you fucking doing, you bugfucker?! Don’t you know what a fucking
power block
is?’

Audible laughs.

—So needless to say, I’m feeling like shit after practice, walking through the locker room, and I kick a water bottle, and a genie pops out. The genie tells me that I have one wish. One wish? Man, I’m thinking to myself, I really just want to get drunk and forget about everything. So I say to the genie, ‘I wish that I can piss vodka.’ The genie shrugs and says, ‘Okay, and so it shall be,’ and disappears in a puff of smoke. I go to the bathroom and take a piss and sure enough, pure vodka! So I go into our meeting room and I tell all the guys about it and everyone gets excited so I fill up everyone’s glass and we’re having a grand old time. Well, most everyone forgets about it the next day, except for Brew. He comes up to me after practice and says, ‘Hey, boy! How ’bout some more of that vodka?’ So I say okay and I fill up his cup again. And the next night, Brew finds me again and grabs me by the back of the neck. ‘Hey, boy! How ’bout some of that good stuff?’ So I hook him up again. Then the next night, I see him walking toward me in the hall. He had just got through motherfucking me out on the field again. And here he comes with that big ol’ smile on his face, and he says to me, ‘Hey, there, boy! How ’bout some of that good stuff?’ like I’m his best friend in the world. So I said, ‘All right, Brew, I’ll give you some of that good stuff. But tonight . . . you’re drinking from the bottle.’

Yes!
The room collapses in laughter and applause and appreciation of the rare moment when a player regains the upper hand. Brew laughs along and takes it all in stride. He may be a hard-ass, but he has a sense of humor. Tony walks back up the aisle and squeezes behind Brew, S.A., and me, and sits back down as I congratulate him.

—Well done, bugfucker!

Coach Shanahan descends the stairs with a smile on his face.

—Good one, Tony. We’ll see how that one plays out tomorrow at practice.

L
ate the next week I see Charlie in the hall before meetings and he tells me he’s just been traded to the Dallas Cowboys. He says he’s leaving, like now. His flight is in a few hours. I don’t know what to say to him. Football goodbyes are strange. It’s like he’s being deported, voted off the island, banished. It happens nearly every day to somebody. And I know from experience, it’s likely that I’ll never see him again. NFL players evaporate when released.

He is on the plane to Oxnard, California, that night, which is where the Cowboys have training camp. He’s met at the airport by a driver who takes him to the team’s headquarters. The next morning he takes his physical, which is a formality before he can get on the field. But he does not pass the physical because of his knees. He’s had multiple ACL tears and knee surgeries over the years. His knees are junk. He practices every day in Denver on those knees, but they’re not good enough for Dallas, and the trade is nullified. He gets back on a plane to Denver and is back in meetings the next evening as if nothing ever happened. But now he knows the score. With Rod, Javon, Ashley, and now Brandon Marshall, there is a surplus at wide receiver. Someone is always getting the old squeeze.

Camp winds down and preseason games are in full swing. Jay has overtaken Bradlee for the number-two spot. Bradlee is doing his best to keep calm and carry on but the Jay Cutler tidal wave is rolling over everyone in its path. Jay plays well in the preseason, which disproportionately excites the media and the fans. But Jake plays well, too.

He throws me a 35-yard touchdown in the third preseason game against the Tennessee Titans. I’m wide open after a nice play-action fake by the entire offense, and as the ball floats down into my hands, I have to concentrate extra hard so as not to drop it. The wide-open catches are the hardest because you’re thinking about catching the ball. Catching the ball is an instinct: a reflex. When you stop to think about it, you put a kink in the circuit. Empty your mind and you’ll catch everything.

After the game, Charlie, Kyle, Matt Mauck, and our friend Grant Mattos stand at midfield and talk. Matt is gone now. He was cut the previous season and now plays for the Titans. Grant’s from San Jose, too. And we both have Ryan as our agent. Grant went to the University of Southern California, then San Diego, then we signed him in the off-season. He merged into our group of friends immediately but he was cut the day before training camp started and landed in Tennessee with Matt. Now here we all are, reunited for a moment on the fifty-yard line. We pose for a picture and say goodbye, scattered again to chase our gridiron dreams alone. The next week our roster is set.

Despite the media’s Jay fetish, Jake is our starter for week one. It’s in St. Louis and we put in a very heavy game plan. Nearly every team, every year, freaks out this way because the coaches have had all summer to prepare for the first opponent. None of the preseason games mean a thing. Game one looms as soon as the schedule is set. Game one matters. When it finally arrives coaches want to fire all of their guns at once.

Going into the game we have multiple audibles and line-of-scrimmage checks that depend on what defensive fronts and coverages and blitzes Jake sees when he gets under center. If they show this we change the play to that. If they show that we change it to this. If they blitz this guy we’ll do this, that guy we’ll do that. But it will be loud down on the field. So we practice in front of high-powered speakers blasting white noise so we can get used to our silent snap count. At home you can listen to the quarterback’s cadence and move when he says, “Set-hut!” But when you can’t hear him you have to go when the ball moves. If you can’t see the ball you move when everyone else moves. This slows down your jump by a count because when the quarterback says, “Set-
hut
,” you really fire your gun on the soft and rolling “Set” even though the hard “hut” is emphasized. “Set
hut
” is said as one word, and since the offense knows the snap count and the defense doesn’t, the offense starts moving before the defense and catches them off guard.

Crowd noise takes away that advantage. It also makes it hard to change the play at the line of scrimmage. We can’t hear Jake’s audibles so we have to look for hand signals. A tight end in a three-point stance can’t always see hand signals, so we have to look at the defense and know how Jake will change the play based on what they’re showing. Football players are smart and all, but it’s not our main thing.

As expected, it is very loud in St. Louis on game day. The audibles and the blitz-reads are too much for us to handle. We never get anything going. We lose the game 18–10 and have five turnovers on offense. Jake throws three interceptions. In the locker room after the game, some reporter (probably Frank Schwab) asks him if he thinks people will be clamoring for Jay now.

—I’m sure they will. They’ve been calling for him since he got drafted.

Jake’s candor is rare and doesn’t help his image in Denver. But he doesn’t care anymore. By then the two—Denver and Jake—have fallen out of love with each other.

One bright note from the game: Rod went over 800 career receptions; the only undrafted player to ever catch that many passes. He is thirty-six years old and he’s the savviest receiver I’ve ever watched. He understands the angles better than anyone. And he also understands the simple concept that many ballcarriers often forget: the end zone is north and south, not east and west. He catches a pass and shoots like a rocket straight up the field, always tacking on at least five yards to a catch that normally would be stopped on the spot. And he’ll play until his body breaks.