Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (5 page)

Usually when our team is off in another city playing, Charlie and I go to Earl’s, our favorite restaurant, to get fed and drunk. Then we saunter downtown and hop around a handful of bars and clubs, dividing our attention between all of the girls who want to hang out with a Bronco. No Broncos around here but us.

—But you’re on the practice squad!

—But you’re a slut!

And we have an understanding. Alina can feel it with every minute that I don’t respond promptly to her texts, don’t reassure her that the party’s boring, that the girls are ugly, that I’m having a horrible time. I feel her desperation but I’m too weak to be honest with her about what I’m up against: a mob of bloodthirsty jersey chasers.

A
s the season wears on and injuries stack up, I become more and more anxious to join the active roster. When an active player gets hurt, a practice squad player often takes his place. I want to be on that field “taking live bullets,” as we say. Not only do I want live bullets, I want a bigger paycheck. My salary is the lowest in the locker room. I don’t think about it early in the season but as the months pass, it’s impossible not to. I’m a rookie and so every once in a while Rod has me go upstairs to pick up his check. I can’t help but take a peek at it. My eyes nearly pop out of my head. Rod has my $4,350 a week in his couch cushions.

Some time after Thanksgiving, we have our offensive rookie dinner, minus the offensive linemen. I’ve been hearing stories about the previous year’s rookie dinner at Del Frisco’s steak house. Clinton Portis had flown in some adult entertainers from Miami to provide flexible, pink comic relief in between bites of filet mignon. The bill was outlandish. The rookies picked up the tab.

Now that C.P. isn’t a rookie anymore, he plans to take full advantage of the situation. He brings some friends and they bring some friends. The back room of Del Frisco’s is full. Wine and champagne and cognac are flowing like the rivers of Capistrano. Ashley Lelie shows up late and orders two bottles of the priciest wine I’ve ever seen. The waitress starts to cork one of them and Ashley stops her.

—No! No! Don’t open it. I’m taking them home.

Then he leaves with his loot. The bill’s over $26,000, split four ways between the rookie offensive skill position players, none of whom was drafted very high. Jake, bless him, feels so bad that he palms me some money to help me pay the bill.

Still, I’m not losing any sleep over money. Football was never about the money to me. It was about competing with the best athletes in the world. And just practicing with them isn’t enough. I want to get hit. I mean really hit. I want to hit the ground hard and get up shaking myself off because I think I’m dead. That’s the feeling I want. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to have typical teenage stoner conversations. Who would win in a fight between Mike Tyson and two lightweights? What would be the best way to thwart a shark attack? Could I kill a mountain lion with a pocketknife? And would I be able to take a hit from Levon Kirkland?

For my friends and me, Steelers linebacker Levon Kirkland represented the pinnacle of big, scary football players in the mid to late 1990s. They insisted that there was no way I could take a shot from him. I vehemently disagreed. Of course I could! He’s only a man, after all. It’s football. But there I was stuck with no way to prove them wrong.

E
very week of practice, my colored dot means that I’m a different player. My favorite week is when I get to be Randy Moss. Randy’s still with the Vikings and is still a badass with some very unorthodox habits. It is ingrained in the mind of football players to go hard, 100 percent on every single play, maximum effort all of the time. So when we watch Randy Moss on film, his tendencies stick out like a dead fish at the aquarium. He has the habit of taking plays off completely. On run plays, he might literally walk off the line of scrimmage, or jog, or skip. He rarely engages the corner in contact on run plays, and generally avoids it altogether. This tendency allows me to do the same throughout the week. I’m a Method actor. I take my role seriously. How seriously? Ask the wives of the players I impersonated.

Randy’s inconsistency works to his advantage and allows him to survey the scene, wait for his moment, then attack the defense downfield or across the middle. Football is about angles: linear movement in a contained area coupled with a finite amount of time in which to exploit it. Randy understands that finite time period better than anyone and can narrow the gap between action and reaction because he’s really damn fast.

As he lazily skips off the line of scrimmage, everyone else explodes into the play. This forces the defenders to account for both his slowness and everyone else’s speed. The defenders pay more attention to the things around them that move faster, and Randy’s able to let the play develop in front of him before he joins in, and streaks up the field for an 85-yard touchdown.

Of course, it doesn’t always work. You don’t even get to try that stuff unless you’re Randy Moss, or an actor playing Randy Moss. This week is the most fruitful week of my practice squad days. I catch a million balls: short, intermediate, deep. At the end of the week, Charlie has to pay me twenty dollars. He’s a practice squad receiver, too, and we have a running tally every week. Whoever catches the most balls gets paid. Touchdowns are worth two. Big money for a couple of big-time guys.

W
hen the game arrives, and the team ships out to Minneapolis, I’m not in the partying mood. I wake up early on game day and drive to the foothills for a hike and some fresh air. It’s a crisp, sunny November day; patches of snow dot the ground and glare white in the sun. I stop next to a creek, find a handful of sticks, and pull out my pocketknife. I whittle off the knots, kneel down, and fashion a water wheel in the shallows. My dad used to do that when my brother and I were kids.

I sit down on the bank and watch the wheel turn with the current. Soon I lie back on a soft patch of dry grass and drift off in the afternoon sun.

T
he next thing I know, the sun is gone and I’m running through the forest with my knife in hand. I come upon fresh mountain lion tracks that lead to a cave. There’s a rustling sound inside and baby paw tracks around the outside of the cave. I pick up a rock and throw it into the cave. Then another. Then I throw a large stick. I taunt the lion, yell at her, insulting her choice of caves.

I see a snake sliding along a fallen branch on a gentle slope toward a dry creek bed. I pick him up by his tail and fling him into the lion’s den. Two cubs come bounding out, followed by their mother, who recognizes me as the idiot causing the commotion. She squares me up and bears her teeth.

—Here kitty kitty. Here kitty kitty.

I flash my blade. She squats down and leaps at me with her front legs out and her jaw wide open.

During our stony arguments I could never convince my friends that I’d have the wherewithal to actually, tactically, complete the task. They thought there was no way I could find her neck with a little knife. And besides, her jaws and claws were razor sharp and her hide was too thick to penetrate. She would rip me to shreds.

But at the moment of truth time screeches to a halt. I see each molecule and fiber of both our bodies moving in unison. The will to survive reaches down and inflates me. As she leaps I stand my ground and take a slight step to my right. Using my left forearm as a shield I catch the brunt of her charge and sink the knife into her neck with my right hand. It presses deep into her flesh as if in slow motion. The blade’s an extension of my pointed will. She winces and stiffens. Her hot breath hits my face and she thuds to earth.

A cold wind shivers through me. I sit up like a shot and look around. All’s calm around me. The only sound is the water wheel gently turning in the shallow creek. I look down at my right hand, quivering and gripped tightly around my folded pocketknife. I hike back to my truck and drive home.

I hear from the radio that we’ve lost in Minnesota. A predictably erratic and brilliant performance by Randy has done us in. Seconds before halftime he caught a long pass and, as he was being tackled on the twenty-yard line, he pitched it backward to a teammate, who scored as the clock ran out. He ended up with 10 catches for 151 yards. Nothing compared to the week I had.

W
ith four games left in the season we have an injury to one of our active wide receivers, and Charlie and I both cross our fingers. God chooses Charlie. He’s activated that week for the game against the Kansas City Chiefs. I stay down on the practice squad. Charlie’s pay goes from $4,350 a week to nearly $15,000: minimum wage for an active rookie. I decide to go take a nap in my Denali.

Two weeks later, the team is traveling to play the Colts in Indianapolis. We are 9-5 and have won four of our last five games. It’s our biggest game of the season. If we beat them we secure a spot in the playoffs. Blade tells me that if I want to go to the game I can; all I have to do is ask Coach Shanahan. I approach him in the hall before a meeting and ask him if I can go.

—Of course you can, Nate. All you had to do was ask.

On Saturday morning before we leave, Shannon Sharpe addresses the offense. He always gives a talk on Saturday morning before we review the film. Shannon’s a three-time Super Bowl winner: two in Denver and one in Baltimore. This is to be his last season in the NFL. He wants one more ring. During his monologue about everyone in the room having a job to do, he says, “Whether you’re Shannon Sharpe or you’re Nate Jackson, everyone has a role on this team.” I’m flattered that I popped into his head, even if it was when he needed the lowest man in the food chain. At least he knows my name.

I get my own room in Indianapolis like everyone else, complete with the two free pay-per-view movies, a staple of Broncos hotel accommodations. I watch porn. No, I don’t. Wait, what?

We win the game impressively and clinch a playoff berth. The dome in Indianapolis is usually one of the loudest in the league but it falls completely silent about halfway through the fourth quarter. Peyton Manning rarely lost there. It’s a team win that will likely set up a rematch in the first round of the playoffs, after one final game.

The atmosphere is jubilant at work on Wednesday morning. It’s Christmas Eve and we’re going to the playoffs no matter what. Jake has brought us to the postseason in his first year as our quarterback. Since we would gain nothing from winning our last game in Green Bay, Coach plans to rest some of our key starters. Rod’s one of them. They need to activate a receiver to take his place. Blade pulls me aside after morning meetings on Wednesday and tells me the good news.

—Congrats, Nate. You deserve it.

Before practice, I go upstairs to Ted’s office and sign a new contract. My practice squad days are over. I’m a member of the fifty-three-man roster. The $4,350 a week is dead forever: chump change for my couch cushions. I’ll get my $15,000 for this week and will watch that number rise steadily every year forward. Daddy’s got a new pair of shoes for every day of the month.

W
e have a tradition in my family that goes all the way back to my infancy. I am the youngest of my dad’s six children and my mother’s two, and every Christmas Eve, my brothers and sisters come to our house with their families and it’s one big lovefest. But this year there will be no group hug for me. I’m with my new family. Football takes precedence over everything: even Jesus.

Ed McCaffrey invites me over to his house for Christmas dinner, under one condition: I have to dress up like Santa Claus and play with his kids. Ed is a quirky Stanford grad and is Denver’s second-favorite son. When he makes a catch, the crowd chants
E-ddie
,
E-ddie.
Because of our mutual whiteness and similar size, I was often compared to him coming out of college. I hope to live up to those expectations, as skin-deep as they are.

I show up at the agreed-upon time and meet Eddie at the side of his house, where he has already prepared my costume. He tells me to come to the door in ten minutes. I put on the white beard and the red suit, take a few pulls from Santa’s whiskey, and head to the front door.

—Ho! Ho! Ho!

I bellow like a lunatic making minimum wage at the mall. Eddie’s wife, Lisa, opens the door with a wink and in I go with my sack of toys that Eddie left me, my deep Santa voice echoing through the house.

—Well hello there young man! What’s your name? Ho! Ho! Ho! Have you been a good boy?

And so on. Things are going fine with the youngest two, but the oldest boy, probably eight or nine, stands at a distance regarding me suspiciously. After ten minutes of jolly platitudes I back out the door and head down the path to the side of the house. I change back into my civilian clothes and sit around next to the garage for a while.

Then I reenter through the same door I had exited and am warmly received as if for the first time by all of the house’s inhabitants—except for the oldest boy, that clever little buzzkill, who puts the exclamation point on his tiny epiphany: my daddy plays football with Santa Claus.

T
he game on Sunday is at Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Though the game doesn’t matter for us in any real way, they need a win to make the playoffs. They also need some help from the Cardinals. The Vikings are ahead of the Packers in the standings, but if the Vikings lose and the Packers win, they’re in. We drive through the neighborhoods of Green Bay on the way to the stadium and I’m struck by the surrealism of the moment. I’m on a bus with my NFL team in Wisconsin on our way to play the Packers. The entire town of Green Bay
is
the Packers. On every lawn there are signs and banners and parties and barbecues and happy people bursting at the seams. With wide, unthreatening grins, they drink responsibly and politely urge us to go fuck ourselves. Lambeau Field lies at the edge of what appears to be a typical midwestern suburban community, unlike most other stadiums, which are built in downtown or in industrial areas. In Green Bay, the stadium has the feel of being a park at the end of the street. We are riding along and I’m looking into living room windows, then all of a sudden, like a Mecca of cheese: