Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (2 page)

1

The First Seven Years

(2002)

“N
ate Jackson, wide receiver, Menlo College.”

I walk to the front of the stage and stop as instructed. I’m in my underwear. A trickle of sweat runs down my side. One hundred men sit in folding chairs with clipboards in their laps. They look me up and down and scribble notes. Who are these sick fucks?

Out in the hall I put my clothes back on and walk past the line of dudes in their underwear who haven’t gone in front of the audience yet. It’s January 2002. I’m at the Hyatt in downtown San Francisco for the East-West Shrine Game, a college all-star game for seniors. It’s a football game, yes, but it doubles as a weeklong job fair for all thirty-two NFL teams. After the Hanes runway fashion show I’m ushered into the room where the New York Giants administer their four-hundred-question personality test. Because when it’s crunch time and the game is on the line, the front office needs to know one thing: do I prefer Jell-O or pudding? I look around the room during the test and decide that most of us prefer both.

O
utside in the lobby I find my new agent, Ryan Tollner, sitting on a couch with a defensive end named Akbar and someone else and they’re arguing about who the most famous athlete in the world is: Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan.

Ryan’s in his midtwenties. His light brown hair is nicely combed and his sharp jawline is clean-shaven. A former backup quarterback at Cal, Berkeley, he speaks with a deliberate clarity that puts me at ease. He’s just getting into the agent business with his cousin Bruce Tollner, after working a year as a financial analyst. He doesn’t have many clients yet. And I don’t know any other agents. In other words, it’s a good fit for both of us. A month ago, after my college season was over, Ryan took me to a 49ers game so we could get to know each other. I hadn’t been to a Niners game since they beat the Packers in the playoffs in early 1999, when I was nineteen years old.

My friends and I had pooled funds and bought tickets at the last minute. We drank beer in the parking lot and pulled out a poster board and Sharpies. After much deliberation, we decided: “Wisconsin, please . . . this is the REAL California cheese.” It didn’t make much sense. There was a drawing of a rat sniffing at a triangle of stinky Swiss. Once we got to our upper-deck seats no one wanted to hold it up. It lay folded on the concrete late into the game as the energy in the stadium became desperate. The 49ers were trailing deep into the fourth quarter. The consensus was that all was lost. Terrell Owens, who had dropped some big passes, was a bum. Head coach Steve Mariucci was a loser. Steve Young was washed up. The Packers were going to beat us again. Then Steve Young hit Terrell Owens for the winning touchdown and capped Candlestick Park in a bubble of ecstasy. Tears of joy filled the stadium. I wiped them from my face. Wisconsin, please, this is the
real
California cheese.

Much had changed for me between the two Niners games. Sitting in the stands with Ryan, my future agent, I no longer felt like a fan. I no longer cheered. I was watching my potential peers. I wanted in. After the game we stood outside of the 49ers locker room and watched the players walk out in street clothes. Ryan spoke with some of them. I stood off to the side. Then we left. Later that week I signed the necessary paperwork and officially made Ryan my agent. He will earn 3 percent of my contract for the rest of my career.

Now it’s just Ryan and me in the lobby of the Hyatt. After the Ali/Jordan argument ends, I tell him about my hamstring, which I had pulled two days before checking into the Hyatt but hadn’t told anyone about. My Menlo coach Dave Muir had been throwing me routes so I could stay crisp for the important week ahead. On one of the last routes of the day—after Dave had run off to the port-o-potty clenching his butt cheeks, then returned five minutes later apologizing—I pulled my hamstring as I came out of a break. It was a new sensation. I had never injured a hamstring before. I decided to keep it to myself and try to work through it. I was already a long shot to be in the Shrine Game, let alone the NFL. I didn’t want anyone thinking I wasn’t ready.

Ryan tells me to be smart with it. No use making it worse. But I have scouts to impress on the practice field. The week of practice is more important than the game. The NFL guys are watching us like they’re examining racehorses in the paddock.

On the second day of practice, I run a slant during one-on-ones and rip my hamstring for real. I’m off the field for the rest of the week, including the game. I’m sure my chance has just slipped away but Ryan tells me not to worry. Just rehab it and we’ll get you on a team. There are other workouts, pro days and combines.

But Menlo, my alma mater, doesn’t have a senior pro day, the day that the NFL scouts arrive to work guys out. Menlo’s too small—about five hundred students—and it’s a Division III program. I transferred there three years earlier after getting cut from Division 1AA Cal Poly. Poly’s head coach, Larry Welsh, told me I was too slow to play receiver and too small to play tight end. Now scram, punk. Menlo revived a football dream that was dead in the water. I wanted to play: that was it. I didn’t care about anything else. My high school coach, Myron Zaccheo, knew I was depressed about getting cut from Cal Poly. He was the one who told me about Menlo. It was thirty minutes away from my house in San Jose but I had never heard of it. But the more I found out, the more I felt pulled to Atherton.

Fred Guidici, Menlo’s assistant head coach and recruiting ace, was my point man on the phone. With the voice of a long-lost friend, he told me about the pass-heavy offense and the local 49er pedigree. He told me about the stable of former NFLers coaching at Menlo. Ken Margerum, former Stanford and Chicago Bears receiver, was the head coach. Doug Cosbie, former Pro Bowl tight end for the Cowboys, was our offensive coordinator. Doug coached under Bill Walsh at Stanford.
The
Bill Walsh, the legendary head coach of the San Francisco 49ers who revolutionized offensive football. All-Pro defensive end for the Vikings Keith Millard was our defensive coordinator. Former All-Pro 49er guard Guy McIntyre was our offensive line assistant. The list went on. I visited the campus and instantly felt at home. I decided to transfer, leaving behind an ideal California college setting and a group of bewildered friends. “You’re doing what?” “You’re going where?” “Men-huh?”

But Menlo was an oasis. The campus was lush and quiet. The classes were small and inclusive. The professors were friendly and passionate. The surrounding neighborhoods are wealthy and extremely safe. A common police blotter blurb from the local newspaper: “Suspicious looking cat seen near parked car.” Or: “Man tying his shoes across the street from suspicious looking cat.”

After my first season at Menlo, Ken Margerum went on to coach receivers at Cal Berkeley and Doug Cosbie took over as head coach. Dave Muir, a backup quarterback at Washington State who was only a few years older than me, joined the coaching staff as our receiver’s coach. We became friends almost overnight, a rarity between players and coaches. A few days into two-a-days he called me up to the coaches’ offices.

“Nate,” he said, “you can play on Sundays. I’ve seen it and I know it. We’re going to make it happen.” The next two seasons were a dream. I caught over 100 balls in consecutive seasons and earned All-American honors alongside my quarterback, Zamir Amin, who ran Walsh’s brilliant offense once to the tune of 731 passing yards in a single game. I was playing football with my best friends: for football’s sake. I was as happy as I have ever been.

After a big game in week two of the 2001 season, Coach Cosbie, who stood six foot six, with light blue eyes and a booming voice, told me that someone wanted to talk to me. Bill Walsh came to our home games from time to time. His son Craig used to be Menlo’s athletic director, and Bill still supported the school. I always knew when he was there. He stood in the northeast corner of the end zone. His silver hair was unmistakable. So was the way he stood, with his arms folded beneath an omniscient gaze. I had been watching him since I was a boy. I dropped my helmet on the grass and jogged over to the legend. He told me to keep doing what I was doing. He said that I would get my shot at the next level. I jogged away with a new pep in my step. Men-huh?

F
our months later, as I stand on the sidelines watching one of the East-West practices that I can no longer participate in, Bill Walsh comes and stands next to me. He’s one of the chairmen of the Shrine Game committee and helped get me on the roster. Like Ryan, he tells me not to worry too much about the hamstring.

—Just get healthy and you’ll have your shot.

I crawl off the ledge and, after the game, start rehabbing immediately.

A couple of months later I’m at San Jose State’s pro day. It’s early in the morning, cold outside. But the presence of stern NFL men fingering their stopwatches puts a buzz in the air. That’s the first thing that strikes me: The NFL is a pageant. Football is no longer just a game. The NFL’s regional scouts stretch from Pacific to Atlantic and work all year long compiling information on their employer’s potential investments.

They’re conducting research for their bosses. I’m trying to touch God. This is the moment I’ve been training for. Most of us here weren’t invited to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Only 260 guys go to that. This is our only shot in front of scouts. We run the 40-yard dash, the L-shuttle, the 20-yard shuttle, and the 60-yard shuttle. We also do the broad jump, the vertical jump, and hit the 225-pound bench press. Then we run routes.

The success I had at Menlo had come with an asterisk: *D3 football. I bought into it for a moment: just like I momentarily bought into Cal Poly coach Larry Welsh’s assessment of my athletic ability. But after seeing the D1 talent at the Shrine Game, and now here at San Jose State’s pro day, I’m hit with a surge of confidence. They’re just dudes: dudes with strengths and dudes with weaknesses. Dudes with doubts and fears and pain. Humanity equalized all of us. D1, D3, NFL: just dudes.

L
eading up to the draft the 49ers invite about thirty local prospects to their facility for a workout. I drive the fifteen minutes to Santa Clara and walk in the front door, greeted immediately by a trophy case that holds the talismans of my childhood. All five Lombardi trophies gleam in the halogen lights. Three of them came under Bill Walsh and two were under George Seifert, Bill’s successor. We change into 49er shorts and jerseys in the locker room. I’m caught between focus for the workout and a surreal admiration of my surroundings. I walk through the weight room and imagine Joe Montana and Jerry Rice discussing a play between sets of leg presses, or Charles Haley yelling at Steve Young in the showers and having to be restrained by Ronnie Lott.

Out on the field it’s all football stuff: ball drills, routes, one-on-ones. No stopwatches and no clipboards: just coaches coaching football. I have a good workout. There was no way I wouldn’t. I feel ordained by the tradition of the institution. After I’m done, receiver coach George Stewart—a large, deep-voiced, kindhearted man everyone called Stew—pulls me aside and tells me what I’m starting to figure out. I can do this.

At the end of the month is the two-day draft. The day before it starts, the Niners want to time me in the 40-yard dash. It is a beautiful, sunny day. I drive from the small parking lot outside of my Menlo dorm room, down El Camino Real to Stanford Stadium, where I meet Ryan and a few 49ers scouts. I run a 4.5 and a 4.6 on the bright green field of an empty stadium. I ask Ryan how I looked. Strong, he says.

The first day of the draft passes. The next morning Ryan tells me that the Niners might draft me late. Some of my close Menlo friends come over to my house to watch it with me. Dave Muir sits next to me in the deafening silence as we watch player after player get what I want. I stare at the phone. During the seventh round it rings: the Ravens. They want to sign me as a free agent after the draft ends. I want to be drafted. If I’m not, I can still sign as a free agent. Sometimes, Ryan says, that’s actually better, assuming you have a few teams that want you. Then you get to choose. If you are drafted, you have no choice.

The last pick comes and goes and my name isn’t called. A few minutes later the phone rings again, the 49ers this time. They want me, too. My first business decision: Baltimore or San Francisco. Because of my many connections to the team, the fact that the 49ers didn’t draft any receivers (the Ravens drafted three), and the team’s proximity to my family, Ryan and I agree that the Niners are my best bet. I call them back, while Ryan delivers Baltimore the bad news, and not a minute later I’m out the door, making my short way to the facility again. I walk upstairs to sign my new NFL contract, complete with a $5,000 signing bonus. Look, Ma, I’m a 49er!

M
inicamps start the next week and my confidence continues to grow. I step to the line of scrimmage with an NFL cornerback in my face. He’s coiled like a snake. My heart races. The ball is snapped and we strike. Sometimes he bites me. But sometimes I bite him. And each successful bite further confirms my suspicions: I belong here. One of my fellow receivers, Terrell Owens, is the most physically dominant wide receiver in the game. Early on I learn a valuable lesson from him, as we’re of similar size. The lesson is this: Do what you’re good at and do it well. Don’t try to be something you’re not. T.O. dominates the cornerbacks who try to cover him, throwing them around like rag dolls. He doesn’t try to dance around on the line of scrimmage and look pretty. He picks them up and moves them out of the way. Then he runs his route. I’m not on that level, but I take note. Decide what you’re going to do and do it violently.

I’m able to focus solely on the physical because I’ve got a solid jump start on the mental. Our offense at Menlo used the same terminology as the 49ers. Football-speak is a language. If you are not fluent, you are lost. And it varies from system to system. Some of the best athletes on the planet could never learn the NFL language, so they never got on the field.