Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile (6 page)

Lambeau.

I find my locker and sit down. There is a program for the game on my chair and I thumb through it while listening to my mood music. I look for the cheerleader photos in the back of the program, a road-game ritual of mine, and am disappointed to find that the Packers don’t have any. But I see my name on the roster list, and here I am, sitting at my locker: a man alive inside a dream.

I jog out of the tunnel and take it all in. A security guard in a yellow jacket smiles and wishes me luck. It’s a crisp, dry night. Once the game starts I stand at attention next to Blade and when someone needs a rest I run onto the field and into the huddle. Jake’s resting, too, and since Steve Beuerlein snapped his finger in half a few weeks earlier, Danny Kanell and Jarious Jackson are sharing the duties at quarterback. The Packers kick our ass. They’re playing for something and we aren’t. But when I’m on the field I feel calm. I see things happen in slow motion. I’m comfortable. It is still just football. People always question whether a guy can perform “when the lights come on,” when the moment is big. But that’s bogus. The magnitude of a game is manufactured by those who sell it, not by those who play it. The lights are always on.

The next week we get back to work preparing for our playoff run. But in the opening round, we travel back to Indy and get rolled. Peyton’s flawless. Eddie Mac had a head injury from the Packer game so I’m suited up again. I stand on the sidelines until the last drive. We are running out the clock with some standard inside runs. Most everyone out here is playing patty-cake and waiting for the clock to hit zeroes: the Colts have another game to prepare for and we have the off-season waiting for us. Blade puts me in for the last four plays and I run around like a crazed jackal. All of them are knockdown blocks or close to it. I want blood. I want to taste the iron on my tongue as I rip the flesh from a safety’s bones and play Hacky Sack with his testicles. Everyone looks at me like I’m an idiot. The free safety yells at me after I crush him with a borderline illegal block. But I don’t care. It’s my playoffs, too. The clock empties and our season ends. And the only blood I’ve tasted is my own, in the form of two vicious carpet burns from the NFL’s last proprietor of AstroTurf hell. For the next month I wake up sticking to my sheets.

T
he week of the Super Bowl, Charlie and I fly to Houston to pick up our Super Bowl tickets. NFL players have the option of purchasing two tickets at face value, but for some reason they make the rookies pick them up in the Super Bowl city. Veterans can pick up the tickets in their home cities. The markup for Super Bowl tickets is obscene, so we take a business trip to Texas to purchase our tickets at face value before selling them at a “significant markup.” The ticket scalping underworld is a breeze once you’re in. True market value reveals itself in back parking lots and dark alleys.

We go to the designated hotel and get our tickets, then we meet our handler in a different hotel parking lot. He gives us a wad of cash and we each hand over two pieces of cardboard. Paper for paper, the American dream unfolds. We book a room in a cheap motel and float from party to party, denied entry at nearly every one, and settle for a gentlemen’s club, where I fall into a deep conversation with a New Orleans dancer who has come to town to cash in on the Super Bowl muscle. I flex my practice squad muscles for her. She is not impressed.

3

Nein Lives

(2004)

M
y phone rings. The caller ID tells me it’s coming from the Broncos facility.

—Yellow.

—Hey, Nate, it’s Blade. How’s it going?

—Hey, Blade. All is well. Driving through the Rocky Mountains right now.

—Ah, headed home, eh? That’s great. Enjoying your off-season?

—Yeah, so far. What’s up with you?

—Ahh, you know how it is. It’s off-season for you guys but not for us. We’re in here burning the midnight oil. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that we’ve discussed it as a staff and we think you’d really benefit from heading over to NFL Europe next month. I know what you’re probably thinking, Nate, but it would be great. You’d get some game action under your belt and you’d have a great time out there, Nate, you really would. And you’d be back in time for our last few minicamps. We really think this will be great for you. So what do you think?

I don’t think.

—Yeah, Blade. Let’s do it.

Great. I had a feeling I might be getting that call. NFL Europe is a supplemental league owned by the NFL and used as a de facto farm system. There are six teams: the Scottish Claymores, Berlin Thunder, Amsterdam Admirals, Cologne Centurions, Frankfurt Galaxy, and Rhein Fire. The NFL’s off-season is NFL Europe’s in-season, so practice squad players like me are often sent to NFL Europe to develop. Charlie played in NFL Europe for the Rhein Fire last year and he’s told me stories. Football in Germany? Man that must suck. But he loved it. And he was the one who warned me that I might be going. Nah, I thought. Not me. I’m going home in my Denali.

And I do go home in my Denali, but only for a few weeks. Yet it’s plenty of time to see that things have changed for me back in San Jose. All of my friends will drink for free tonight, here at our neighborhood bar, the same bar we’ve been coming to since we were teenagers. Now my money is no good here. Now the girls are lining up. Now people are offering me rides home. Now I’m a Denver Bronco.

Along with the newfound adulation comes a new responsibility: my urine no longer belongs to me. While I’m home I get a call on my cell phone from the Pee Man. I’m on the list. But I’m not in Denver. I’m at home with my family. That’s okay, he says, we have someone out there we can use. Northern California’s regional Pee Man meets me in a parking lot and follows me to my parents’ house. I introduce him to Mom and Dad on our way to the bathroom. I pee in a cup and hand it to him. He squats in the hallway and pours it into two sample cups. He caps each of them and seals them both in a box. I initial and sign everything and he leaves, nodding to my confused parents as he walks out the front door holding a box of my piss.

I’m allocated to the Rhein Fire in Düsseldorf, Germany. But our camp is in Tampa. We arrive in late February at our expansive hotel compound just outside of town.

Wide receiver Adam Herzing is my roommate. We know of each other from back home in San Jose. He’s a year younger than me. We went to the same middle school and rival high schools. We both went to Cal Poly and have the same agent—good ol’ Ryan Tollner. We’re both six foot three, white, and love Cheerios. But we had never met.

We become fast buddies, along with Greg Zolman, a six foot two lefty quarterback from Vanderbilt, whose room is across the hall. Greg and Adam know each other from time spent with the Colts. Greg shattered Vandy’s passing records and is now competing with NFL Europe golden child Chad Hutchinson, allocated by the Cowboys and serving as the poster boy for NFL Europe’s “Here’s a name you might recognize!” campaign. But everyone has a history. Everyone has expectations. Everyone’s name is recognizable somewhere.

Before we can practice, we have to go through physicals and introduction meetings. The first meeting is in a banquet hall and led by the commissioner of the league. Then, after a few more forgettable presentations, we are greeted by our German sensei, Markus. In his polished English, touched slightly with a Teutonic accent, he sets the terms.

—Ze food vill be different, ze langvich, ze transportation, ze customs, ze people. Everyzing vill be different. You muss know zat.

Yawn goes the crowd. But I’m intrigued. Sure, NFL Europe isn’t how I expected to spend my first off-season. And sure, the money is shit compared to the NFL. We’ll make $600 a week. But I’m headed to Europe to play the game I love.

After Markus finishes his spiel, we have our physicals: six teams’ worth of football players to inspect and all of them with a lifetime of injuries to identify and document. NFL Europe contracted HealthSouth, a medical group based in Birmingham, Alabama, to oversee all of the major bodily issues. Bumps and bruises will be treated by team trainers in Europe but anything more serious will get you a one-way ticket to Birmingham. HealthSouth’s head trainer is Mayfield Armstrong. I hear the voice before I see the man. As the long line of players approaches the door to the banquet room, Mayfield holds court inside. Gregarious but firmly pointed, he shouts instructions.

—C’mon, Jimmy! You wanna play professional football I’ma hafta see ya at least
try
to touch ya toes! Is that s’far’s you can go, big boy?

—Now I ain’t the smartest man alive, Julie, but it says here this man just came off an ACL surgery. Looks pretty good to me!

I get to the front of the line and sit down in front of Mayfield. He’s a husky middle-aged man, clean-shaven with graying hair and a fierce twinkle in his eye. He looks at my file.

—All right, Mr. Nate, says here you had a shoulder operation last year.

—A year and a half ago.

—How’s it feeling?

—Great, it’s great.

—Well show me then. Can you do some push-ups?

—Really?

—Yes, sir. Really.

I drop and do ten push-ups.

—Good. Can you give me a little clap at the top of it?

I do two with a clap. He scribbles some notes.

—Well, all right, Nate. You look healthy to me. Good luck over there.

We shake hands.

—Don’t let me see you again until the exit physical.

H
ead coach Pete Kuharchek has our ear.

—You guys have a great opportunity. Some of you are already on NFL teams. Some of you are trying to get on NFL teams. But we’re all here now. And there are some damn good football players in this room, guys. We have a lot of talent, the best talent in this league. But it’s up to you to make the most of it. Things are going to be different over there, guys. Okay? You are going to have to adjust. If you’re expecting everything to be like the NFL, you’re going to be disappointed. Keep an open mind, guys, and roll with the punches. The football part will be exactly what you’re used to. Everything else, well, we simply don’t have the budget, okay? Our motto is: Be flexible. Okay? Be . . . flexible.

The 2004 Rhein Fire sit at attention, watching our new coach dig into his opening monologue. Bent forward at the neck, his spine is a taut bow ready to fire an arrow at whoever might pursue him, a shot that would snap him into a posture two inches taller. He stalks his ten feet of real estate at the front of the room and shakes his head almost imperceptibly with each point of emphasis, his lower lip weighed down by a pond of saliva formed by the angle of the bow. Pete is a veteran coach who’s never been on an NFL sideline. He has, however, taken the Rhein Fire to back-to-back championship games. They lost both times.

—Practice is going to be physical, guys. We’re going to hit each other. We’re going to be violent. We are going to bully people out there. And it starts with training camp. There’s no way around it. We are going to work our asses off while we’re here. I promise you, none of these teams are going to outwork us. We’ll be in Germany before we know it. But right now we have work to get done. So bring your hard hat and your lunch pail to work every day, men. This isn’t a vacation.

Great. Pete wants us to kill each other.

Practice is at a high school in Clearwater Beach. From our hotel it’s a forty-minute drive across the 60, a toothpick bridge suspended over the crystal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. To make sure we are all frothing at the mouth to hit someone, Coach splits up the offense and defense for the first few days of practice. We practice the plays on our own, by ourselves, with no defense. They do the same on their end. It is boring and gets us all riled up. Football players are conditioned for violence. We are at home in the melee. We may have moments of quiet reservation and doubt when lying on our living room couches, but on the field we are pulled toward the mayhem. The feel of the helmet and shoulder pads, the sound of the whistle, the taste of the mouthpiece, the smell of grass and sweat: sacraments for bloodshed.

But the only interaction we have with the defense is in the locker room and on the bus, and since we aren’t getting to know each other on the field, the locker room and bus are quiet. We are strangers. On the day we are to finally practice as a team, the tension is high. Our sacraments have been dangled in front of our noses but we’ve been kept in cages. Just before they unlock the doors everybody is talking shit to each other from across the field. It feels like we are going to brawl.

The first thing we do is a passing drill called seven-on-seven that is designed to work on pass plays only, without any linemen getting in the way. The defense plays coverage and tries to prevent the passes from being completed. But they don’t hit the receivers. They protect their vulnerable teammates.

On one of the first plays of seven-on-seven, I catch a pass across the middle, turn up field, three, four steps, and am cracked hard from the side by a safety. I pop up and look at Whiskey Pete. This is the moment that sets the precedent, the moment where coach says . . .

—What the
fuck
is that?! We don’t do that shit around here! You got it? Does everybody get it? Save that for game day. We’re on the same fucking team, guys. Protect each other!

But he just stands there watching us through his eyebrows, lip pond glistening. That’s what he wants. Well all right then. That’s what he’ll get.

The next hour and a half is a bloodbath. Bodies are flying and helmets are cracking in the Florida sunshine. Must . . . impress . . . the . . . coaches. Smack! The dreams of the father! Smack! The
American
dream! Crack! C’mon,
boy
! Whammo!

Thirty minutes later, on a routine run play, I size up the strong safety for a block. He comes at me in kill mode. We meet solid: helmet to helmet and chest to chest. But also knee to knee. The bursa sac on my left knee bursts. Fluid rushes to cover my patella. He isn’t so lucky. He yelps and falls at my feet. Our best defensive player is done for the season with a torn ACL. Are you not entertained?

After the first practice, things settle down. Now we know each other. Next week, we practice against one of the other teams. Fresh meat. We are doing one-on-ones against their cornerbacks, and their receivers are doing one-on-ones against our cornerbacks. They run a route; we run a route. Pride is on the line. The shit-talking is constant.

Late in the drill, I line up to run a slant. A corner steps out to cover me. He squats inches from my face and mumbles something about handcuffs. He’s short, even for a defensive back, and his lowness to the ground forces me to lower my stance to improve my leverage. I shoot off the line and engage him with my hands, then push off and break to the inside, just in time to see the ball soar over my head. I feel a twinge in my pinkie and look down at it. It’s sticking out sideways and down toward my wrist at an acute angle. I hold it up in front of my face. Not much of a painful feeling. No feeling, really. I take off my glove. It looks much more real without the glove. I walk my pinkie over to the trainer.

—Mmmm.
That’s dislocated, Nate. Here.

He grabs my pinkie and yanks. It slides back into place without a whisper. I reglove my hand, tape the pinkie to the ring finger, and I’m back to practice.

After practice, though, the finger isn’t acting like a reduced dislocation. It hurts. A lot. We X-ray it. It’s broken. The X-ray looks like someone has taken a ball-peen hammer to my finger. Shards of slivered bone surround a prominent shark-tooth fragment just below the second knuckle.

They decide to take a closer look at it in Birmingham. The next morning I fly to Alabama. The bursa sac in my knee, manageable at sea level, fills up with fluid on the airplane. I hobble in to see Mayfield.

—Nate! What the hell are you limping for? I thought it was your finger!

—It is, Mayfield. I’m just sore, that’s all.

—Shit, Nate. Who ain’t?!

They keep me there for four days. They are trying to figure out whether to operate. But there’s not much rehab to be done on a shattered pinkie. I spend most of my time wandering around the hospital and flirting with the HealthSouth receptionist. She’s a cute, brunette southern girl in business attire with eyes screaming “get me out of here.” At every door opening, every phone ringing, every new set of footsteps, she perks up and shoots her flare. She isn’t going to miss her chance.

On my last night in Birmingham we go to a movie together and talk. I talk about my girlfriend. She talks about her boyfriend. Both of us are unsure of whatever this is. Unsure of everything. She is starting to realize that she may never make it out of Birmingham. I’m starting to wonder if either of us should bother trying.

B
efore I leave the next day, Mayfield makes me a pinkie splint.

—All right, Nate, now this should help. But it’s still gonna hurt. Shit, you know that. That ain’t nothin’ new. But I’m serious this time, Nate. Don’t let me see you back here. You got it?

—Yeah I got it, Mayfield. Thanks for the help.

I’m on the field for practice that afternoon with my pinkie splint and my knee brace, gimping from another flight-induced swelling. But I’m happy to be back with my teammates. Our receiver core is getting tight. Aside from Adam, there’s Shockmain Davis. Willie Quinnie. Chris Leiss. Bosley Allen. Jon Olinger.

The day after I get back from Birmingham, we have a scrimmage against the Amsterdam Admirals. I’m very tired in warm-ups. I feel out of shape from my four days in Alabama. My receiver coach doesn’t put me in until the end of the scrimmage. A few plays after I enter the game I catch a 60-yard touchdown from Greg on a blown Cover 2, nearly hyperventilating in the end zone. Well all right. Football is easy. Just throw me the ball.