Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away

by Ben Utecht

  By the time the Miss Minnesota pageant finally rolled around, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I wanted to see Karyn win. I knew she had it in her and I wanted to see her achieve her childhood goal. But I was also anxious, and ready for the two of us to start our life together. I hated living so far away from her. Only seeing one another maybe once a month was starting to take its toll on both of us. We talked on the phone every day, but it wasn’t the same. Not knowing when we could actually get married was getting old. I don’t like living with uncertainty. I was ready to get on with life.

  However, I was going to have to wait at least a year longer. Karyn nailed her performance in the pageant. She showed poise when she answered the questions, and her piano solo brought down the house. By the time they got around to naming the winner, I knew it was going to be her. I was sitting with Karyn’s family. Chris, my agent, sat right next to me. When the announcer said, “The winner, and Miss Minnesota for 2005, is Karyn Stordahl,” Chris reached over, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Congratulations, buddy. Looks like you’ll be taking a lot more cold showers.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Then he added, “What are you going to do if she wins Miss America in January?”

  “I don’t even want to think about that right now,” I said.

  •  •  •

  Our inability to set a wedding date wasn’t the only part of my life that was up in the air. Although the Colts kept me on the team throughout the 2004 season, I didn’t have a guaranteed spot on the team going forward. My year of sitting back and learning the offense gave me a leg up on any new players coming in, but that only got me so far. I still had to go out and make the roster. During the off-season Marcus Pollard moved on to the Detroit Lions, which left Dallas Clark, the 2003 first-round draft choice Tony Dungy mentioned at that Athletes in Action banquet, the number-one tight end. Ben Hartsock also played a lot the year I was hurt, and he was still with the team. Before training camp the Colts brought in Bryan Fletcher as a free agent. Bryan had bounced around between a few teams before joining the Colts. All of these guys had a lot of talent. I wasn’t sure if there was going to be room on the roster for all of us.

  •  •  •

  Training camp opened a little over a month after the Miss Minnesota pageant. Since I was no longer a rookie I didn’t have to lug around anyone’s helmet and pads, but it didn’t take long for me to look back at that time as the good old days. Within the first few days of practice I realized that this game is all business. And when you play for the Colts with Peyton Manning as your quarterback, you aren’t in the business of being average. This is the business of becoming a champion. The expectations, the pressure, and the stress were astronomical. We’d finished the previous year with a 12-4 record and won our division, but none of the veterans on the team looked at the year as successful. The team fell short of our own expectations, which made everyone in training camp even more driven.

  I struggled to keep up. Everything moved so much faster than in college. Players were bigger and stronger, but they also had moves and schemes I had never seen at Minnesota. As a tight end, running routes and catching passes is only one small part of my responsibilities. On most plays I was called on to block and open holes for our running backs, Edgerrin James and Dominic Rhodes, or to protect Peyton Manning. In camp that meant I had to block our own defensive players, including the best defensive end in all of football, Dwight Freeney. In 2004 Freeney led the league in sacks with sixteen and was named first-team All-Pro. He had a spin move that made the best linemen in the game look foolish. When I tried to block him, he made me look like I had never played the game in my life. The coaches all noticed, and they let me hear about it. I never thought I was going to get it right. One night I called Karyn and told her, “I don’t think I am going to make it.”

  “You can do this, Ben,” she reassured me. “You have so much talent, and you’re smart. You can pick this up. You’ll see. Hang in there.”

  I needed that reassurance. All my life I’ve been a pretty sensitive guy. I really internalize criticism. One of my teammates even started calling me Sensi-techt because of the way I responded to criticism. I tried not to let things get to me, but when you are trying to pick up a whole new system and adjust from the college game to the pros after not having played a down of football in a year and a half, a lot of criticism comes your way.

  From the start I worked hard to master the blocking techniques taught by Howard Mudd, our legendary offensive line coach. His approach was completely different than what I had done in college, and he wasn’t shy about calling a player out when one of us didn’t do things right. Mudd taught us to use our shoulders and forearms as weapons, to throw our bodies right into the chests of the guys we were trying to block. If we didn’t, we heard about it. In the film room, going over tape from practices and games, I remember being singled out for my mistakes. “Utecht, what’s the matter with you?” Then he unleashed a tirade of adjectives for my play that probably shouldn’t be repeated, if you get my drift.

  Mudd was tough and fair, but he wasn’t the only one who got on me, either. Offensive coordinator Tom Moore was one of the most intense coaches I have ever been around. I enjoyed Tom. He and I shared a Minnesota connection because we were both originally from Rochester. On one play in practice I was supposed to get a clean release on the linebacker as I started my route. The linebacker in this case happened to be Gary Brackett. Gary was a really good player who had a great career with the Colts. On this particular play Gary anticipated my moves and hit me hard, throwing me completely off my route. All our passes built on precise timing between Peyton and the receivers. I blew that up on this play. The whistle blew and I went back to the huddle. The next thing I knew someone grabbed my arm, spun me around, then punched me square in the chest with his forearm as hard as he could. That’s when I saw it was Tom Moore. “This is the way I want you to do it!” he boomed. Then he punched me again as he showed me how physical he wanted me to be with linebackers on my routes. The guy was sixty-six years old when he did this! The rest of practice I was angry and embarrassed and really pissed off that he did that in front of the entire team. But I also got his point.

  He made another point later in a different practice. I had some sort of injury, I don’t even remember what it was, and I had to sit out drills one day. While I was standing on the sidelines with some other players, Tom came over to us and said, “Utecht, you ever hear of a guy named Wally Pipp?”

  “No, Coach,” I replied.

  Tom went on to say, “Wally Pipp played first base for the New York Yankees back in the twenties. He came to the ballpark after a night of too much socializing and told the manager he had a bad headache and couldn’t play. So the manager takes him out and puts in a little-known guy named Lou Gehrig. Gehrig didn’t miss a game for the next fifteen years and that was the end of Wally Pipp.” Then Tom paused and let his words sink in before walking away without saying anything else.

  I got his point. You stay on the field no matter what because once you come out, you may not get another chance. Playing hurt isn’t optional. You do it if you want to have a career in the National Football League.

  During my high school and college days I had already learned this lesson, but once I made it to the NFL “playing with pain” went to a whole different level. I always felt I had a pretty high tolerance to pain, but even I needed some help sometimes. And that help came in the form of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. Nearly all players have to take them.

  My experience with medication to help manage pain started in high school. I’ve already described how I took maximum doses of ibuprofen to get me through my hip injury. The progression from weekly over-the-counter anti-inflammatories to prescription medications came about pretty quickly when I played college ball. In a couple of earlier chapters I wrote about the pain shots I received in my foot and my groin. I never really gave the shots a thought. They always felt like a no
rmal part of the game. You do what you have to do to stay on the field and contribute to the team. Even before the major injuries forced me to turn to pain shots, I regularly took ibuprofen to deal with pain the game inflicts, until it didn’t work any longer. I was then given Vioxx and Celebrex to keep me on the field. Vioxx was eventually taken off the market because of possible heart problems related to its use, and Celebrex had some warnings associated with its use, but that didn’t worry me or my teammates. Late in my college career I received Toradol injections for the pain in my groin that was eventually diagnosed as a sports hernia. The shots kept me on the field, but, as I already wrote, they set me up for the more serious tear that came against Wisconsin.

  In the NFL, weekly Toradol shots were as much a part of game-time preparation as film study. I did not yet know this when Tom Moore shared the Wally Pipp story with me, but I discovered it once I started getting hurt in games. While playing with an injury, I and any other player who needed some help with pain lined up for a Toradol shot right after our final team meeting the night before a game. As soon as the meeting was over I would grab a snack, then walk behind a divider that separated the dining hall. Lots of guys also lined up for their shots. I wanted my body to feel better so that I could stand up the punishment doled out on the field, so I did what I had to do. At the time I was thankful for them. I probably would have had to miss more games without them. And if you miss games, you stand the chance of being the next Wally Pipp. No one I ever played with wanted to earn that distinction.

  Looking back on my career, from high school through college and the NFL, I cannot even begin to calculate the amount of pain and anti-inflammatory pills and shots I took. I don’t think there was even one week where I didn’t have to take something, even if it was as small as an Advil. However, I never knew, and would not discover until after my career was over, that anti-inflammatories don’t just help hurting joints feel better. They also mask the symptoms and consequences of concussions, including the headaches incurred by hundreds of subconcussive hits that I took every year as a tight end doing my best to block defensive ends and linebackers. In the end, the drugs kept me on the field, and at the time, that’s all that mattered.

  Just in case you think my experience was unique, a former college teammate of mine who played in the NFL told me about his experiences with prescription drugs in the pros. He played on one team where on the flight home after a road game, one of the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle handing out painkillers to players like they hand out sodas and peanuts on commercial flights. He also shared that there was a player on the team who collected as many pills as he could so that he could act as a pharmacist to his teammates during the week just in case anyone needed a little extra for pain management. My friend admitted that he frequently visited this player’s locker to get a painkiller to help get through practice because he suffered so many injuries in his career. All of this was just a normal part of professional football culture. None of us thought twice about it.

  •  •  •

  Training camp gets pretty monotonous. Thankfully the endless parade of drills in 100-degree heat gets broken up by the exhibition games. The team starters don’t play much in those games, but guys like me who are fighting to make the team do. The Colts opened the 2005 exhibition season in Tokyo against the Atlanta Falcons. I didn’t play too much with the offense, but I did get a chance to play on specials teams. Believe me, I busted my butt on the punt and kickoff teams. On one punt return I lit a guy up with a huge hit. He came running down the field and I lowered my shoulder and knocked him off his feet completely. I got some huge props from the coaches when the team watched film of the game back at camp the next week. I have a hard time remembering any other specific details from that game but I do believe I had at least one reception on offense.

  The rest of camp and the preseason games flew by. As we got closer to the final roster cuts I became more and more confident I was going to make the team. In our last preseason game, which is the last chance for guys like me to make an impression, starters don’t play at all, which meant I got a lot of time on the field. Toward the end of the game I turned to our third-string quarterback, Tom Arth, and said, “I’ve been beating my guy all night. Get me the ball.” The next play Tom arced a high, forty-yard bomb to me, which I caught easily. After the game Bill Polian came into the locker room and congratulated me on my great play that night. That’s when I knew I had probably made the team. Coach Dungy confirmed my hopes the next day. I was now officially an Indianapolis Colt.

  •  •  •

  I scored a touchdown in my first regular-season NFL game. It came in the third quarter in the nationally televised Sunday night game against the Baltimore Ravens. Coach Dungy named me the starting tight end for the game when Dallas Clark had to sit out with a concussion. My touchdown came toward the end of the third quarter. We were on the Ravens’ twenty-six-yard line. Peyton called a route combination where I ran a seam route. I took off down the field and the safety, future Hall of Famer Deion Sanders, should have been on me, but he wasn’t. Peyton looked to his first read, that is, the first receiver to which he intended to throw, but the defender was all over him. Then he saw me running wide open. Peyton threw a beautiful spiral to my back shoulder. I adjusted to the ball, made the catch, then went over the safety into the end zone for my first professional touchdown. The next day the front page of my hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, featured a photo of me in the end zone cradling the football. I still have that paper. And the ball.

  After my performance against the Ravens, the coaching staff named me the starter for the second game. Since we ran a lot of two-tight-end sets, Dallas still played a lot. But, as the starter, I stayed in the game when we ran what is called the King’s personnel package, that is, a one-tight-end formation. Basically, this meant the starting tight end spot was mine to lose.

  I had a great week of practice the next week. My confidence was soaring at this point. I made great catches and great reads all week leading up to our second game, at home against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

  On the second play of the game I fired off the line to block the defensive end. I shoved my hands into his chest and tried to steer him away from the play. All of the sudden, I felt him slipping away from me. As he started to get away I tried to go low and legally cut him at his knees. He moved faster than I could get down on the block. My body went low as he ran from me, and his heel came up and hit me hard in the ribs. Pain shot through my side as I felt something give. This isn’t good, I told myself. When I went to pick myself up off the ground the pain grew worse. Don’t get Wally Pipped, was all I could think, so I stayed in the game.

  My form deteriorated throughout the rest of the game as the pain grew worse and worse. Somehow, I played through to the end. After the game the trainers took me in for an X-ray and discovered I’d fractured three ribs. The team doctor held me out of the next four games. Dallas reclaimed his spot as a starter and never let go. I came back in week seven but by then the rotations had been set and the offense was clicking. I went from being the game-one starter to a situation player. I didn’t really play any significant time until the last game of the season, when Coach Dungy rested most of the starters to get ready for the playoffs. I had another good game and my second touchdown, but this one came from the backup quarterback, Jim Sorgi, not Peyton Manning.

  We won the last game of the season and finished with a 14-2 record and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. However, the season was marked by a tragedy. The team had a 13-1 record (including a thirteen-game winning streak) when news came that Coach Dungy’s eighteen-year-old son, James, had lost his life in Tampa. Suddenly, football didn’t seem so important to any of us. The entire team was in shock. Coach Dungy was like a father to all of us. With his family in crisis he left the team for a few weeks. We lost the next game after the tragedy hit. The Arizona game was Coach Dungy’s first game back. We dedicated the win to him and his fa
mily.

  It is hard to say how much the tragedy carried over into the playoffs. As the number-one seed in the AFC, we had the first week off. Pittsburgh upset the Cincinnati Bengals when the Bengals’ star quarterback, Carson Palmer, went down with a knee injury early in the game. The Steelers came to Indy the next week, a game in which we were heavy favorites. We didn’t play like it. The offense never really clicked. Through three quarters we’d managed to score only one field goal and went into the fourth quarter behind 21–3. Then Peyton engineered one of his patented comebacks and we scored a couple of touchdowns and a two-point conversion to pull to within three, at 21–18. I thought we were going to pull the game out when Jerome Bettis, the Steelers’ running back, fumbled the ball on our two-yard line. Nick Harper, one of our defensive backs and one of the fastest guys on the field, grabbed the ball and took off. It looked like he might go all the way when Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger dove at him from behind and managed to just trip him up.

  Even so, that play gave us the ball on our own forty-two with a minute left. That’s plenty of time for Peyton Manning in his prime. We quickly drove the ball to the Steelers’ twenty-eight, but the drive stalled. Our kicker, Mike Vanderjagt, came in to kick the game-tying field goal and send the game into overtime. Vanderjagt was the league’s most accurate kicker that season, having made 92 percent of his field goals for the year. But instead of sending the game into overtime, he pushed the kick way to the right. The ball landed somewhere up in the crowd and just like that, our season was over.