Counting the Days While My Mind Slips Away

by Ben Utecht

  I played just enough in the last game to hurt my shoulder. I’d hurt it the week before in a win over the Texans and finished it off when I landed hard on my side against the Titans. The injury was a severe acromioclavicular (AC) joint separation, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from playing in our first playoff game, at home against the Chargers. I took some painkillers in addition to the usual Toradol shot and didn’t miss a beat. The team, however, did. The Chargers ended our season when they scored late in the fourth quarter to take a 28–24 lead. We could not answer. Our season was over.

  The playoff loss turned out to be my last game with the Colts. I became a restricted free agent during the off-season. That meant I was free to negotiate with other teams, but the Colts had the right to match any offer and keep me. The Bengals, against whom I always had big games, offered me a three-year contract worth $8.75 million. The Colts had signed Dallas Clark to a big contract the season before and did not have room under the NFL’s salary cap to sign a second tight end to such a lucrative deal.

  I talked to Coach Dungy about the situation before I made a decision and he told me I should accept the Bengals’ offer. I respected his honesty. Like I said, an NFL coach is like a second father, and Coach Dungy certainly was to me. I took his advice and signed with Cincinnati. Karyn and I put our Indianapolis home up for sale and moved ninety miles down the road. I had high hopes that in Cincinnati I could become one of the top tight ends in the league. I was ready to get to work to reach my goal.

  CHAPTER 15

  FRESH START

  LEAVING INDIANAPOLIS WASN’T EASY. IN the four years I spent there it came to feel like home. Karyn and I spent a lot of time with teammates Dallas Clark, Bryan Fletcher, Ben Hartsock, Justin Snow, Hunter Smith, and Dylan Gandy. For much of the time Bryan was our token bachelor when all of us went out to places like St. Elmo Steak House. All of us were young with great-paying jobs and just starting out in life. These were some of the best days of my life.

  I grieved leaving my friends behind, but that’s life in the NFL. Dallas and Justin both stayed with the Colts for another four seasons, but none of the rest of my closest friends did. Ben Hartsock actually left before me to join the Titans. He later moved on to play for the Falcons, Jets, and Panthers. Bryan looked to gain an increased role in the offense after I left, but the team released him after they selected two tight ends in the 2008 draft. Dylan ended up moving on to the Detroit Lions after brief stops in Denver and Oakland. That’s just life in the NFL. Team rosters are fluid. It is a business, after all.

  Leaving my teammates wasn’t the only difficult part of the move. During my four years with the team I had started working toward the life I hoped to have after football. Music has always been a key part of my life. Back when I sang the national anthem at ball games during college I wasn’t just a singing football player. I felt I was a singer who happened to play football. Music started early in my life. I sang in my dad’s church when I was a boy. Throughout high school I was in more choirs than I was sports teams and took vocal lessons from our choir teacher. In college I was part of the FCA worship team and sang in area churches. I did the same in Indianapolis. A “chance” meeting took this to a whole new level.

  During my rookie season with the Colts, I was invited to speak to a youth event in Anderson, Indiana, about forty miles northeast of Indy. As I said earlier, the Colts now hold their training camp there. After I finished my speech, where I of course wore my Colts jersey since I had not yet made a name for myself with the team, a very energetic woman in a Peyton Manning jersey came running over to me. Jumping up and down she said, “I am the world’s biggest Colts fan. I am so excited that you are here. I know everything about the team and I know all about you. May I have an autograph, please?”

  How could I turn down such an enthusiastic fan? “Of course,” I said. “Who should I make this out to?”

  “Sandi Patty,” she replied.

  “Sandi Patty?” I asked, in shock. “Are you the Sandi Patty?” Through the 1980s and early ’90s this Colts fan in front of me was the biggest star in all of Christian music. I grew up with her music filling our home. I did not realize she lived in Anderson.

  “Yes, I am,” she said.

  “Oh my gosh,” I gushed, “I want YOUR autograph.”

  Sandi was gracious and laughed. We talked for a while, and that might have been the end of it except a few weeks later I appeared at a school event and sang. Her husband, Don Peslis, happened to be there. Afterward he introduced himself to me and told me Sandi had mentioned me to him.

  A friendship grew. Sandi and Don’s home became a second home for me, especially when I was still single and living alone in the city. Sandi really encouraged me in terms of my singing. She even invited me to join her onstage for her Christmas performances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Coach Dungy and several other staff members even came to hear me sing. During my time in Indianapolis, Sandi became a mentor to me in terms of music. She also told me that she believed I had what it took to have a career as a singer. These weren’t just words. Her manager, Mike Atkins, came out of semiretirement to represent me.

  The real highlight of my time in Indianapolis came in 2007 when Sandi and I sang “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” in front of more than one hundred thousand people on Monument Circle, outside in downtown Indianapolis during their annual Festival of Lights, which kicks off the holiday season in the city. Standing on that stage with one of the legends of the Christian music industry, singing in front of so many people, and of course wearing my Super Bowl ring, was a dream come true.

  While Cincinnati was only ninety miles from Indianapolis, going there still meant leaving all of this behind. Sure, I stayed in contact with my teammates and with Sandi and others who mentored me in music, but it wasn’t the same. I had new relationships that needed to be built. Before I signed the contract, Coach Dungy encouraged me, telling me that he felt God had a plan for me in Cincinnati. “God’s going to use you as a light there, Ben, I’m sure of that,” he said in one of our last conversations as player and coach. I felt confident Coach was right. Going to the Bengals meant leaving much behind, but it also meant a fresh start with new possibilities.

  •  •  •

  I actually signed my contract with the Bengals in my garage in my suburban Indianapolis home. I didn’t have a fax machine, so I went to a nearby church and faxed the contract from there. My $8.75 million contract included a $2 million signing bonus. Even after taking out my agent’s fees and paying all the taxes, that still left me with a lot of money, especially for a twenty-six-year-old guy only four years removed from college. Karyn and I put our house up for sale. Since it was 2008, the year the real estate bubble burst in a big way, we lost a lot of money when we found a buyer. We chalked it up to experience and headed down Interstate 74 to the Queen City.

  Initially, Karyn and I rented a downtown apartment a couple of minutes from the Bengals’ facilities at Paul Brown Stadium. After losing money on our house in Indy, we were hesitant about buying another home in a second NFL city, especially with only a three-year contract. However, I saw the length of the contract as a blessing. I told Karyn, “I’m going to crush it these three years, then sign another three-year deal with the team. That will give me a ten-year career in the league and by then I’ll be ready to really pursue a career in music.”

  I was so confident in my plan that we bought another house. We found a home tucked away in hidden development in the woods in Mount Carmel, Ohio. A golf membership came with the purchase of our new house and I know that excited Karyn. The house also had more amenities than our house in Indy. Going from a $250,000-a-year contract to one that averages just under $3 million a year will do that, even for two people determined to save as much as we could for the future.

  We moved to Cincinnati right after I signed my contract. I needed to get to work right away learning offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski’s system. Both Coach Bratkowski and Head Coach Marvin
Lewis showed a lot of faith in me, along with tight ends coach Jonathan Hayes, who in my opinion is one of the great tight ends ever to play and coach the game. My coaches’ confidence motivated me even more. I wanted to make a good impression from the start. Unlike Indianapolis, I wasn’t going to have a year to just sit and soak up everything. The team had a lot invested in me and expected me to contribute right away. I started spending time with my new quarterback, Carson Palmer, to develop a rapport with him. Few quarterbacks in the league could compare to the one I had in Indy, but Carson came close. Like Peyton Manning, Carson had been the overall number-one pick in the draft. Carson won the Heisman Trophy his last year at the University of Southern California and had been named to the Pro Bowl following both the 2005 and 2006 NFL seasons.

  I came to the Bengals with a lot of enthusiasm, but I noticed a problem from the start. Even though the team’s offensive schemes were not as intricate as those we ran in Indianapolis, I struggled picking them up. In OTAs and the first minicamp I felt like I was walking through a mental quicksand when trying to learn the new offense. At the time I chalked it up to my unfamiliarity with the system and all the new terminology I had to learn. It will come. Be patient, I told myself. I had to be very patient because it felt like nothing I read or studied stuck in my brain. I never associated my difficulty with the concussions I suffered in 2006 and 2007. I really had no reason to do so. Before I signed my contract with the Bengals I underwent all kinds of testing, including a close look at any lingering effects from the concussions in my past. The Bengals’ doctors cleared me, just as the Colts’ medical staff had before. I had no reason to suspect I might still suffer from lingering memory issues. Since not one but two sets of doctors had declared me fit, why would I?

  •  •  •

  A few weeks before my first training camp with the Bengals, Karyn and I went home to the Twin Cities to visit family and to celebrate my twenty-seventh birthday. The two of us went to the Downtowner Woodfire Grill in St. Paul, which is one of my favorite spots. We went through dinner, then she said, “Do you want your gift?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Karyn then took out a small package and handed it to me. It felt really, really light. I had no idea what it might be. Looking over at Karyn, she had a big grin on her face like this was something I really wanted. I couldn’t imagine what she could have possibly bought that was so small and so light.

  I tore through the wrapping paper and found a small box. Inside the small box was an infant-sized Minnesota Golden Gophers jersey, number 82 printed on the front and back, which was my number in college. My eyes got really big. I looked up at Karyn, who now had tears in her eyes. “Does this mean . . . ?” I asked.

  “Yep. We’re having a baby,” she said.

  “How did you get this?” I asked.

  “I bought it before I graduated after we got really serious. I bought it for this day,” she said.

  I broke into tears. It was the greatest birthday present ever.

  •  •  •

  By the time training camp opened I had a great relationship with my new teammates, but I was still struggling to learn the offense. Karyn and I made friends quickly both on and off the field. It was a good thing my new quarterback, Carson Palmer, and I became friends because in the second preseason game of the year, I put our relationship to the test. Early in the first half Carson audibled to a play where I was supposed to stay in close to him and block. An audible is where the quarterback changes the play right before the ball is snapped based on the defensive alignment. Carson saw the safety creeping up close to the line to blitz, that is, rush him instead of dropping back in pass coverage. My job was simple: block the safety and protect the quarterback. I blew it. I didn’t just miss the block. I completely misunderstood the audible. Instead of staying in and blocking I went out for a pass. The safety crushed Carson, driving his helmet up under Carson’s face mask and breaking his nose. Neither of us knew it at the time, but that play was a harbinger of what awaited us in the 2008 season.

  We opened the year on the road in Baltimore against the Ravens. Because they are in the same division, the Bengals play the Ravens twice every season. As a team we should have been up for the game, but we came out flat and stayed that way. It was a hot, humid day and we melted in it, myself included. I dropped a couple of balls I should have caught. I wasn’t the only one. On the day, Carson only completed nine out of twenty-four passes, two of which were to me. The Ravens outgained us by two hundred yards and had twenty-one first downs to our eight. Even though they thoroughly outplayed us, we lost by only a touchdown, 17–10.

  Losing the first game of the year was a new experience to me as a pro. In my three years playing for the Colts we started out 13-0, 9-0, and 7-0. The 2008 Bengals flipped that script upside down.

  We played our second game in near-hurricane conditions against the Tennessee Titans. At game time the wind whipped through the stadium at 70 miles per hour. I don’t know how the people in the upper deck of Paul Brown Stadium kept from blowing away. The wind certainly affected the football. On our first play of our first drive of the game, I went out for a short pass. The wind caught the ball and sent it up high. I jumped up to grab it but it was just out of reach. As the ball sailed over my outstretched arms, one of my former Colt teammates, David Thornton, plowed his helmet into my chest, driving me to the ground. I could not get up and I could barely breathe.

  A stretcher carted me off the field and an ambulance took me directly to the hospital, where according to the doctor there, X-rays revealed I had possibly fractured my sternum. Later the team doctors looked at the same X-rays and said my sternum was merely badly bruised, not broken. Either way, I couldn’t play again until week five, in a game on the road against the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium, the stadium with a hole in the roof. Locals said the hole was there so that God could watch His team. (The stadium has since been replaced with AT&T Stadium, which also features a retractable roof.) I don’t know about that. I do know that in 2008 the Bengals felt a little cursed. Going into the Cowboy game we were 0-4, losing not only the Titans game but also to the Giants and our cross-state rivals, the Cleveland Browns.

  Looking back, I guess it sounds crazy to think that I came back from a bruised or broken sternum in only three weeks, but I did. I was able to play because I was wearing a special chest pad covering my sternum and I believe because I received anti-inflammatory injections before the game. Even with that I was not the same player. Carson threw my way five times. I only caught one of the passes and it wasn’t because the passes were thrown poorly. Toward the end of the first quarter I went deep over the middle on a seam route. When you go across the middle of the field, you know you are going to get hit when you catch the ball, and get hit hard. As I watched the ball arcing toward me, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of one of the safeties bearing down on me. The ball, the safety, and I all arrived at the same place at about the same time. The pass was high but very catchable. However, instead of stretching up for the ball, I pulled my arms down and braced myself for the hit from the safety. I couldn’t help myself. In that split second I reacted and did what most of us instinctively do: I protected myself from harm. The ball fell harmlessly on the turf, while the safety gave me an earful. To put it mildly, he questioned my manhood for letting a catchable pass go by out of fear of the hit he was going to lay on me.

  I also heard about it in the film room the next week.

  We lost to the Cowboys 31–22. If I had caught the pass, the game might have turned out differently. I didn’t just let the pass sail. I also signaled my quarterback that he could not trust me to sacrifice myself to make a tough catch.

  The following game, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey against the Jets, I set out to change that perception. Carson missed the game due to injury. Ryan Fitzpatrick took his place. We fell behind early but fought back. Right before the end of the first half we drove the ball down to the Jets’ five-yard line. Ryan
called a play where I ran an under route across the middle of the field right by the goal line. I caught the ball, but paid the price for it. One defender hit me in the legs, and another hit me squarely in the middle of my chest, right where I’d been hit four weeks earlier. I felt a pop. X-rays revealed a new break in one of my ribs in the upper left side of my chest. I played the rest of the game, but missed the next three. The team finally won our first game in the last of those three games. We held on for a 21–19 win over the Jaguars.

  When I finally returned to practice we had a 1-8 record. The calendar said November 10, but for all intents and purposes our season was over. Teams who lose their first eight games don’t make the playoffs, much less win a Super Bowl. Even so, I tried to maintain a positive attitude in the locker room. The team was pretty down. Our owner, Mike Brown, had canceled the team Halloween party because of our poor start. No one felt much like partying.

  I came back strong my first week of practice as we prepared to play the Philadelphia Eagles at home. My chest still hurt, but that was nothing new. I followed the pain protocol, that is, painkillers and anti-inflammatories, and got back to work. In one of the first practices I lined up for a live blocking drill with one of our linebackers. The two of us crashed into one another, and as we did, our heads collided. I nearly blacked out. My vision went dark for just a moment and I felt a little woozy afterward. However, hits that make you see stars or go black and leave you with a headache are pretty common in blocking drills and games. I just ran back to my place in the line and didn’t say a word to anyone, although the hit left me with a severe headache.

  That night I woke up around 2:00 a.m. and found I had soaked the sheets with sweat. The next morning I still didn’t feel right. When Karyn got up I told her, “I think I have another concussion.”