Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile

by Jackson, Nate

  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.

  With 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.

  We 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.

  The 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:

  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 alw
ays 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.

  The 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)

  My 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.
<
br />   —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.

  Head 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.