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

by Jackson, Nate

  —Nate. George needs to see you upstairs.

  Up the stairs we go to complete the filthy cycle.

  I sit down once again in front of that stupid mahogany desk. George hands me a manila envelope with my walking papers in it.

  —Well, Nate, I’m sorry about this. We thought you could come in and add a different dimension to the offense. But it’s just too close to the start of the season to get a good look at you. I have no doubt you’re a good player, but you’d be better off in a system that . . .

  Blah blah blah and on and on he goes. I’m not paying any attention. I am busy bashing his skull against his big, beautiful desk while his family members look on through the foggy lens of forgotten picture frames. But I know it’s not George’s fault. I like George. He was the only reason I was there in the first place: him and my tight end coach. George went to bat for me and convinced Mangini and Daboll to give me a shot. It was those two who decided I was no good. George just had to be the one to tell me. Yes, this is all part of the business. Yes, it’s what I signed up for. I should be happy that I got to be a part of it at all. Look at this! I was a Cleveland Brown! That’s more than most people can say. I am a lucky man. I should be thankful.

  But thankful for what? Thankful that I was given the talent to play the game I love? Yes, I’ll buy that. Thankful to be subjected to the whims of the men who control the game I love? Hardly. There are thousands of George Kokinises and Eric Manginis in the football world, men who love the game but weren’t good enough to play it, so they found a way to control those who are. They are trying their best to build a perfect football team, yet they’re losing the perspective needed to do it. And they’re polluting the stream that every football-loving child in America is drinking from. They’ve forgotten about the players. A coach is only as good as his team feels. And if he doesn’t have their respect, what does any of it matter?

  I go back home to Denver this time and swan dive into the pit of despair. A week later, the day after the last preseason game of the summer, I get a call from the Saints. Their second tight end, Billy Miller, tore his Achilles tendon in the game and they need a veteran to come in right away. They fly in four of us, all of whom have at least five years of experience. I know two of them well: Jeb Putzier from Denver and Daniel Wilcox from NFL Europe. We are all veterans, we are all in good shape, and we all want the job.

  The workouts for the Eagles and the Browns were led by an assistant coach who also served as the quarterback. But in New Orleans, head coach Sean Payton is leading the workout and quarterback Drew Brees is throwing us the passes. It feels more important. I have another solid workout. I run another 4.6 and catch everything. But we all do. And after we shower and change, we all hop back in the van and are dropped off at the airport. None of us gets the gig.

  The season starts and I’m unemployed. I have to make a choice. UFL training camp is starting in a week. In the conversations I had over the summer with Eric Van Heusen, we talked about a lot of things. One was, well, what’s the point? EVH, as I called him, assured me that the NFL would be plucking men off UFL rosters when their own players got hurt because the UFL guys would be in football shape. They would be polished and ready. EVH and the rest of the coaches had to really sell this one because all of the UFL guys believed they should be NFL guys, believed they would be NFL guys; all they needed was another chance.

  Another thing we talked about was money. EVH said they hadn’t worked out the particulars yet but it would definitely be six figures. Well, that is good. Certainly it won’t be NFL money, but six figures is good. Playing in the NFL warps your perception of money, and after earning large sums of it to play a violent game a certain way, the prospect of living that same strange, brutal life for a fraction of the reward is unappealing. This was a major obstacle the UFL was facing. Football is fun when you don’t know any better. But when your body starts to break, unless you are getting paid well, there is no incentive to continue. There’s a reason why you don’t see grown men at the park in full pads playing football games. They claim to love the game so much. They claim that the pros are so lucky to play it. Well, you, too, Johnny Crotchscratcher, can play the game you love. Put an ad on Craigslist. Start your own league. Go hit somebody.

  When I talked to EVH after getting cut by the Browns, he told me it was going to be more like $80,000. Not what I was expecting but still good for three months of work. After my final workout in New Orleans, whenever I worked out, I broke out in hives. They crawled all the way up my back and sides onto my neck and face. Large, raised boils and coagulated blood islands formed on the sea of my skin and begged me to reconsider whatever my body knew I was about to do. What beeping? I ignored the cries and pushed on. I was in great shape. I had trained all summer. And for what? To pack it in? Then what would I do with this ax I’d been sharpening? There’s nowhere else I can swing it. I call EVH and tell him I’m in.

  Great! Oh, but one thing, EVH says, now it’s $50,000. That’s all they can do. Eh, fuck it. I’ll do it. I drive from San Diego to Arizona, where all of the UFL festivities are taking place. First order of business: pick up my playbook. Jim Fassel’s Scottsdale home doubles as the Locos’ off-season coaching offices and it’s where I go to meet EVH and Fassel in person. They are nice guys and tell me they’re happy to have me. EVH gives me my playbook and I leave for the hotel in Scottsdale where we’ll stay for three nights and go through extensive physicals and meetings and orientations. But hold on! First we have to sign the contract. Get it in ink! We all showed up despite being misled by the numbers. But the big surprise comes in the hotel ballroom, when they hand us the pen. The real salary, the one we’ll all be receiving for our services, is $35,000: $35,000 to keep the dream alive. I sign it in blood. Look, Ma, I’m a Las Vegas Loco.

  Training camp, and the Locos’ home base for the duration of the six-game season, will be located in Casa Grande, Arizona. One hour southeast of Phoenix. Population: 48,571. Climate: the fucking desert. Notable landmarks: none. Recreational activities: drinking alone in the dark. After the three days in Scottsdale, this is where I’m headed: the 10 East to the 387 South. The 387 is where shit gets real: tumbleweeds and cacti and a lonely highway as straight and hot as the devil’s dick. As I drive along repeating my mantra, my mind runs away from me.

  . . . alone on the highway of my football dreams, I keep my thumb outstretched. Cactus, sand, and rock as far as I can see, cleats over my shoulder, my teeth are grinding, chewing on a coca leaf. I haven’t eaten in days and my eyes are getting heavy. I pack more leaves in my mouth so I can stay awake, stay alert, because I know at any time the right truck will come down this road and spot me, wild-eyed with the madness, and it will pull over and throw open the door for me. I stay awake for this possibility. That’s all that I have ever needed. The possibility. Faint recollections of youth flash behind my eyes. I don’t know what it means. Is it keeping me alive or killing me? This is the madness creeping in. I shake my head a few times and scream the alphabet backward. Do this enough and truth starts to go backward, too. When my body was young, growing, I stepped with a certain rhythm, a certain bounce that I can picture here on this dusty road. In fact I can feel it. I still have it, and without a soul anywhere near this highway I bounce back and forth across the lanes, simulating the routes I’ve been running in empty streets since 1984, pushing back the tears with speed. Keep running, keep lifting, keep hitting, keep throwing, keep pushing, keep chasing, keep chasing, keep chasing the life you believe in. I’m kicking up dust on this two-lane highway. I haven’t eaten in days, but I’m never hungry anymore. I’ve got enough money to feed a village forever but not enough to feed me for a day. The money in my account gives me no peace and no appetite my mother tells me it should. She tells me to learn about my money, what it can do for me, what it can do for my future, my family’s future. But I’ve got no interest in money and no time for a family. I’ve got things to do, mother. I pack my cheek with more leaves and
dig into the pavement with the balls of my feet. I think I see something ahead. Yes, I see something. But I’ve been saying this for weeks now, and every time it ends up being a bush or a rock or a broken-down Chevy or a fucking carcass. Stupid little kid that I am, I get excited every time. I’m back to my old optimistic tricks, circling the imaginary defenders that can’t cover me out here in the desert or anywhere for that matter. All I need is a quarterback who understands me. That’s all I need. So I keep moving, alone down this two-lane highway, wild-eyed and mad with love and fear and pain and hope. Mad and scared that I was wrong all along, afraid to stop moving, stop running, because it will all be over. My thumb will go down and I’ll start learning about my money and I’ll start a family and be very secure and everything will be just fine. But I know when all this happens, when I quit hitchhiking for good, part of me will die. That bounce, that rhythm, the patterns in the street, the wild eyes, the pain, the pain I have learned to cherish, it will all be over. I’m not r—

  Blinker, right on 84, and there’s my new home: the Holiday Inn. We will stay here for the duration of the season and bus to Las Vegas for our home games. I needn’t stress the regularity with which my mantra is running through my head. Casa Grande feels like rural Mexico. I love Mexico and all, but this is no bueno.

  Day one of training camp reveals the many ways that the UFL differs from the NFL. One is equipment. In the NFL, everyone gets everything they need. In Casa Grande—affectionately mispronounced “cassa grand”—we have to fight over the piles of face masks and shoulder pads and thigh pads and knee pads on the floor. Fifty men are rummaging through them simultaneously. The equipment manager is an ornery control freak with a wobbly gait and a lazy eye who initially withholds his services so he can show us all who’s boss. Simple questions are met with sharp retorts.

  —Where do I get a mouthpiece?

  —Oh now you want a fucking mouthpiece? Shit!

  I’m not the only one with a mantra.

  There are four tight ends on our team. All of us have NFL experience and we all get along. One of my fellow tight ends, John Madsen, played for the Raiders when I was a Bronco. I knew who he was from playing special teams against him. We studied our opponents and watched so much film that I often felt like I knew the men I was playing against. John and I are similar players, too. We both excel in the passing game and consider ourselves pure receivers. And we both gain very little pleasure from blocking. We also share another fun fact: we are both failed experiments of the Cleveland Browns organization. The nameless face I assumed was watching me try out on the indoor turf of the Browns facility was John. They cut him when they signed me. And here we both are, brothers in misery.

  Football is football anywhere. There are tenets of the game that do not change. But the unpleasantness of these tenets can be exacerbated by the conditions that support them. In this regard, football in Casa Grande takes on a new luster. The Holiday Inn supplies us with all of our meals, which aren’t horrible, but any meal eaten in the dining area of a desert Holiday Inn, no matter how delicious, is seasoned with the flakes of self-loathing.

  Our practice facility is ten miles farther west down the 84, and was hastily constructed ahead of our arrival. In fact, it was still under construction when we arrived. It appears to be of the same blueprint as any nondescript industrial office building, framed on the cheap and ringing with a tinny echo. The facility is to be a multidimensional sports complex with soccer fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and football fields, none of which have been completed except for several football fields with freshly laid sod on the far end of the desert complex, about a half mile’s walk from the locker room.

  The temperature hovers at about 104 degrees and there is a biblical swarm of mosquitoes that descends on every practice. The smell of bug spray dominates the air. Offensive linemen, firmly rooted in their three-point stances, can be seen frantically trying to scratch the eternal itch on their shin bone just before the ball is snapped. As the days wear on, the size of the swarm grows, alerted by the thirsty desert winds.

  Upon returning from practice, it is not uncommon to find a shortage of towels for the showers or a scorpion in your shoe. When returning from meetings and getting ready for practice, it is not uncommon to find the contents of your laundry bag damp and musty. The dryer is perpetually in flux. Yes, life is hard in Casa Grande. No one has it how they want it. Everyone is pissed off. There is an audible hum underneath it all: what the fuck are we doing?

  The answer is Football! Football made us all the toasts of our towns. It got us laid. It gave us status. It made us tough, gave us confidence, and this scar right here, and here, and here. Football! The physical talent we were born with pushed us onto the football field. It was a no-brainer, really. Society funnels people into the industries that their talents serve. And this mosquito farm in the middle of the Arizona desert is the runoff. It is the prolonged, agonizing breakup of a lifelong relationship that cannot and will not ever end well.

  Two weeks into training camp and my blocking technique is coming back to me. My old friends, Bump and Bruise, are back, too. And the firecracker pop in my helmet! I’d missed them all. They never asked me any questions. They accepted me. And they gave my mental struggle the physical reminder that pain on the outside was easier to bear. Here. This is pain. We understood each other. In the hot, dry heat, my teammates and I act out the tactical know-how of Jim Fassel’s offense, sweating bug spray and cracking each other in the face, over and over. One day after the next: all days the same. It’s the routine of football in the lives of football men that quiets the demons within. It’s the routine that keeps them at bay. And it is the end of the routine that we all fear. That’s why we’re here.

  On one mid-training-camp morning, the same as the one before and the one after, I wait for my turn to run a pass route during one-on-ones. When I get to the front of the line, I whisper my route to the quarterback and get down in my three-point stance.

  —Set, hut!

  I jab step with my inside foot and shake my defender on the line of scrimmage, pushing up the field with crisply choreographed steps. At the top of the route, I square up my shoulders, give a slight head nod inside, stick my foot hard in the ground and make a clean break toward the corner. The quarterback drops it over my head perfectly as I pull away from the linebacker who is covering me. Touchdown! That’s how it’s done. Satisfied that my endless pursuit of football perfection has finally been reached, or is finally revealed as unreachable, the hand of fate steadies, lines up the scope, and pulls the trigger. No doubts this time. The sniper hits his mark.

  Thwap! My hamstring explodes as I decelerate. I hop twice on my opposite foot, drop the ball to the grass, sit down next to it, and pop off my helmet. A mosquito hovers at eye level. It’s over now. It’s all over.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was brought to life by the support of many wonderful people. The athlete’s body is coveted. His mind is implored to stay silent. But the athletic mind is an abundant source of artistic revelation. These people encouraged me to tap it:

  Mrs. Namba, my teacher in the third, fourth, and fifth grades at Grant Elementary School in San Jose, laid a foundation of compassion and confident expression. Those remain my most important school years—the most lasting and most complete.

  At Bret Harte Middle School and Pioneer High School I was a social jock. Academia was a thing to be endured between practices and parties. But those years made a lasting impression on my heart, and everyone involved lives in the spirit of this book—girlfriends, friends, classmates, coaches, teachers, and parents.

  The summer before my sophomore year at Cal Poly, a childhood friend committed suicide. In the days that followed, my mother gave me a journal. I asked what I was supposed to do with it. She told me to write, it didn’t matter what—just write. And the words started flowing. Uncapping the pen uncorked my heart.

  The next year I transfer
red to Menlo College and enrolled in a newspaper class, and professor DeAnna DeRosa soon gave me a column in the Menlo Oak. There were no parameters on the content or style of my articles. Menlo gave me artistic and athletic freedom that allowed me to flourish.

  When the Broncos sent me to NFL Europe, I was asked to keep an online journal for their website. Again, no restrictions on content or style. I wrote for the website for the next three years. I am thankful to Pat Bowlen and the whole Broncos family for allowing my self-expression.

  During training camp of 2006, a writer named Stefan Fatsis was given unrestricted access to the team in order to write a book about life in the NFL called A Few Seconds of Panic. We fell in together, a writer to a writer—bouncing ideas off one another. In the years that followed, Stefan critiqued and promoted my work, made calls on my behalf, gave me advice, and motivated me to keep writing. He pushed me through the door and into the light.

  During two consecutive off-seasons after meeting Stefan, I enrolled in writing classes at Denver University. My professors and classmates encouraged me to believe in the voice in my head and shed my football armor, for which I was not ready, but I thank them for trying.

  I owe a special thanks to Tommy Craggs of Deadspin and Josh Levin of Slate, who, after my NFL career ended, gave me a forum to write about what I knew. Soon I was on a plane to New York to pitch my book idea in meetings arranged by my new agent, Alice Martell. Alice found me by chance, and what a lucky man I am for it. Her compassion and thoughtfulness has made the transition from athlete to writer as smooth as possible, and has given me a big picture perspective that I desperately needed.