Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile by Nate Jackson Read Free Book Online

play, the better they play. I want to make it harder on them in practice than it will be on Sundays. When our DBs play well, I pat myself on the back. When they don’t, I take it personally.
    Usually when our team is off in another city playing, Charlie and I go to Earl’s, our favorite restaurant, to get fed and drunk. Then we saunter downtown and hop around a handful of bars and clubs, dividing our attention between all of the girls who want to hang out with a Bronco. No Broncos around here but us.
    —But you’re on the practice squad!
    —But you’re a slut!
    And we have an understanding. Alina can feel it with every minute that I don’t respond promptly to her texts, don’t reassure her that the party’s boring, that the girls are ugly, that I’m having a horrible time. I feel her desperation but I’m too weak to be honest with her about what I’m up against: a mob of bloodthirsty jersey chasers.
    A s the season wears on and injuries stack up, I become more and more anxious to join the active roster. When an active player gets hurt, a practice squad player often takes his place. I want to be on that field “taking live bullets,” as we say. Not only do I want live bullets, I want a bigger paycheck. My salary is the lowest in the locker room. I don’t think about it early in the season but as the months pass, it’s impossible not to. I’m a rookie and so every once in a while Rod has me go upstairs to pick up his check. I can’t help but take a peek at it. My eyes nearly pop out of my head. Rod has my $4,350 a week in his couch cushions.
    Some time after Thanksgiving, we have our offensive rookie dinner, minus the offensive linemen. I’ve been hearing stories about the previous year’s rookie dinner at Del Frisco’s steak house. Clinton Portis had flown in some adult entertainers from Miami to provide flexible, pink comic relief in between bites of filet mignon. The bill was outlandish. The rookies picked up the tab.
    Now that C.P. isn’t a rookie anymore, he plans to take full advantage of the situation. He brings some friends and they bring some friends. The back room of Del Frisco’s is full. Wine and champagne and cognac are flowing like the rivers of Capistrano. Ashley Lelie shows up late and orders two bottles of the priciest wine I’ve ever seen. The waitress starts to cork one of them and Ashley stops her.
    —No! No! Don’t open it. I’m taking them home.
    Then he leaves with his loot. The bill’s over $26,000, split four ways between the rookie offensive skill position players, none of whom was drafted very high. Jake, bless him, feels so bad that he palms me some money to help me pay the bill.
    Still, I’m not losing any sleep over money. Football was never about the money to me. It was about competing with the best athletes in the world. And just practicing with them isn’t enough. I want to get hit. I mean really hit. I want to hit the ground hard and get up shaking myself off because I think I’m dead. That’s the feeling I want. When I was in high school, my friends and I used to have typical teenage stoner conversations. Who would win in a fight between Mike Tyson and two lightweights? What would be the best way to thwart a shark attack? Could I kill a mountain lion with a pocketknife? And would I be able to take a hit from Levon Kirkland?
    For my friends and me, Steelers linebacker Levon Kirkland represented the pinnacle of big, scary football players in the mid to late 1990s. They insisted that there was no way I could take a shot from him. I vehemently disagreed. Of course I could! He’s only a man, after all. It’s football. But there I was stuck with no way to prove them wrong.
    E very week of practice, my colored dot means that I’m a different player. My favorite week is when I get to be Randy Moss. Randy’s still with the Vikings and is still a badass with some very unorthodox habits. It is ingrained in the mind of football players to go hard, 100 percent on every