Coming Back Stronger (5 page)

The older I got, the more difficult it became for me to witness the bitterness between my parents. I felt like I needed to start making my own decisions and believed that by doing that, there would be less fighting. This coming-of-age did not go over smoothly. Although I’m sure this process of asserting independence is an issue in every parent-child relationship, unfortunately it was what began the deterioration of my relationship with my mother.

During my senior year I begged Brittany to stay in West Lafayette while I finished school. Although she had already graduated, her plans of going out into the working world were put on hold while I tried to accomplish my final goals as a student athlete. I couldn’t imagine not having her there for every game and every special moment. She worked full-time as a travel agent, paying all the bills. My scholarship check was enough to get us dinner at Bruno’s, a local pizza joint, once a month, and that was pretty much it.

Brittany and I leaned on each other during that time and grew up together over the next few years. But we had no idea what we were getting into. Early on we committed ourselves to each other, and we decided that no matter what happened, we were going to work through any hard times we faced. We would fight together. Quitting or giving up on each other was never an option. Without her I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I didn’t know how important that lesson would be until I made it to the NFL.

Charging Ahead

Those were good years at Purdue. Just as I’d dreamed, we made it to the Rose Bowl my senior year. We fought hard and won the Big Ten, and then we finally found ourselves at the big game. We played the Washington Huskies, and it was tight almost the whole game. The Huskies scored twenty points in the second half, and we ended up losing 34–24. It was a big disappointment to the team, but we were thrilled to have left our mark on the “granddaddy” of all bowl games. Along the way I was nominated twice for the Heisman Trophy, finishing fourth in 1999 and third in 2000.

In what seemed like no time at all, I was getting ready for the NFL draft. In February 2001, I participated in the Scouting Combine, where players are poked and prodded and sized up in virtually any way you can imagine. If your knees and shoulders and ankles don’t hurt when you get there, they do by the time you leave, after all the team doctors yank on your joints. They make you feel like a piece of meat.

To test physical speed and agility, players run a forty-yard dash, the 5-10-5 shuttle, and the L drill. The scouts even clock your throws with a radar gun—similar to what police officers use when they give you a speeding ticket on the highway. I wasn’t breaking any speeding laws in terms of arm strength. I think my fastest throw was around 60 mph. Then you go through multiple interviews with coaches who pry into just about every subject, trying to find out how much you understand about the game as well as what your personality is like and what kind of guy you are.

A few of those interviews stick out in my mind. Dick Vermeil of the Chiefs asked me a lot of questions, none of which I remember because I was too busy staring at his Super Bowl ring. He’d won it with the Rams a few years earlier. I really wanted one of those. Meeting with offensive coordinator Norv Turner of the Chargers was another key interview. I could really feel his interest in me as a player and a person, and that sense was confirmed when Norv, Chargers head coach Mike Riley, general manager John Butler, and a few other scouts came to Purdue a few weeks later to give me a personal workout. I think I took him back when I asked what they were going to do with Ryan Leaf, whom the Chargers had drafted three years earlier with the second pick but who didn’t seem like a good fit for San Diego. He told me that was none of my business, and then I watched as they released him a week later. That was when I knew they might be drafting a quarterback.

The last memorable interview came with a young quarterbacks coach from the Washington Redskins named Brian Schottenheimer. It was his first year as an NFL coach, and he was only a little older than I was. Little did I know that someday he would coach me for four years in San Diego and become one of my great friends and mentors. Funny how things work out.

It was an exhausting day, but overall I had a positive feeling about how everything had gone. I must admit, though, that I was tired of answering the same questions about my short stature and the fact that I had played in a spread offense almost exclusively in the shotgun my whole college career. Would I be able to adapt to an NFL offense where I would be under center the majority of the time? I kept reassuring them that they had no need to worry—I was pretty sure I could take a snap from under center. In all seriousness, they could watch the film, talk to my coaches, talk to those I played with and against. I tried to give them everything they needed to see and hear. Now there was only one thing left to do: wait for draft day.

On April 21, the air seemed to be filled with electricity. Brittany and I were waiting for the results in my apartment along with Tim Layden, a writer for Sports Illustrated, who was doing a draft profile on me. Brittany had saved up her money to surprise me by flying in my brother, Reid, to also share in the moment with us. I was frying up some fish in the deep fryer and watching the draft on ESPN.

Being a competitive person, I was really counting on going in the first round, at as high a number as possible. I knew very well that’s how a player’s worth is measured. If you’re the number one pick, or in the top five or top ten, you’re deemed one of the best prospects in the league. There’s a big difference between the contract of the first pick and the seventh, between the tenth pick and the twentieth.

New England had talked with me about taking me as their sixth pick, and I knew San Diego, who held the fifth pick after a trade with Atlanta, was also interested in me, so I thought I would go pretty high. In the first round, San Diego chose LaDainian Tomlinson. I figured that was it for my chances to play for the Chargers. But I still felt fairly confident I would go as the sixth pick to New England—until they chose Richard Seymour instead.

There were about six other teams who said they might draft me if I was available in the first round. Seattle and Kansas City showed a lot of interest early but traded for Matt Hasselbeck and Trent Green, respectively, prior to the draft. Carolina and Jacksonville had draft picks in the teens and had both seen me throw lights out at my pro day in March at Purdue. Neither one was meant to be. Players like Michael Vick, Santana Moss, and Deuce McAllister, whom I would team up with later in New Orleans, were all drafted ahead of me. I listened as the names were announced all the way through the teens and into the twenties. That left Miami with the twenty-sixth pick.

I had been told by numerous sources, but most significantly Coach Tiller, who had a friend in the Dolphins organization, that if I was still available at that point, they would definitely draft me. I stood by the phone, ready for the call that would say, “Congratulations—welcome to South Florida!” But the call never came. I checked the ringer to make sure the phone was working. Sure enough, that was not meant to be either.

I was frustrated and a little hurt—not so much by the fact that I wasn’t a first-round pick, but more so because I thought I had been lied to. The fact of the matter is, you can’t believe a thing most teams tell you on draft day. I didn’t realize at the time how much goes on behind the scenes. It looks like a pretty exact science, but it’s not. Emotions are high and last-minute information is getting thrown around right up until the draft decisions are made. As the first round neared an end, it became obvious that I would not be drafted by any of the remaining teams. They didn’t need a quarterback. I then saw a familiar team pop up on the draft board.

San Diego had the first pick in the second round. Little did I know they had actually tried to trade up to get me late in the first round, but no one would trade with them. They were sure that I wouldn’t be available to them in the second round. But there I was, still watching, still waiting.

Finally the phone rang. It was John Butler, general manager for the Chargers. I was going to San Diego! They chose me with the first pick of the second round, the thirty-second pick overall. Of course I would have liked to have been drafted higher, but I was happy about going to San Diego. I loved John and the coaching staff he had put together. His résumé spoke for itself. He had been with the Buffalo Bills for many years, including four consecutive trips to the Super Bowl in the early nineties. He had also brought in Doug Flutie a few weeks earlier as the starting quarterback. In my mind—and a lot of people would agree with me—Doug Flutie was a legend. I was five years old when he threw that legendary Hail Mary for Boston College to beat Miami in 1984. There was so much I could learn from this guy, and with no pressure to immediately come in as the starter, I could relax and get indoctrinated gradually. Plus, I would have the opportunity to play with some of the greatest to ever play the game—LaDainian Tomlinson, Junior Seau, and Rodney Harrison.

I hopped on a plane to San Diego to meet with head coach Mike Riley and answer questions from the media. As I tried to wrap my brain around my new reality, I realized something: I could get stuck in disappointment because I hadn’t gone in the first round like I’d envisioned, or I could be thankful I’d landed in the right place. Sometimes it’s not how you get to your destination that’s most important. The key is ending up in the right place—on the right team, in the right situation, with the right opportunity. I felt that God had put me in San Diego for a reason. A new adventure was about to begin.

As soon as training camp was underway, one thing was clear: I was the backup. In fact, I was competing for a spot on the team, as far as I was concerned. Dave Dickenson was making a run for the backup quarterback role, and I had my work cut out for me. Doug Flutie, the former Heisman Trophy winner and free agent who had been acquired by the Chargers, would be the starting quarterback. I played in only one game all year—when Flutie got a concussion—and even then, it was only for about half of the game. But I was watching Doug and taking notes.

Doug Flutie was a mentor to me; he did so much for my career and my development as a young player. I loved the way he played the game—with a fire and passion to win like I’d never seen before. I’m sure that’s why he played professional football for so long—over twenty years in three different leagues. We were friends then, and we are to this day. He really cared about me as a person and as a player—I don’t think he saw me as a threat. When I became a Charger, I wanted to help Doug and the rest of the team. My goal was to work my tail off and play as well as I could, and if I was good enough to play, great. If I wasn’t good enough, then I wouldn’t play. I just wanted to play my best, and I think Doug respected that.

Flutie was tough. He’s a small guy—only five-nine. He’ll tell you he’s five-ten, but don’t believe him. He’s five-nine and 180 pounds. But what he lacks in height, he makes up for in heart, athletic ability, and a supercompetitive nature. Mentally he’s as tough as they come, and physically he can’t be kept down. You can knock him around all you want, but he’s going to get back up and fight. A great example of this came during the 2002 training camp. In a freak accident during practice, someone ran into Doug on the sideline and separated his shoulder. He jumped up, brushed himself off, and didn’t tell anyone about the injury until two weeks later. Meanwhile, he kept slinging the ball around as if nothing had happened. That was Doug.

Early in that season Doug revealed something interesting to me that must have come from his experience in Buffalo. He said, “I’ve learned to never take myself out of a game and to never let someone else take you out of a game. Do whatever you can to prevent injury, but if you do get hurt, fight through whatever you can. Never give your backup the opportunity to see the field because you might not get back out there again.”

In Buffalo, Doug had experienced a divided locker room, where half the players wanted Rob Johnson as quarterback and the other half wanted Doug. There were stories of heated rivalries within the team, and when Doug came to San Diego, he wanted to be as far away from that as possible. I had heard about that situation secondhand, and although Doug and I would compete fiercely for the starting job the next year, we could not have been better friends during our four years together.

In the 2000 season, the year before I arrived, San Diego had a 1–15 record—about as bad as you can get. The year I joined the team, Flutie led the team to a 5–2 start before losing the last nine games of the season. It was disappointing to all of us, but it was still an improvement. The next year Mike Riley was let go as head coach, and Marty Schottenheimer was hired. My world was about to change.

The past several years had been a whirlwind for Brittany and me. Between finishing school, getting drafted, and playing my first season in the NFL, it seemed like we’d barely had time to catch our breath, let alone spend much quality time together. We decided to take our first big trip as a couple, and we settled on Europe: London, Italy, Normandy, and Paris. We started making the plans together, but what Brittany didn’t know was that I was also making plans to propose.

I made sure we were in Paris on Valentine’s Day. I’d practiced my proposal speech over and over—I knew exactly what I was going to say. And I was going to say it in French. I wish I could tell you what I said because I am quite proud of my memorization, but it was for her ears only. Although Brittany had taken six years of French classes in high school and college, I wasn’t sure she’d be able to understand my pronunciation. But I figured once I got down on one knee, she’d catch on pretty quickly.

I had done research and talked to the concierge to find the perfect restaurant. It made me nervous having never been there before. I’m a visual person, and I like to see all the factors so I can anticipate what’s going to happen. I tried to imagine the restaurant’s layout and the setting for the proposal, but there were still some unknowns.

When we arrived at Le Petit Bofinger, we were seated at a table for two. I had the ring in my coat pocket. I took off my coat and placed it on the back of the bench where she was sitting. We relived the highlights from the day—our tour of Notre Dame Cathedral and some of our favorite painters and sculptors from the stroll through the Louvre. I was waiting for the right time. Finally I said, “Hey, babe, reach into my coat pocket and grab the map. Let’s figure out where we’re going tomorrow.”

She reached in and suddenly pulled her hand back out as if she’d found something crawling in there. “The map’s not in there,” she said.

“Are you sure? Check one more time.” I knew full well the ring box was waiting for her in that pocket. Again she insisted the map was not in that pocket and began to check the other pockets in my coat.

“Check that pocket again, sweetie.”

“It’s not there.” She shoved the coat my way for me to find the map.

“Baby, just pull out what’s in there.”

She was kind of flustered at that point, but she reached in and pulled out the box. While she was concentrating on that, I slipped onto one knee next to her. I took out the ring and put it on her finger, proposing in my best Texas French. She was wiping away the tears. I was crying too. It was a good thing I’d practiced so much—somehow the words came out perfectly.

What we didn’t know at the time was that a couple from Canada was sitting behind us to our right. Brittany and I were so oblivious, we had no idea there was a single other person in the restaurant. The husband saw me go down on my knee, and he must have been a Boy Scout—always prepared—because he pulled out his camera and took a picture.

Six months later I got the picture in the mail. There would be many more good snapshots to come.