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[07 Apr 2009|03:20am] |
when i sat down to write this, i realized that i had absolutely zero ideas. normally i'll go on and on for about four paragraphs about how big the donovan mcnabb trade was, or how cromartie is going to do on the jets. i understand that there are a lot of people out there that don't realize that when you play football, it's all you have time to do. even though we're still in the middle of the off season, team work outs have already started up and everyone is gearing up for draft day (you can get your official dallas cowboys draft day hat by clicking here). we don't have a lot of time off, which is good. time off leads to idle hands, which leads to messy play making and losing games. it happens, no one is perfect. but the more time you put into making sure that your game is as tight as it can be, the less margin for error there is. people think that we have all the time in the world from january to the end of july when training camp starts back up, like it's an extended vacation where you can travel the world and see all the sights. in all reality, we have about two months to ourselves. the free agency is always stressful if you don't have a contract, and sometimes even if you do (case in point, jake delhomme). january and february are my golf months. as soon as march rolls around, it's time for voluntary team work outs. voluntary is the keyword, but it's more of a "if you don't show up we'll slander your good name on espn, i'm looking at you jamarcus russell". you will go to these work outs if you know what's good for you. and i've been going. i like them, they make me see just how out of shape the human body can get after two months of sitting around watching lost and eating pizza rolls. that's the life of a nfl quarterback, with maybe a few hours of golf on the wii thrown in.
in an effort to show the world that there is still some room in my life for subjects that don't completely revolve around football, i started looking up writing prompts. that was a pretty big fail, since the only one that stuck out to me as something that i'd want to write about was "explain how to form a winning team". to be honest, my team still has some strides to make before we're a consistently winning team, but we're getting there. i'm hoping to have a super bowl ring by the time i'm brett favre's age. i'm twenty nine, i still have a few years left in me. it's truly an honor to get to do what you love to do, and i've tried to make that a point in every interview i've ever done. most of the time it's the typical answer you get from people, "if you work hard, you can achieve anything you want to". that's true to a point. for christ sakes, dianna grew up in a hotel waiting for her break. i don't think i had a hard life. i came from a middle class family in burlington, wisconsin where i grew up in a sea of estrogen with my dad, mom, and two sisters. if you don't know anything about burlington, here are two quick facts. it's like pleasantville. the population is just over 10,000 people. it's small. fact number two? no, it's not where the coat factory was made. take note, because this is the last time i'm going to tell you.
i've never thought that i could think of one or two words that would describe me as a person, but if i could one of the main ones would be patient. i'd also like to add in handsome and charming but there are a few people who would disagree, and i don't need my ego downsized today. i grew up playing a lot of different sports. basketball was my main thing for a little while, before i realized that just my height wasn't going to get me into the major leagues with michael jordan and charles barkley. instead, i went back to idolizing joe montana and roger staubach, quarterbacks who could lead their teams to multiple super bowls. quarterbacks who made it look easy. the first time i stepped on the field, my offensive line was shit and i almost got killed. the other team was better than us, way better. people in wisconsin don't have a lot else to do when they aren't perfecting their craft. i probably completed three or four out of thirty passes attempted that night. it was horrible, but i kept doing it. i got into eastern illinois when it was time to go to college, and i took up the position of starting quarterback there. my highest completion rating was an 81% where i managed to finish with 17 out of 21 passes. instead of getting drafted right out of college like a lot of my friends did, i went to the combine in 2003 and was signed as a free agent by the cowboys. even though it wasn't an official draft pick and it didn't hold any promise of even seeing play time, it was still probably the biggest moment of my life. i almost got cut from the roster once, which was a wake up call. i took my first snap in 2006, three years after i signed on the cowboys roster. patience is a big thing in the nfl, unless you're eli manning. i had no issue with waiting to play because i knew that when the time came, this was the team i wanted to be on. after all, i'd been in the locker room with the same guys for the past three years. i wanted to be the one slinging the passes to sam hurd, bledsoe be damned. it took a long time for me to get where i am, and it'll probably still take a while before i can get to the promised land, but i'm patient. it'll be worth it when it comes along. to be honest, i want this to be our year. nothing would be greater than to play the super bowl home in dallas. the cowboys are out for blood this year, watch out.
a day in my life right now consists of pizza in any way shape or form, madden, bench pressing at the "voluntary" work outs, and chat roulette. there are still a few more things to look forward to before training camp starts back up in july. my birthday is coming up, and while i'm not excited at all to turn 30 i am excited to get it over with.
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