Player’S Life Is Forever On The Bubble
Steve Gleason wouldn’t want anyone to mistake this for complacency or overconfidence, but he took the plunge and opened up a checking account on Tuesday.
No, he hasn’t sent out any dry cleaning yet. Are you crazy?
Security is a baby-step proposition in the world of the National Football League practice squadder - or an ex-practice squadder, Gleason’s official designation at the moment though things remain, well, as liquid as his assets.
Vin Scully’s right - we’re all day-to-day. But Steve Gleason feels hour-to-hour.
“But I’m getting better with it,” said the one-time Gonzaga Prep and Washington State linebacker who has surfaced with the NFL’s flavor of the month, the New Orleans Saints.
“It’s a shock to the system in training camp when you come in with 30 rookies and you get to know them all and, boom, one day five of them are gone with no notice. You learn quickly how temporary it all is and that you have no control over any of it.
“People are calling me right now and saying, `All right, you’re playing’ - but I could get released tomorrow. You just learn to take it in stride.”
And the strides can come with a fury.
It was three weeks ago when the Saints phoned Gleason with a come-on-down to join the practice squad. This after he’d made it to - but not through - the angst-heavy final cut with Indianapolis in the preseason and whizzed around the country for in-and-out tryouts with New Orleans, San Francisco and the New York Giants. Then, after being put on alert last week by the Saints that he may be activated to fill in on special teams, he was hustled in to sign a contract on Saturday afternoon, barely 24 hours before the Saints played Denver.
He can’t even clip that day’s “Transactions” out of the paper to glue in his scrapbook. The move never made the wires.
But he has the memories. Well, some of them.
“To be honest, the first three special teams plays - I watched on film yesterday and I don’t even remember being out there,” Gleason admitted. “I can see some of the others in my mind, but it was wild out there, and I was very nervous.”
Hey, sometimes you feed off the emotion of a football game, and sometimes you’re fed to it.
That may have been what happened to the Saints, who stumbled in 38-23 losers - their second loss in three games after an amazing six-game winning streak which carried them to the head of the NFC West class. Having not been along for that ride, Gleason is having trouble taking much ownership of it - but got his allegiances prioritized early.
“I was still on the practice squad when we played the Rams and when they fumbled on the 10, I was jumping around like it was the Super Bowl,” Gleason said. “But, no, it’s not like I accomplished that. And while I was frustrated with losing this week, it wasn’t like losing to Oregon State or Cal when I was at WSU.”
Emotional investments take time, especially when you’re focused on week-to-week survival.
Gleason has already bucked some long odds to get this far. Undersized as a college linebacker at 5-foot-11, 215 pounds, he was passed over in the draft before signing as a free agent with the Colts with the proviso that he start thinking of himself as a safety.
And so he did.
“Until I came out of the first huddle at my first minicamp,” he laughed, “and I lined up six yards deep the way I’d been doing for eight years.”
He quickly caught himself and scooted back 10, but “felt like I was in a foreign country. Something just wasn’t right. I was so uncomfortable. And in the NFL, it’s not like high school where they walk you through each technical part of the position.”
But he adapted the way most rookies have to - watch, do, repeat. He struggled with reading pass routes - knowing what’s going to be run before it’s run - and an approach he found less instinctive than when he was a linebacker.
And then in the Colts’ last exhibition game against Minnesota, he looked up and saw Randy Moss and Chris Carter split out to the same side.
His side.
The cushion he gave them could have been divided into separate ZIP codes.
“I remember thinking, `Make sure they can’t outrun you,”’ he said. “You can’t be intimidated, but those are the kinds of guys I’ve always been a fan of and just like that, you’re out there with them.”
Most of his fellow rookies with the Colts told him he was going to make the team. That included his roommate, running back Kevin McDougal from Colorado State, who thought sure he’d get axed because he fumbled in that last game.
A half-hour before the deadline, the phone in their room rang.
“Neither of us wanted to answer it,” Gleason recalled. “He did and said, `Don’t worry, it’s your mom’ - except that it was a Saints secretary. What was worse is that they told me I might get put on the practice squad, so I had to sit in a hotel for two days while the guys I knew were going to practice.”
When it didn’t work out, Gleason flew back to Spokane and resumed morning workouts at Shadle Park with his father, Mike - lifting weights, running, doing the drills he learned in camp. In the afternoons, he helped coach at Prep.
“Finally, I was going to look for a job waiting tables at night so I could keep working out during the day,” he said. “The day I finally unpacked my bags and put everything back in the dresser, the Saints called. I was gone by 6 the next morning.”
Like a Cougars freshman, he’s back on the scout team - he was Isaac Bruce the week of the Rams game. His special team position designations - L3, R2 - sound like something punched up on a jukebox. He’s living in a hotel, driving a rented car, still putting together names with numbers.
Could it really get any better?
“You talk to your friends and everyone thinks you put $2 million in the bank the day you signed and you’ll never have to work again,” he said. “The reality is, I could walk in tomorrow and not have a job.
“But even in college, I never thought, `Well, yeah, five years from now I’ll be in the NFL.’ I’ve always tried to live today the best I can and tomorrow can take care of itself - and I can’t think of a lifestyle that’s better suited to that attitude than this one.”