There are optimal times for thinking about why I’m on the roof of Met Life Stadium. Sunday at 8:17pm–as I’m being led across the catwalk three minutes before airtime–is not one of them.
Last Tuesday, on the other hand, would have been an excellent day to evaluate whether I’ve given this thing my best shot, and now it’s time to go back to school and figure out the next phase of my life. That’s our day off, after the Monday film sessions where I watched how the rest of my team did at playing actual football, and before practices resumed on Wednesday, when I could have decided to tell my position coach that I’m not gonna be on the Roof Squad and see what happened.
But right now, these thoughts are an impediment to visualizing the choreography I’m about to execute in full pads and cleats on solar panels–a very different surface from the end zone turf where I practiced these moves all week with Destiny and Heather (rather than participating in drills with the teammates who are now hearing the roar of the crowd as they run out onto the field two hundred yards below.)
Okay, you might be thinking, so I mess up the choreography, big deal. Wasn’t I just complaining about dancing up here with two cheerleaders during the four seconds that the drone circles around us before swooping down over the grasps of screaming fans and leveling out over the field as the live feed cuts to the booth where the announcers will introduce the game?
Well, it is a big deal if I screw this up. First, because I don’t want to look stupid on national television. Second, because I’m a professional who takes pride in executing the plays as my coach has drawn them up, even when it's the four-foot-ten cheer coach who I never even noticed before the final day of cuts in training camp, when the defensive coordinator sat me down in his office and told me there was good news and bad news. Third, because a mistake up here could lead to me falling off a two-hundred-foot roof.
I’m exaggerating. The solar panels, which light up in team colors so that me and the cheerleaders are blinded in Sharpie highlighter blue and red, form an inner ring within the circumference of the outer roof, so there’s no danger of plunging all the way down. It’s only about a thirty-foot drop down to the upper deck seats, and remember I’m in full pads–although of course Destiny and Heather aren’t, and neither are the fans we’d be falling on. The point is there’s a good chance I wouldn’t die.
Also, the panels are almost 30 feet wide, so nobody should miss their mark so badly as to go near the edge. Except for the Eagles game in October when my teeny tiny coach told me that this week’s plan was for me to run a route and catch a pass from Destiny. When I complained that I’m a safety, not a receiver, she shrugged and said, “not up there, I guess.” We practiced for a few hours on Thursday, just behind the end zone where the teammates were running tip drills and shouting deliriously as they took turns taking pretend interceptions to the house.
Destiny plays some quarterback in a Hoboken pickup game, and she was throwing a tight spiral on the practice field. But up here, with the autumn wind swirling and the camera rolling and all of us blasted in renewable neon blue, the ball came out of her hand as wobbly as if Heather had just nailed her on an unblocked A-gap blitz, rather than just jumping up with two pompoms and doing a “herkie”, that horizontal scissor jump that is much easier to execute on grass than on a solar panel. (Easy for a cheerleader I mean. I tried it once on the sidelines and thought I heard something pop. As I walked gingerly back and forth to make sure I hadn’t ripped a groin, I saw the secondary coach looking my way for the first time all day, shaking his head.)
So I’m running on solar panel glass, trying to track Heather’s wounded duck that’s caught in the infamous North Jersey air currents that have cursed so many Giants field goals. The route called for me to run a nice easy slant behind Heather’s herkie, catching the ball squarely in the middle of the panel. Everyone knows that’s not what happened.
I wish I could say that it was just football instinct that led me to make that diving one-handed catch and pop up within six inches of the ledge, waving the ball to the drone like I had made a game saving interception. Certainly that’s what I hoped my coach would think–or any goddamn coach anywhere. For the next month, I waited for a call from someone who’d see me as a grade-A psycho who’d rather “literally jump off a building than give up on a play.”
But that line came from the YouTuber who first posted the video you probably saw, not from anyone in the league. Fans couldn’t understand why I didn’t get called up to the Giants’ regular roster. It was another dreary losing season–what did they have to lose? On Reddit, people speculated it was jealousy in the locker room at a practice squad guy suddenly getting all these interviews–and even a Mountain Dew endorsement.
They weren’t in the practice facility the next week, when my catch came on the TVs about ten times a day (it was ESPN’s #2 OH NO HE DIDN’T! Highlight of the Week). I'll admit to feeling a twinge of excitement the first time it came on Monday morning. I thought I might get a couple of shouts, or at least some good-natured taunts about being a star cheerleader. Instead nothing. Actually, much less than nothing. Nobody looked up, but the normal hum of the rooms--weights clanging, forks hitting plates, bursts of laughter--dampened sickeningly, so you could hear a muted “damn” from halfway across the facility.
I knew what they were thinking, because it’s what I would have thought if I were them. Because we were the same, which is what they were thinking. That it could just have been them up there. If they were on their fourth team in their third year out of college. If they had gotten a high ankle sprain in their first training camp. If they were the one given the "opportunity" by the head coach to be the team’s selection for the new Netflix pre-game intro.
Fear and desperation are the soil and sunlight that grow this game. Fear of never making it off the practice squad; desperation to get noticed; fear of having to figure out what to do every day if it wasn’t trying to get better at football; desperation to avoid that moment at all costs, even if it meant risking my life on a stadium roof because someone said go fetch. Every time I came on, the tv became a mirror that no football player ever wants to see.
By Thursday, the facility had gotten so quiet that when Dexter Lawrence said, “Turn that shit off!” I saw some people jump back, even though he didn’t shout. Dex was our leader, our only All-Pro, who told me in training camp he “was rooting for me” when he had no reason to even talk to me. Now he said nothing else, just placed one of his giant meaty hands on my shoulder as he walked out of the room.
Six weeks later, we’re all playing out the string in another losing Giants season. Washington is here to officially eliminate us from the playoffs. There’s no way I’m back next year, and from what I can tell from friends around the league, I won’t be anywhere else either. These are some of my final seconds in the National Football League. The play call is for me to pump my legs up and down like I’m running through tires while waving to the drone. On either side of me, Destiny and Heather are dressed in short fuzzy Santa dresses and doing some moves I can’t remember. We haven’t talked much since the Eagles game either.
It’s really cold up here. The crew screams out a countdown. In the grey sky behind the approaching drone, I can see the towers of Manhattan, where I only visited on the day I did local radio. I take a few deep breaths, do some warm-up jumps. I’m running the play in my head, considering my alternatives.
Then the camera buzzes around us. Pride and instinct kick in. I execute the play like I always have, like it’s my last.