Video Games

Every morning when I pull myself out of bed, North Dallas Forty–style, I play out the conversation in my head, what exactly I will say when I go up to Coach Mike Shanahan’s office and tell him I’m quitting, that I can’t take it anymore. But by the time I pull into the parking lot, I have once again convinced myself that I am a warrior, and this is my war.

Training camp is an attack on the mind: an attack on one’s sanity. Enduring it for six years has desensitized me to pain and anguish. Pain isn’t rigid. It’s a choice, a weakness of the mind, a glitch in the system that can be overridden by stones and moxie. I find my switch and flip it. People often asked me how bad it hurt to get hit by those huge dudes. The truth is that it doesn’t hurt at all. The switch is on. I can’t feel a thing. My body is a machine and my emotions are dead.

But the years of abuse are taking their toll. Misaligned joints, stretched ligaments, bruised bones, overworked muscles, and a jangled brain keep pace with an ambitious football mind. One play at a time: one day at a time. My football mind is stronger than my human body.

After morning practice we have a few hours to ourselves. I don’t like to fall asleep between practices. Instead I sit in the locker room and shoot the s— with Domonique Foxworth and Hamza Abdullah and Brandon Marshall. I’m learning to play acoustic guitar. I sit on the floor and strum the only three chords I know. If someone walks through the locker room we make up a song about him. It’s meant to humiliate and cut deeply, in the hopes of unearthing a crippling insecurity. The more distraught our victim, the more aggressively we laugh at him. The longer he stays, the worse it gets, until he finally realizes he is dealing with madmen who have lost the ability to empathize, and he scurries off. I’m not concerned about another man’s feelings. I don’t even have time for my own. This follows me off the field and out into the world, where people’s concerns seem weak...