The Art Of Surviving The NFL

The NFL has a problem.

No, not their failing ratings – did anyone really expect a mediocre Monday night matchup between a defenseless Saints squad and Matty Ice’s cooler-full of flawed Falcons to contend with The Great American Train Wreck (and Presidential Debate)? Even if the game did serve as a commemoration of Steve Gleason’s exhilarating and nation-uplifting post-Katrina punt block, it was an uninspiring bout between a pair of uninspiring teams, neither of whom carry even the faintest whiff of Super Bowl-worthiness. (As an aside, the NFL has always been a little piggish, but Mark Cuban isn’t some clairvoyant for suggesting that a league hellbent on growth, residing in a country desperately clung to the virtues of capitalism, would eventually jump the shark – eventually being the operative word. And let’s be really real – even conceding that the league has lost some viewers to this point of the season – though there are plenty of reasons to think the ratings drop is nothing more than a blip on the tech screen – there’s no data suggesting the NFL’s in any real danger of being overtaken again by baseball, aka The Ghost of America’s Past Time Past, or the upstart MLS, the presumed – by some – Ghost of America’s Past Time Future).

No, the league, the NFL, the Not For Long (it was there all along, Cubes!), is suffering from a problem of culture. More specifically, it’s suffering from a culture of boorishness, of a dearth players root-for-able both on the field and off, of even a hint of a suggestion of a commissioner, Roger Goodell, and ownership group willing to dole out punishment to star players serious enough to fit their obvious and too-often heinous crime. Really, what kind of NFL world do we live in when football inflation levels and smoking weed exist in a similar, if not the same, space on the scale of pigskin punishment as domestic violence?

Even former players no longer on the league’s payroll, players like Greg Hardy and Josh Gordon, continue to cultivate a negative cultural standing for the NFL, while watching the game from afar. In case you weren’t paying attention or managed to block his existence out entirely, Hardy, the trash can in human form, was arrested this past week for possession of cocaine. And while Hardy’s issues, both personal and professional, obviously extend well beyond the lines of the field, they continue to reflect poorly on an NFL and it’s teams – again, no judgement if you didn’t catch this, the man is a bundle of loose toilet paper tied together by impudent rage and inadequacy and not worth even a moment of your attention – who were at least willing to consider re-employing Hardy again this year (or at least to bring him in for an offseason visit, gauge fan reaction, and then pretend like it was only a favor to the player and/or his agent), even after Hardy did his damndest to aid the implosion of Jerruh’s Cowboys last season, following his sickening domestic violence arrest in 2014.

So why is it that a league and a game so widely beloved by a nation desperate for heroes (see: Train Wreck, Great American) seems only to produce, by and large, the worst types of people? And further, why is it that the NFL can’t seem to get out of its own way when it comes to supporting or punishing or promoting its real product – the players on the field?

The answers to those questions aren’t easy to come by.

But if you look closer, look really close, peel back the layers of the stinky, tear-inducing, embattled superstar onion, you’ll find plenty of players worth rooting for, players worth caring about, genuine players unconcerned with national kneel downs that remind you the NFL isn’t just populated by athletes or outsized personalities – it’s populated by people.

People like Carolina Panthers cornerback Robert McClain.

***

In a lot of ways, McClain both is and isn’t your typical NFLer – if there even is such a thing. He isn’t because he’s certainly not what most NFL fans would think of when they think “professional football player.” He’s not J.J. Watt’s meathead schtick, that WWE-like persona with all it’s grand proclamations of badassery. He’s not Panthers teammate Cam Newton’s brash bravado, Newton’s million-watt grin. He’s not even Steve Smith Sr.’s teflon-like toughness, his villainy personified.

For those very same reasons though, McClain really is the epitome of the kind of player that comprises the majority of NFL rosters.

As ESPN’s Adam Schefter noted at the outset of the 2016 NFL season, following initial roster cutdowns, there were more undrafted free agents on NFL rosters (481), than first- and second-round picks combined (480). McClain wasn’t an undrafted free agent – Carolina plucked him out of UConn in the seventh round in 2010 – but most teams consider late sixth and seventh-round picks to be “priority free agents” anyway. Meaning, their talent level isn’t all that different from an undrafted guy, but they provide some skillset, some specific attribute that the team doesn’t want to risk losing to the 31 other franchises in the UDFA melee.

Most fans already know the rest of the statistics regarding the majority of NFL players. The average yearly NFL salary is $1.9 million. The average NFL career lasts a little over 3 seasons. McClain’s done well for himself, having made it through most of 5 NFL seasons already. But his output has been limited – 4 interceptions, 2 forced fumbles, nary a Pro Bowl nod or All-Pro mention to speak of.

Make no mistake about it though – McClain is tough. He has to be. To survive in the NFL, every player, stud or special teamer, has to be. So like Smith, he is tough. Like Newton, he is brash. He’ll flash a grin right after he knocks the ball out of a wide receiver’s hands, right after he knocks said wide receiver to the turf.

But McClain’s also thoughtful. Soft-spoken. Creative.

He’s more.

But he’s also less. Because he’s not Watt or Newton or Smith. Never will be. He’s not even Niners quarterback Colin Kaepernick or the faction of other NFLers making clear their distaste with the current state of policing in the U.S.

Maybe though, that’s not the negative it sounds.

McClain is, for lack of a better term concerning everyday NFLers, very much a JAG – Just A Guy. He’s a guy who happens to get paid to play football, who wants you to know that the things he cares about – painting, animals, his family – are the things that carry real importance.

McClain’s truth, most player’s truth, really, is that football is a job. It’s also a passion, a love, of course, but it’s an all-consuming career that doesn’t last and will leave you crippled and destitute if you’re not wary.

“Football is like the modern day gladiator,” McClain says, “so art is just my outside.”

***

It can be easy to forget that these men, these warriors, these gladiators we pay hundreds, for some even thousands of dollars to see demolish one another on a weekly basis for our viewing and rooting pleasure, are, in fact, human beings.

Behind the facemask, under the pads, inside the helmet, there is a living, breathing human, with more to think and say than most give them credit for.

Why then was it so jarring to so many to see a player like Kaepernick take a knee against the injustices in this country? Or to hear outspoken Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman assert recently that the players really have little-to-no reason to trust the decision-makers at One Goodell Way? Why, oh why, has Sherman teammate Doug Baldwin, whose father is a police officer, received death threats for espousing his own views on the Black-Blue-All Lives Matter issue?

Again, the answer to any of these is surely multi-faceted, but it’s an answer that McClain is plenty happy not to touch. Why? He can’t control what they, the all-encompassing they, do. As the saying goes, he can only take care of what he can control. And right now, that’s ensuring that he and the rest of the Panthers cornerbacks are ready to take on Ryan’s suddenly efficient Falcons offense on Sunday, providing strong play opposite Newton and, hopefully, saving Carolina from falling into an unfamiliar 1-3 hole.

“I don’t concern myself with any of that stuff. It’s stuff that doesn’t affect me really,” McClain says. “I’m just out here doing what I have to do for me and my team to make sure we come out with a win on Sunday. All that stuff – it’s like my coach said in college, just ‘drinking the Kool-Aid,’ or for another word, poison. I don’t concern myself with anything outside.”

Kaepernick and Sherman and Watt – they can have the headlines. What McClain wants is a win. And it’s attitude like that that allows the Panthers, one of the league’s most successful teams of late, to go on winning. Key players like Newton and Kelvin Benjamin and Luke Kuechly lead the charge, provide the soundbites, but the rest of the Panthers group, as it is with any legit NFL squad, is made up of guys like McClain.

Guys who love the sport. Guys who are willing to fight and claw and struggle for the game. Guys who are Just.

***

Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X. Tupac. President Obama.

Artwork by Robert McClain from McClainsArt.org.

One visit to McClain’s new website provides an informative peek behind the curtain at just what makes this artist, this human and yes, this professional football player, tick.

But ask McClain to talk about himself, to talk about his influences, about the thoughts and feelings that spur the ideas in his head into becoming art on the page, and he’ll defer to the unknowable nature of cognition.

“At times it can be real, it can be what’s happening in the world, it can be the random thing happening out on the street.”

In terms of his art, McClain’s goal is to keep from working with a “closed mind.” If he allows himself that openness, then what will come will come, and the results will be all the better for it. As a Da Vinci fan, that open-minded nature makes sense. McClain appreciates what the virtuosic artist, mathematician, inventor and writer – who was so prolific, he is considered by many as the world’s first and truest “Renaissance Man” – was able to create utilizing a variety of mediums, many well beyond the canvas.

But as an artist, just as a football player, McClain doesn’t model himself after Da Vinci. Doesn’t model himself after anyone, really.

“I keep my own style,” McClain says plainly.

Blueprints not required. Directions need not be followed.

In terms of a future after football, a future that would presumably involve art in some capacity, McClain hasn’t really gotten that far yet. But he does know one thing – art will always be there, in some form or another.

“Just to continue painting, to continue to create stuff, continue to be creative,” he says. “I’m going to do art until I die.”

***

The NFL world mourned yet another star on Thursday – no, not Watt, although that certainly takes a lot of wind out of the Texans’ already listless sails – as news broke that Gordon would be foregoing his reinstatement to the league, just in time for a Week 5 showdown between the Browns and the Patriots and following a nearly two-year absence, in order to enter an inpatient rehab facility.

For a guy like McClain, as it surely is for other NFL players, it’s hard to watch talent like Gordon’s spend its prime years away from the field. But Gordon isn’t the first NFL star with more than enough talent to do great things, but lacking in the personal strength necessary to see it through. Entering a rehab facility is a start and the hope across the league (if not necessarily in Brownsland) is that, with help, Gordon can get his act together for some kind of mid-to-late-career resurgence.

The NFL is a better place, the game a better product, when stars like Gordon and Watt (not Hardy, never Hardy) are on the field. McClain, who sat out the 2011 season, what would have been his sophomore campaign, after being cut by the Panthers and the Jaguars, understands the pain a guy like Gordon, well-liked despite his continued issues, is dealing with.

“It’s hard to sit and watch the sport you love. We’re all out here to be great, we all have the gift to play football and we have a passion for it.”

But the fact of the matter is, guys like Gordon and Watt, they’re not the ones who really make the machine run on a week-to-week basis. It’s JAGs who cover kickoffs, who play key special teams roles, who put their bodies on the line for a handsome paycheck, yes, but far less than the six-figure deals the league’s bonafides pull down.

With the league trending younger and younger, it’s become increasingly difficult for guys like McClain to carve out and maintain their role. Just this offseason, at McClain’s own position, the Panthers swapped out expensive veteran star Josh Norman for a pair of rookies – James Bradberry and Daryl Worley. The results haven’t been great, but cost-effective measure like this are how smart GMs build competitive rosters.

As for McClain, he doesn’t take the additions as an insult, but simply as just another facet of the game and the league. Though he surely understands what it means.

“Anything I need to do to make sure I help them, I’ll do.”

***

Much has been made over the years regarding Watt’s otherworldly work ethic. And for good reason. Who doesn’t remember that totally-not-contrived montage of Watt spending long evening hours, well after all the others Texans had gone home, working against a tackling dummy, running gassers, catching footballs one-handed, then, when there couldn’t possibly be anything left, committing another chunk of his personal time to signing autographs?

Watt is the closest thing to superhuman the league has going. Sure. But what about the guys who do that same work, that same preparation, only without the cameras rolling, only their Sunday’s aren’t all highlights and breathless accolades? The guys whose Sunday’s are comprised of, in essence, one long, tiresome, injurious, and mostly unnoticed play?

Those JAGs, like McClain, are the engine that makes the NFL run. So what if they don’t have hot takes on big issues, so what if they don’t ham it up for the cameras?

Sometimes, being Just A Guy really isn’t the worst thing in the world. Sometimes, in times of turmoil, when it seems anyone and everyone is clamoring for their chance to hold the microphone, it’s exactly what the league, and the world, needs.