The Weekly Gut Check - Steve McNair
Posted 7/5 by Matt Waldman, Exclusive for Footballguys.com
The Weekly Gut Check examines the players, strategies and guidelines fantasy football owners use to make personnel decisions.
Dear Liam and/or Rowan:
Your mother has dreamed that if we're fortunate enough to have you, that you'll be twins. I am more cautious. Other than the possibility that we may decide to do our part to bring one or both you into this world, I'm not assuming anything else. If you get an opportunity to read this letter, you'll have learned that July 4th is a special day in this country. However, for our family, Independence Day holds significance even more personal than the birth of our nation under duress, cookouts and fireworks.
Your mother doesn't see Independence Day like most people.
July 4th is an especially solemn day for her. Despite her joy for life, she prefers not to celebrate the way most Americans do.
It's the day your grandma passed away and changed your mother's life at the age of seven. Although she wouldn't realize it until years later, this painful event shaped her courage and independence to be her own person in the face of others who opposed her growth.
My Fourth of July's were more typical as a child. However, this day has been the setting for some big highs and lows as an adult. Although the lows I experienced were not as painful and life changing as what happened to your mom, I learned beginnings and endings are rarely pretty in real life, but they hold powerful lessons.
Especially what happened today with Steve McNair.
As you will know by the time you read this, I fell in love with pro football shortly after I could walk and I played the game in the yards, fields, and streets of the neighborhoods of my childhood until the day I became and adult. I always became of a fan of players who performed their best when the competition was most heated. I drew inspiration from them and tried to give that kind of effort in my life. I didn't hero-worship any athlete. Even McNair.
Still, few, if any, showed more heart, courage and competitiveness than Steve McNair and it was his actions and demeanor as a football player that reinforced several life lessons for me. Lessons that I hope to have reinforced in you.
The Titans quarterback was a black college football legend. You didn't see players from these schools much on TV for reasons you're well aware by now. The biggest reason he chose Alcorn State was the fact the more prominent football schools didn't think he would make a good quarterback. However, they were wrong and when you did see his highlights, they were jaw dropping.
McNair followed his desire, understood the risks involved, and worked hard to overcome them. I hope like McNair, you won't believe anyone who tells you that you can't fulfill your dreams. As long as you understand what it will take to achieve it, you can do anything. You just have to understand what you're willing to sacrifice and how long and hard you want to work to make it happen.
Despite the speed and agility of a running back, the physicality of a linebacker and the arm of a future all-star, most were skeptical that McNair would excel in pro football. NFL quarterbacks aren't normally as athletic as McNair was and the few that were have been taught to impose their will on the defense with their eyes and arm only.
Not McNair.
He played like a throwback from the 1930s, an era when quarterback was just another position on the team. McNair had no problem giving and taking hits, often winning collisions against players a quarterback had no business challenging in the first place. And when his opponents challenged him, some of them three hundred pound defensive linemen barreling towards him in the pocket, they would lower their shoulder and often find themselves sliding down the quarterback's statuesque frame as if he were cut from granite. When they did knock McNair down, they were most often the ones the trainers ran out to see.
He was unique among his peers and he embraced what made him special. I hope you recognize what separates you from others in a positive way and not allow others' doubts to extinguish it. Yet, I hope have enough humility to recognize that you can always improve. McNair was humble. Unlike other quarterbacks with amazing athleticism and strong arms, he worked to perfect the craft of his position and incorporate it into his game. The only thing constant in life is change and the more you can learn new skills, the more successful you'll be as a person.
However, McNair was hardly invincible. It was his vulnerability that made him a great player, leader and ambassador of the NFL. It was his ability to take this kind of punishment, get off the ground, and more often than not, ultimately get the best of his competition that inspired me. Even when he came up short, which he did in some of the biggest moments of his career, he died hard on the field - giving his opponents all they could handle until the very last play - and it was this spirit that far outweighed any statistic.
It's these moments I admired most from McNair that I hope you will someday understand in your lives. Our society too literally embraces the idea that "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." This quote came from UCLA coach Harland Russell in 1950 and was embodied by the great NFL coach Vince Lombardi. They were wrong.
In the end, it's about respect. Respect doesn't come from winning. It comes from not giving up. Steve McNair lost the most important games of his career, but earned the ultimate respect of those who saw him compete. Maybe in this sense winning is the only thing, but I prefer the old axiom, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."
This effort was even more amazing considering how McNair often labored to recover enough from the previous weeks' punishment to take the field a week later. The list of dinged parts was long and it was probably no cosmic coincidence that McNair married a nurse; he needed one around the clock to make it through season after season of injuries few players would play through, much less throw their body around like a crash test dummy.
I hope you live in the present the way McNair played in the moment. I hope you face challenges head-on that make you afraid and require you to summon courage and compete with the controlled recklessness of McNair. And I hope you take responsibility for your actions without judging others like he did in public after circumstances didn't go his way.
Steve McNair, the only Titan that could have compelled me to cheer for the Baltimore Ravens when he signed with them for the last two years of his 13-year career for all the reasons above, died today. He was three years and a week younger than I. He left behind a wife, four sons and dozens more family and friends. He also left behind hundreds of teammates, thousands of opponents, and millions of fans.
As I write this, we don't know all the details surrounding his death. What is known is that McNair and 20-year-old friend Sahel Kazemi, a woman he knew well enough to give co-ownership to a car, were found dead in her condominium today. McNair was riddled with bullet wounds. Kazemi was found with one gunshot to her head, and the gun near her body.
No one should die this way. Despite these facts and the conclusions some may draw, Steve McNair was a man with qualities I greatly admired, and his death felt like I lost a good friend. Although I wish his passing wasn't so untimely and tragic, McNair was adored despite never earning a championship ring, major endorsement deals or a celebrity spouse. The outpouring of the public speaks volumes that despite my complaints otherwise, winning is neither everything nor the only thing.
I can only hope you live your lives where people will truly miss you when your time comes. Unlike McNair's mother, I hope I'm long gone from this earth before that day comes.
Love,
Dad