Thread: Informational; What Happens When a Player Gets Cut?......

What happens after a player gets cut?

A former player walks us through the process and the pain of being released. Nate Jackson

September 01, 2012, 03:00 PM EST

Last week, NFL teams had to trim their rosters from 90 down to 75. In the next few days they’ll take it all the way down to 53. That’s 37 football men locked out of the party. But most often it doesn’t end right there. In fact its a slow burn, a gradual acceptance of your fate; whereby the closer you were to making the team, the harder it is to give it up, because you know you belong.
US PRESSWIREFormer Bronco Nate Jackson.


Football players are resilient. They know how to push through the pain and the doubt. They’ve been told no before, and they didn’t listen. That stubborn belief in their own natural ability propelled them to greatness at the college level and onto an NFL preseason roster; where they ran into a buzzsaw. The NFL is about much more than just believing in your football skills. Your NFL team is a corporation: assets, dividends, profit margins, marketing, advertising. It’s show business. And it leaves good players in the dust every year.


After getting cut, the question for the lifelong football player is: do I move on or keep trying? In my six year NFL career, I was cut four times -all of them under very different circumstances.


The first time was after my first training camp with the 49ers in 2002. I had a shoulder injury from college that didn’t pass the physical. The only way I was allowed on the field was if I signed a waiver for my shoulder. If I injured it again, I could be released with no medical treatment. Of course I dislocated it in camp, and they cut me.


I had surgery on my own, rehabbed it on my own and lived at home with my parents during what would have been my rookie year. After the season was over, the Niners signed me back.


I went through the off-season and mini-camps, and halfway through training camp I was traded to the Denver Broncos for a conditional 7th round pick. I only had two weeks to make an impression.


The day after the last preseason game, cut day, I waited by the phone. It rang. It was the Broncos. They wanted me to come in to the facility. I was being cut from the team, but they wanted me on the practice squad. I cleared waivers and signed a practice squad contract the next day. And since I wasn’t on the active roster, the 7th round pick never changed hands.


I lasted six years in Denver, until Mike Shanahan was fired immediately following the 2008 season, and Josh McDaniels was hired in his place. A few weeks after the new hire, I got a call from my agent. “The Broncos are releasing you today”, he said. “Didn’t they call you?” No they didn’t. It turned out the GM called my parents’ home phone and left a message instead. My phone call to Coach McDaniels went unreturned.


I was 29 years old; unemployed, very angry and very bitter. I internalized it and started training like a crazy man. My agent said, “teams are interested. Stay ready. It could be any day now”. Summer came around and no one had called. Still I trained hard all day, every day. I didn’t know what else to do.
Training camps started; still nothing. Then in mid-august, the Eagles called and wanted to work me out. I flew to Pennsylvania and had a workout with two other tight-ends on the field next to the Eagles practice field. I had a good workout. I believed they would sign me. They didn’t. I was back on a plane an hour later.


The next week, the Browns called for a workout. Red-eye flight, straight to the facility for a workout with one other tight-end. I had another good day. I waited in the coaches’ offices for the GM, who eventually called me into his office and told me they liked me but couldn’t sign me. But stay ready! Then back on a plane, back to California.


Three days later, he called back and said they found me a spot. Another red-eye, straight to the facility, got fitted for my pads and helmet, and I was jogging out for morning practice in brown and orange, shaking my head. It was the last week of camp. I had to learn fast. Didn’t learn fast enough. Less than a week later; cut again. This time, for good.


I had another workout a few days later in New Orleans but I wasn’t signed. With no takers, I decided to play for the Las Vegas Locomotives in the UFL. They drafted me and held my UFL rights, and had been courting me all summer. But I told them, “No, I’m getting back in the league!” When it was obvious that the league wasn’t happening, I showed up in Casa Grande, Arizona for training camp with the Las Vegas Locos.


Two weeks into camp, while running a corner route in 1-on-1s, I tore my hamstring off the bone. Thwap! It was the same injury, though more severe, that prematurely ended my last season with the Broncos. A week later I had surgery to repair the hammy; a three-inch horizontal scar in my gluteal fold (butt-cheek overhang). I rehabbed aggressively, excited to get healthy and get back on a team. But I’d been out for over a year. No one wanted me. And it was very hard to accept it. I spent my whole life sharpening those skills. Now what do I do with them? They were useless.


This will be my fourth season out of the game. I’m finally adjusting to life outside the bubble. But every year around this time, I watch the games and think about the guys who are getting cut, getting ready to go through what I went through, what every football player goes through eventually. And I feel for them. It’s a long fall.




Nate Jackson played six seasons for the Broncos. He is a freelance writer and is currently writing a book about life in the NFL, to be published by Harper Collins.