Eat My Schwartz

by Geoff Schwartz

When I added it all up, I was pretty depressed. I had signed a one-year deal hoping that I would be healthy and play well and essentially earn a long-term deal. But the hernia set me back, and when the year was up, I made it clear to the Vikings that I didn’t want to come back. They made it clear to me that the feeling was mutual.

  And that wasn’t the only breakup looming. My long-distance relationship with Meridith had been awful for both of us. The entire move had been a disaster. I just didn’t like it in Minnesota. I was in a small apartment. It got dark for the night at about four o’clock. It snowed. It was cold. I wasn’t being a good fiancé, a good friend, a good anything. I shut everybody out, including Meridith, who was studying like crazy. She would go to classes all week, then, every two weeks or so, she’d fly in to Minnesota on a Friday. But we didn’t really connect. She was focused on her studies—and had to be ready for tests on Monday mornings—and I was focused on my floundering career and mired in depression. Here we were, supposed to be planning our wedding, and it was impossible for me to focus. Meridith was talking about finding work in Charlotte, which was where her family and friends were. Yet I had no idea where I’d wind up after Minnesota. It was hard to see how we were going to make everything work.

  I’m sure if you ask Meridith about this time, she’ll say I was totally locked in to my career. And she’s right. But I wasn’t just self-absorbed for my own sake, I wanted to be able to provide for her and for myself, and make good on the dreams we—or at least I—had spun for the two of us.

  I think things really bottomed out when Meridith realized she was having all the wedding meetings by herself and that I was not focused on the details at all. In my defense, I’m not the first guy to want to punt when it comes to the finer points of wedding details. What do I know about placement settings, printing invitations, wedding registrations, and other marital minutia? And so we’d fight all the time. I mean all the time. And when I forgot about a previous discussion about the ceremony, she hit the roof.

  “You don’t even know that we have a string quartet?” she yelled. “Why are we even having this stupid wedding?”

  I realized I had no idea what the cake was going to be. I had no idea what the dinner menu was. I wanted to be a part of the planning, at least for the elements of the wedding that I cared about, but I just couldn’t.

  The fighting and resentment continued and when the season ended we were just so far apart. We decided to break up the first week I got back to Charlotte. I was sitting there, numb, watching a playoff football game, while Meridith moved out of the house so we could have space.

  So there I was. No fiancée. No team.

  Great.

  I remember asking myself, Is this what I really want?

  The answer: not really.

  * * *

  When the free agency period started, the phone did not exactly ring off the hook. Not a single team called. I tried to keep calm, but the reality was I was a free agent coming off of two years of not starting and I’d had a total of three surgeries over the last two years. And even though the bone spurs weren’t really a “football-related injury,” they didn’t help my reputation as a durable player. Fortunately, Deryk was out there floating my name, reminding general managers of my success at Carolina, and that I was part of the line that supported Adrian Peterson. Finally, one week in, I got a call from Kansas City.

  I flew into Kansas City and the visit went great. I enjoyed myself there, which was good because, frankly, I didn’t have a lot of options. Even if I had hated it, I would have stayed. So I signed another one-year deal.

  I was twenty-six years old, and poised to enter the prime of my career, but here I was thrilled to have just latched on to a team. This was not where I wanted to be at all. After confronting and overcoming three injuries, I was concerned about job security and longevity. I wanted to find a stable situation not just for me, but if I ever wanted to have a shot at making a go with Meridith, I needed a secure deal. To do that, I needed to be viewed as a reliable cornerstone of the offensive line, not some fill-in guy who might develop into a starter. I wanted my game to command respect and a guaranteed multi-year deal. To do that, I had to figure out a way to take my game up a notch and make some noise.

  The question was how. Luckily, an old friend of mine had the solution.

  Mitch

  The summer leading up to my first season, I spent a lot of time with Geoff, training in Charlotte. It was great to hang out there in his house, smoking meats in the yard, spending time with him and Meridith, and prowling the baseball diamond again while he coached the Fort Mill high school baseball team in South Carolina. That first part of the off-season was just fantastic.

  It was also great to actually work out together and soak up Geoff’s knowledge. For the last eight years both of us had played an intense amount of football, but we never really trained together. I had spent most of the last five summers working out in Berkeley, and Geoff had been working at Oregon while I was still in high school.

  Every morning we’d go out on the field and toss a football around—yes, linemen like to play catch, too—and do our running drills, stretching, and other stuff. Then in the afternoon, we’d go to the movies, face off in video game battles, or experiment in the kitchen. It was a blast.

  That morning when we were out there training, and Geoff turned to me after some sprints and said, “Something is not right,” I could see the worry on his face. I was concerned, too, but I don’t think I was much help. Other than my own herniated disc, I’d never had a performance-threatening injury that I couldn’t play through. And although Geoff had had the same disc problem, and his nasty weight-lifting injury, he had been mostly injury-free, too, until the previous season’s hip impingement. I didn’t know what to tell him, besides, “You need to talk to a trainer, or the team doctor.”

  But there was no trainer or doctor to talk to, because Geoff was getting ready to go to Minnesota to play with the Vikings and we were in Charlotte.

  Eventually, I had to leave and head back to Cleveland. I’m an analytical guy, and I knew that the immediate prognosis, whatever they found for Geoff, was not good, timing-wise. I didn’t need to be a veteran to realize that showing up for camp hurt was not a good way to claim a job. I knew Geoff was aware of this. I could see the concern and worry lurking 24/7 under his California cool. I tried to stay positive for him.

  “Dude, even if you get hurt, you will make it back.”

  “There’s no guarantee.”

  He was 100 percent right. But I didn’t want him to dwell on that. “Look, man, how many times have you beaten the odds?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Geoff, how many players play their first down as a high school junior and wind up playing Division One football as a true freshman?”

  “I don’t know. Not many, I guess.”

  “How many guys play through a season with a fractured clavicle?”

  “I bet a few.”

  “BS. I’ve never heard of one. That killed you, but you did it.”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “How many seventh-round draft picks go from the scout team to starting in one year?”

  “That was partly ’cause I was in the right time at the right place.”

  “Come on, Geoff. Except for your size, the odds have been stacked against you since you started playing. And every time, you’ve managed to rise above. This is just another time.”

  I’m sure I was an annoying little brother with a two-year guaranteed contract who hadn’t played a single NFL down yet, but everything I said was true. He was an inspiring figure, my brother. He totally helped me get to where I was. I’m the silent, quiet brother. But I needed to be there for him.

  “Geoff,” I said. “Whatever happens, it’s going to be okay. There are three things I know about you: you’re a smart, strategic player, you are a monster, and you do the work.”

  * * *

  Famous last words, right? This conversation and these themes repea
ted themselves a lot over my first year. Mostly I tried to listen and be sympathetic.

  My own NFL debut had been filled with bumps. It’s not like the Browns were setting the world on fire.

  When the conversation would swing around to me, Geoff, as always, was relentlessly positive about the future. Back in high school, he had predicted that I would be a far better player than he was, even before I’d ever played a down. And he was still sticking to his prediction. It was great getting scouting reports from him as I prepped for games. I loved when he confirmed my own observations. It made me feel like I had the skills to break down tape, like I belonged.

  * * *

  Every player has his own way to watch tape. A guy can watch six hours of tape and really not learn that much, or he can watch for forty-five minutes and be productive and figure out everything he needs to know. At this point in my career, I feel like I’m a good student when it comes to scouting the opposition.

  My primary focus as an offensive tackle is pass protection. So I want to see who I’m going against that week and study his main pass rush moves, because my biggest responsibility is winning one-on-one blocking assignments. Does he try to blow by you or does he juke left and spin right, or is he one of those guys who will try to take you on, mano a mano, and bull-rush in the trenches? What are his countermoves after you shut that first move down? Some of these guys actually come in with rushing game plans, so they might hold off on showing you a move until they are sure there’s a passing play coming up, and then they spring it on you.

  To help decode tendencies, I also run a tally system as I’m watching film. I watch 3 or 4 games and I can get a good idea of what my opponent’s best move is and what his second-best move is. This is really valuable because now I can calculate and anticipate a sequence of events. If I stop one move, I can have a pretty good idea what the countermove will be.

  To finish scouting individual players, I study what other guys have done against my opponent that would be good to incorporate into my game plan. I want to learn how to react to certain blocks, front side blocks, left cuts, right cuts, and how my opponent may counter when I get my hands inside.

  Once I feel comfortable with that stuff, I start breaking down situational plays. That means I’m looking at how the defense sets up on different downs and different yardage scenarios. What do they like to do on a third down and 2 yards to go, or a third-and-8? Then I also study the team as a whole, I look for blitzing situations, first downs. This is the tactical stuff I love about football, checking through the known knowns, thinking about probability, and trying to turn knowledge into an advantage.

  9

  RAISING ARIZONA AND MASTERING THE BODY

  Geoff

  Leave it to the guy who inspired me in high school to inspire me as a pro.

  Duke Manyweather graduated a year ahead of me at Palisades High. Duke was the only guy on the football team who went on to play Division II ball. We stayed pretty tight. In fact, Duke was the first guy to get me into smoking meats. I went to visit him at Humboldt State, where he was playing, and he fired up a smoker at his house and started slow-cooking. I thought it was cool. We had a medley of meat, and I was sold. Well-smoked meat is up there with some of the most flavorful foods I’ve ever eaten due to various dry rubs and mesquite-flavored wood and the long slow-cooking process. After that I started experimenting on my own. Now I’m the proud owner of a Green Egg smoker and I fire it up about eight times a year and cook beef ribs.

  But Duke and I had a lot more than a losing record in high school in common. We both loved football, but both of us have taken that passion a step further than most people. We like the science of being a lineman. Although he was never big enough to make it as a pro, Duke used his advanced degree in kinesiology to become a guy devoted to helping athletes move more efficiently. When I got hurt, he was one of the people I called to dissect my injury, what I might have been doing wrong, how I should rehab, what stretches I should focus on, and what muscle groups I should build up.

  For more than a year, Duke had been telling me about this revolutionary new way to train. He had hooked up with a new fitness and training company called O-line Performance, masterminded by a former NFL Pro-Bowler named LeCharles Bentley. I didn’t know that much about LeCharles, but it turns out that just calling him a Pro-Bowler understates the case. He was honored with that designation for two different positions—a real rarity in the NFL. In 2002 and 2003 he was an all-pro guard, and from 2004 to 2005 he dominated at center, his old college position.

  After signing a huge deal with Cleveland, his hometown team, disaster struck. LeCharles tore the patellar tendon in his left knee, and his health and career crashed from there, thanks to a nearly lethal staph infection that required two more surgeries. It was so serious that doctors even considered amputating his leg. Tragically, LeCharles never played another down in the NFL, but he became interested—obsessed might be the better word—in optimizing the performance of offensive linemen.

  According to Duke, LeCharles was a genius and a revolutionary. He was adamant that the standard NFL methods of training had nothing to do with the needs of a lineman. The old methods, Duke said, built muscle, but not the muscle the average tackle, guard, or center needs.

  “You have to train with this guy,” Duke would say on every phone call. “Nobody is better than LeCharles. He can change your career.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I’d tell Duke.

  I admit it: I was skeptical. Not because I didn’t trust Duke; I did. But because, when you think about it, who is most invested in offensive linemen? The team and the coaches. So it’s safe to assume that it is in the team’s best interest to make sure their players are training the smartest way they can, right? And that means all the coaches I had ever worked with over the years must have been teaching similar methods—bench, squat, lift—because they knew that was the state-of-the-art training regime available. In other words, I assumed all the traditional methods were right because, hey, that’s what everyone does.

  Adding to my ambivalence was the fact that I had trained by myself in recent years and things had generally gone well. I didn’t think I needed to pay for specialized training. On top of that, going to work out in Arizona hadn’t worked out timing-wise, with scheduling between me and Meridith.

  But in 2013, after not cracking the Vikings starting eleven, I knew I had to do something different. I needed to be in the best shape of my life, so there was no way a team could keep me on the bench.

  As if reading my mind, Duke called and said, “Hey, I think it’s really time for you to explore a new way for you to get your body ready for the season. You have got to get down here and give this a shot.”

  I remember thinking, “He’s probably right. I am not playing well, I’m not as strong as I should be. I don’t feel like my body is ready to go to war.”

  I needed a whole body reboot. And with things cooled off with Meridith, I had no obligation to be in Charlotte. I could go to Arizona and have the time to reshape and refocus.

  I told Duke I was ready.

  * * *

  Going down to the O-Line Performance facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, that first time—it’s now in Chandler about thirty minutes outside Phoenix—I had some ideas about what to expect. I knew it would be hot—like 100-degree hot. I knew we’d do some strange drills, stuff I’d never done before. And I knew LeCharles would design a program for me.

  But I didn’t expect to push around two-ton pickup trucks.

  I also didn’t expect to flip 600-pound monster truck tires.

  And I didn’t think my diet would change.

  But everything changed.

  The workouts ran between an hour and a half to two hours, and they were brutal. As LeCharles liked to say, “This ain’t South Beach. There’s no sand, no pretty girls.”

  The O-Line Performance philosophy is that every workout should be geared to your position, so that the drills echo some aspect of our work on the line. That�
��s why we pushed those huge pickup trucks. Pushing is what we do on the line. So why wouldn’t that be a smarter way to build muscle than to do bench presses? The same thing goes for flipping tires. In line-play you often push up against the competition, moving them back. Flipping those tires mimics the hip explosions as we come off the line. And those tires are a lot heavier than a defensive end, let me tell you.

  Another part of LeCharles’s philosophy is that every drill you perform should be high-intensity during a session. Once you are stretched and ready to go, there are not a lot of warm-ups. If LeCharles thinks you are having an easy time during a drill, that drill is going to get harder. If you are lifting weights and he thinks you are cranking out reps too easily, he’ll throw more heavy metal on your bar. He’ll increase the friction. Whatever it takes to make you work harder, he finds a way.

  Honestly, after that first workout, I felt like my arms could touch the ground—that’s how heavy they felt. There were plenty of moments that first week when I thought I might have to quit. But LeCharles doesn’t let you quit. Plus, I was working out with some great NFL guys—Redskins’ starting guard Shawn Lauvao, Steelers’ left tackle Kelvin Beachum, Lions’ guard Larry Warford, and the Jets’ Willie Colon—I couldn’t quit. I needed to represent, and I enjoyed that challenge.

  Not only that, but the workouts are so intense that as a player, I developed a new gear conditioning-wise. As my endurance improved, so did my ability to think under grueling conditions. And I look at that as helping me achieve a new physical and mental level—like an ability to shift into overdrive—to give me a competitive edge on the field.

  Following his program, I completely reshaped my body, not just by sticking to the relentless workouts, but by eating smarter and better. I guess I already knew some of LeCharles’ nutritional tips. I knew carbs and sugar are our enemies, but I thought I could still have a casual relationship with them. LeCharles taught me that eliminating them from my diet would make me feel better, recover faster, and be faster. Nobody had talked to me with the same amount of passion and knowledge. I heard what he was saying about carbohydrates, and how they can sap my energy. I followed his instructions and went cold turkey. I stopped gorging on my beloved fried rice. I cut out pasta. It was hard at first, because I didn’t realize how many carbs I ate, how much they filled me up, and how good they are: rice, pasta, bread, fruit. But then I started focusing on eating foods that would help aid my recovery time, like smoked meats that were high in protein and fat. It didn’t take very long before I could feel the difference. Duke was right. I’m forever grateful. LeCharles Bentley became a guru of sorts to me, and I guess I became a true believer.