Eat My Schwartz

by Geoff Schwartz

  Obviously I strive to take care of my body as much as possible, especially at high-stress times, like early in training camp. A big part of that is sleep. I’m sure that sounds funny to some people, as if sleep is the opposite of working out. But making sure I’m getting my rest and have time to recover helps set me up for better training sessions. If I come in worn out and tired, I’m more likely to lose focus, diminish the efficiency of my workout, and possibly do some damage. As far as recovery goes, I also always make sure to ice myself. And doing things in the training room, even just little things like stretching or working with a foam roller, can help. The smallest efforts in maintenance and recovery can make a huge difference.

  I think the number-one job of the strength and condition staff is not to make me stronger, but to prevent injury. Prevention comes with strength, because the stronger I get, the better my muscles can protect themselves and recover faster if anything minor happens. Over the years, my training routine—and I think many players share this—has been shaped by a pick-and-choose strategy. I’ve seen so many guys doing different things over the years, and I’ll go study them, or ask what they are doing, and if it seems to make sense, I’ll try it out and see how it feels.

  Eating properly is also crucial. When I’m in training mode, I’m eating clean and making a lot of meals at home and not bingeing on rich food in restaurants. I love going out to restaurants as much as anybody. Actually, maybe more than anybody! But the menus and all that choice make it tough to eat right sometimes. It’s easier to eat right when I’m eating in.

  Ultimately, surviving and thriving in the NFL requires discipline, analytical skills, and focus. Geoff and I are guys who have good strength and agility, but we can’t be entirely reliant on that. Neither of us has the jaw-dropping raw athleticism that you see with very top picks. There’s a clip on YouTube of Jason Pierre-Paul from 2009 engaging in a backflip contest with his University of South Florida teammate linebacker Kion Wilson. The 6'5" Pierre-Paul, who plays with Geoff on the Giants, busts out thirteen backflips in a row to Wilson’s six. It is an amazing performance when you consider his 270-pound body and the speed he is moving at are combining to put thousands of pounds—literally tons—of pressure on his hands and arms. He didn’t train for that. I mean, I’m sure he has extremely focused workouts and he lifts plenty of weights, but I’m betting he never attended an acrobatics or gymnastics academy to work on his backflips. The guy is just a tremendously gifted athlete. He was born with a body and brain that is wired exceptionally well. That’s why he was a first-round pick. Guys with unique elite athletic ability who can maximize their athletic potential are poised to be the best players at their position.

  In order to compete against that high level of athleticism, where everyone is strong and fast, and where some guys are practically superhuman, guys like me and Geoff need to make sure we are doing all the other things right. I am dealing with small percentages of how much better I can get here or there. When you put those things together, maybe you are 4 or 5 percent better than the next guy. You’re not going to be 50 percent better when you get to this level of competition. It’s really about making incremental gains in various areas and hoping all your effort pans out.

  * * *

  One interesting—or maybe I should say “tragic”—aspect of the whole iron man thing is that it may be the most marketable aspect of my entire career. It is the fate of the offensive lineman to be anonymous. Actually, despite football’s enormous popularity in the United States, football players are, with a few exceptions—quarterbacks, running backs, receivers, and a few defensive players—some of the least marketable players in the sports world. I think that’s because, compared to all other sports except fencing and motorcycle racing, football offers the least facial exposure. We all have helmets on during our greatest moments on the field. You can’t really see us. Whereas, with LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, or anybody else in the NBA or in professional baseball, you get to see their faces every time they are on camera.

  In the football hierarchy, the skill position players are far more marketable. They’re the ones who get to touch the ball, and viewers’ eyes are on the football all the time. The quarterback touches it every play, the running back gets 20 carries, the receiver makes leaping catches scoring touchdowns—those guys have more recognizable names and they have more recognizable faces. They are the people that the fans want to see. And defensive players are better known, too—they celebrate sacks and ferocious hits as if they have just scored a touchdown.

  Offensive linemen? Well, we don’t really exist except during replays when an analyst might call viewers’ attention to a battle in the trenches. There was an offensive lineman named Jerry Kramer who played for the Green Bay Packers under Vince Lombardi. He wrote a bestselling book in 1968 called Instant Replay that recounts an entire season with the Packers. Kramer, who played for at least eleven years, wrote, “Usually, if you play a good game, nobody notices.… When you’re screwing up and your man is making tackles, you get noticed.” Over forty years later, that hasn’t changed at all. On the offensive line, you can deliver perfectly on 99 plays in a row and never get mentioned. But if you screw up on the 100th, you can become an instant public enemy.

  My dad watches a lot of my games on TV. He told me that during our game against the Texans in 2014, every time J. J. Watt got past me—even if it wasn’t a sack—announcers would point out Watt’s effort. But the vast majority of the time I stopped Watt and even knocked him down a bunch. Was that work ever discussed? Nope.

  * * *

  While I can really zoom in on the mental aspects of football, the strategy, the film sessions to decode my opponent’s tendencies, the biomechanics of our drills, I think it is also important to be able to decompress, relax, and have fun. My other non-football obsession besides cooking and food revolves around video games.

  I’ve been playing video games as long as I can remember. You know how some people can spend hours discussing the TV shows they love, or the music and bands they idolize? I’m that way about gaming, and I’m especially that way when it comes to sports games. I’m a bit of a maniac—although in the obsessive world of gaming, sometimes it seems like we are a nation of maniacs. One of the interesting things to me about gaming is that, yes, it is addictive, but it is also relaxing. It takes my mind off of whatever I might be worried about—like how I’m going to stop the guy who is bigger, faster, and stronger than me on the other side of the line—and gets me focused on something fun and frivolous. Really, as much as I like talking about gaming—from basic computer games like SimCity and Oregon Trail to PlayStation Halo and Super Mario to Sega’s Dreamcast system—I do actually love playing more than yapping about them.

  As you know by now, Geoff and I are still both baseball fanatics. Growing up, I loved baseball video games and they are still my favorite type of game. My favorite game of all time is MVP 2005 for PS2.

  Tragically for me, the MVP baseball game went out of business, a victim of a video gaming corporate war and the ensuing rush to sign up player video game rights. What happened was that Entertainment Arts, which owned MVP and Madden NFL, got sideswiped when a rival company, 2K Games, made a football game priced at about $20. So a lot of people bought it and EA worried that Madden, their long-time cash cow, was under assault. So EA bought the exclusive video game rights from the players association, making Madden the only company allowed to make a football game with actual NFL players.

  In retaliation, 2K bought out the rights to show MLB players, so MVP was the last baseball game EA Sports ever made with Major League players. It was unfortunate because, in my opinion—and I’m not alone here—the inferior baseball and football video games survived, while the superior ones died.

  MVP ’05 still lives on as far as I’m concerned. It is still the best game in terms of being able to hit the ball. The bat striking the ball is incredibly realistic. You can tell from the point of contact when you swing whether you’ve hit a weak grounder or a hom
e run, which is not the case in a lot of games. Similarly, the pitching mechanics are really good. You don’t just push a button. I tell people MVP ’05 was by far the best rendering at the time, and is still the best today.

  That’s why every few years I’ll start playing the game again. It’s out-of-date, of course, missing all of today’s young stars, but that doesn’t stop me; I’ll go back and I’ll completely update the rosters myself. It’s an involved process. I go into the game, click on minor league players, and then I have to change their names and all their stats in order to update the model for the new players I add.

  If you’re a fan and a gamer, you’ll probably understand. If not, I guess you’re within your rights to think I’m a little insane. I prefer another phrase for it: a labor of love.

  13

  GETTING BETTER (SORT OF) ALL THE TIME

  Geoff

  The year 2014 was incredible. It truly had the highest highs of my life.

  Unfortunately, it also had two of the lowest lows.

  But, hey, let’s start by accentuating the positive.

  As you know, in the first part of the year I had signed the two best contracts of my life—one with Meridith, and one with the Giants. Then I went to Arizona for my own brand of March Madness with LeCharles and the other O-Line Performance addicts. Then I was in North Carolina to see Meridith. Then I flew up to New Jersey to find us a house. Then zipped back to North Carolina where Meridith was finishing school and entering her last trimester of pregnancy. Then I was back in Jersey for the off-season program and totally excited to be playing for a legendary team with a legendary coach in Tom Coughlin and miracle-inducing quarterback in Eli Manning.

  And then, with the perfect timing you expect from an offensive lineman and his super-organized wife, we—okay, Meridith did all the work—had Alex.

  Our plan was to induce labor before preseason camp started, so I could be around for a little while. As it happened, doctors told us the first day we were allowed to induce the baby was my birthday. I’ve never been a big birthday guy, so it was okay to share it with the little guy. We planned to induce on July 11.

  The Internet is filled with holistic methods that people claim will help naturally induce childbirth, from going on long walks to eating spicy food to rubbing strange oils into your skin. And we—or really, Meridith—tried a bunch of them. But nothing happened. So at 7 a.m. we induced, and then—not unlike draft day—we waited.

  And waited.

  The contractions finally started increasing later in the afternoon. And just after 7 p.m. it was show time.

  Alex’s birth was the most incredible event I’ve ever witnessed in my life. This unbelievable woman has been carrying a child in her and then there he is. It was just amazing.

  We hired a birth photographer and I cry every time I see the video.

  * * *

  As exciting and nerve-wracking as the delivery was, the most terrifying moment might have been our exit from the hospital two days later.

  I know everyone takes their baby home and has their struggles with breast feeding or sleeping. It’s universal. But that moment when we left the hospital, part of me was like, really? You are going to just let us walk out of here with a baby? Isn’t someone supposed to check that we’ve got a car seat and that I put the damn thing in correctly? But of course they don’t. The wonderful hospital staff just smiles and waves good-bye.

  Babies. Everybody was one, and almost everybody has ’em. But Alex was a wonder to me. He continues to be a source of joy, love, and discovery every day—even when he has a mind of his own, which he very clearly does.

  * * *

  So 2014 was truly miraculous. The best year ever.

  And then I dislocated my big toe.

  It was a freak injury. I mean, really, have you ever heard of anybody suffering a dislocated big toe? Shoulders, yes. Toes, no way. It happened during the second quarter of our third preseason game. Preseason games have a number of functions. They let you work on your timing as an individual player and as a unit. They provide players with an opportunity to prove themselves, and they give coaches more performances to evaluate. Other than that, they have no importance to the standings, and they are not even great indicators of how good or bad a team will be during the season. But when the New York Giants play the New York Jets, there’s a little more drama in the air. We’re the two local teams, and the local news media loves to make a big deal about it.

  Getting injured is every player’s greatest fear. Getting injured during preseason is high on the list of things you never want to do. And getting hurt in your first big audition for the home crowd, well, that was bitter icing on a poisoned cake.

  I was playing left guard, which was a new side for me. I spent my entire career on the right side. I’d played right guard at Carolina, and at Kansas City, but the Giants’ line had been hit by a slew of injuries and personnel issues, so I was filling in on the left side. Normally at right guard or right tackle positions, when I anchor my body against a bull-rush, my right leg is back. That’s exactly the opposite of my positioning when I play left guard, which requires planting my left foot. I had played right side for so long that my default anchoring was to put my right leg back. I struggled a bit in the early going. Muhammad Wilkerson was really coming hard, and Eli Manning was stripped of the ball by a linebacker (I recovered it) on the second series, but considering the new position, I was doing pretty well. Midway through the second quarter, though, the Jets’ defensive end Sheldon Richardson, who is a beast, started bull-rushing me. I momentarily put my left leg back in the correct position, and then quickly switched legs to get out of position, as if I were playing on the right side. And in the process of doing that, I jammed my right toe into the turf and the damn thing popped out of place. It didn’t hurt very much at first and I tried to get off the field on my own, but I quickly discovered I couldn’t put any weight on it. And as you know, I have a lot of weight.

  They carted me off the field. I lay there thinking about Meridith at home with Alex, and my dad, who was in the stands, and how they must be worried about me. I made sure to give them a thumbs-up.

  When I got the initial diagnosis, the Giants’ team doctor told me it was the first time he had seen the injury in thirty years. Unfortunately, there’s not much comfort in knowing you have a rare injury. Instead, this huge wave of disappointment swept over me. I was in pain, obviously. But the idea of not being able to play also hurt a lot. I had just signed a big contract, and I felt I let the team and the organization down by not being able to play, especially because of such a weird freak injury. I had been totally stoked to join the Giants and contribute, and now I couldn’t. That was the most disappointing feeling.

  I guess the injury was also a reminder that some things in life are out of your control. I had thought I was over that hump in my career where I would have to deal with injuries. I thought that with all the work with LeCharles and all my battles to get fit, I was past those issues. But freak accidents and freak injuries are a part of life. And obviously, nobody works on conditioning the muscles around your big toe. Not even laser-focused LeCharles.

  I flew to Charlotte to see Dr. Robert Anderson, an orthopedic surgeon who is the go-to doctor in the NFL for foot issues.

  I got off the injured reserve on November 17 and told the coaches I was ready to play, even though I was a little nervous about my toe. I guess the coaches were ready, too, because our regular tackle was out, so I played the entire game against the Cowboys filling in for him. I had had one practice in shoulder pads over the last twelve weeks, and you can imagine that I was a bit nervous about being rusty. I barely made it through that game—but part of playing in the NFL is playing through injuries, playing through pain, and playing whatever position your team needs you to play. So I sucked it up and I did a solid job given my circumstances.

  There’s actually a good chance you saw that game, or at least part of it, because it featured one of the greatest catches of all-time: Odel
l Beckham Jr.’s insane one-handed grab of a 43-yard pass in the second quarter. I’m proud to say I was on the field for that. I was looking right at it. We ran a play-action fake with Eli moving to the right. My guy Henry Melton was pushing toward Eli so I had a good sightline on Odell. When Eli threw the ball, Melton stopped rushing and I moved downfield. I was the first guy down there to congratulate him. It was an unbelievable play—not just the catch itself, which was amazing, but when you add the fact that he was getting held, and falling down, and near the sideline, he had so many obstacles to overcome and bring the ball in. The thing is, we see Odell make incredible catches like that all the time in practice. He’s just a phenomenally talented player who is blessed with huge hands and a great wingspan for a 5'11" receiver. Still, no one who saw it will ever forget that play. What I’d like to forget, though, is that the Cowboys marched 80 yards on us in the final minutes to win the game, 31-28. That was definitely not part of my comeback plan.

  Plans are easy to make and hard to execute. That became crystal clear to me the next week in our game against Jacksonville. I went into the game feeling great. A week of practice had me feeling back in the groove. My toe wasn’t very sore anymore. I was ready to rumble.

  Contributing to my good mood was the fact that we were coming off Thanksgiving, and Meridith and I had hosted a fantastic dinner for the offensive line. We invited all the guys over, plus their wives, girlfriends, and kids. I got to expose my pals to one of my favorite dishes of all-time: the deep-fried turkey.

  Like most people in America, I had never heard about fried turkeys, much less tasted one, before I got to North Carolina. But it’s a fairly widespread tradition in the South, as I understand it. Obviously, I was skeptical. I mean, I love fried food, but this just seemed silly. One of the glories of a turkey is that slow-cooked, basting-in-its-juices magic, with the stuffing soaking up the fat and brine.