Real Talk

Sometimes in life what we need more than anything is for someone to just put it to us straight. Be direct. 

No B.S. 

When it comes to my NFL career, Norv Turner was that guy for me. 

Before meeting him, I’d played college ball at DII Central Missouri and put up video game–type numbers as a wide receiver. At the combine, I posted a 40 time in the 4.4s and got drafted by the 49ers in the sixth round. I was all ready to set the NFL on fire. In the town where Jerry Rice did his thing no less. It was absolutely perfect. 

Then, within a day or two of arriving in The Bay….

Sh*t hit the fan. 

I’m chilling in the receivers room one morning, not a care in the world, and I walk out and see this dude sitting by my locker.

It’s the Grim Reaper. 

Everyone who’s played in the league knows what I mean by that, but for everybody else … any time a personnel guy is sitting at your locker, that’s the end of your NFL dream right there. If the reaper’s there waiting on you, it’s basically a wrap. You’re toast. Adios! And even just two days in, as a rookie … I already knew all about the reaper. 

Anyway, I walk up and make eye contact and … the reaper speaks.

“Coach Turner wants to see you.” 

Turner was the OC for the Niners back then. So when I hear those words, my heart almost drops out my chest. 

“Upstairs. In his office.”

I’m a deer in headlights. 

“Oh, and bring your playbook.”

All the guys within earshot … hearing that playbook part, they’re all, “Ooooooooh. Damn, bro.” And in my head it’s like: Two days in? And this is what it is?? I’m already out. Gotta hand in my playbook and head home? Already????? 

So I trudge up the steps all nervous and walk into Coach Turner’s office and….

He doesn’t even look at me. 

Swear to God. Not even for a second. He just glances up to notice someone came in, and then he goes right back to writing something on a legal pad. After what seemed like an eternity, Coach finally looks up and says….

“Yeah, this isn’t gonna work.”

All the air goes out of my entire body with those words, for real. 

“You’re not an NFL receiver.”

I can’t breathe. I’m completely shook, and in my head, it’s like: So now what? Do I have to take a bus home? Do I at least get to keep my jersey? Then, after a few more agonizing seconds pass, Coach is like.… 

“We’re moving you to tight end.”

????????????????

At that point, two sets of feelings kick in simultaneously. Like: OH MY GOD I DIDN’T ACTUALLY GET CUT. I CAN STAY. THANK GOD!!!!!!!! But then at the same exact time, it’s also like: Wait. What? Tight end?!?!?!

I look at Coach Turner and basically just say the first thing that comes into my head.

“But I don’t know anything about playing tight end.”

And Coach, I’ll never forget it as long as I live, he just looks me dead in the eyes and is like….

“Well, you better f***ing learn fast. Because you’re not ever gonna play receiver for us, so if you can’t be a tight end, your a** is getting cut.” 

And then, the only thing he says after that is, I swear to God, he just looks at me and says….

“You can leave now.”

Damn. 

I remember trying not to cry as I walked back down those steps to where my teammates were. And before I could even fully process everything, I saw that I had a new jersey at my locker, new number. 

Prior to that meeting, I’d been number 14. (Good wide receiver number. Fast number!) Not anymore. You know what they gave me, bro? No lie, you know what my new number was?

46.

I’m like: Are you kidding me right now? 46?!?!?!? Long-snapper number? What is this?

I’m calling up my agent like: “I’m done, man. They’re about to cut me, for real. This dude moved me to tight end, and yo …… THEY GAVE ME NUMBER 46?!?!?” I’m in full-on panic mode.

But then, a bit of time passed, and, slowly but surely, something happened that I definitely wasn’t expecting. 

Turner, I mean, what can I tell you … it turns out he was actually right! 

It was rough at first, I’m not gonna lie. I’d been a wide receiver my entire life. I didn’t know what 3-technique was. Or 4-technique, for that matter. I didn’t know how to block anybody. Coaches were cussing me out every day. Making me stay after practice. This one coach, who shall remain nameless, I remember he’d be taping newspaper want-ads for jobs up on my locker like.… “Maybe you can try some of these places to find another occupation. They’re looking for roofers down in Santa Clara.” 

But all that stuff had me motivated to show everyone I could become a tight end. And I worked my tail off to get it all down, and after a while I basically….

Became a tight end.

A pretty damn good one, too. 

Looking back on it now, I owe a lot to Coach Turner.   

He knew something about my potential as a player that even I didn’t see. And before long we’d be at practice and Coach would be looking over at me, nodding his head and yelling out how I may have hated him before, but.…

“You’re gonna thank me for this later!” 

He was right about that, too.

Fourteen years in the league and three Pro Bowls later, I couldn’t be more grateful for that time up in his office. Now that I’m retired, sometimes I just sit back and think…. Man it’s crazy how many people over the years hit me with that kind of real talk that ended up changing my life. 

I’m thinking of Coach Leon from back home in Pomona, who took me under his wing and introduced me to organized football when I was just a mischievous little 8-year-old kid running around doing dumb stuff. Him finding a spot for me on the Pomona Steelers peewee team, and then taking me to church after practice, talking on the ride over about how it was up to me to take responsibility and make good choices. I’ll never forget that. Or my mom sitting me down at home when I was getting in trouble for fighting all the time and was ready to quit football and forget about school, and her telling me, basically: “Nah, you ARE going to college. You’re not quitting. You will get out of Pomona!” 

Or my former coach at Central Missouri, Willie Fritz, seeing me still messing up as a young adult, and not being serious about my future, and telling me to my face, straight up, like: “Stop being a clown and be a man!!!!”

Hearing that, I mean … it broke me. 

But I needed to hear it. And it opened my eyes. Just the directness of it. It registered. 

I’m telling you all these stories from my past because I feel like I’ve now reached a point in my own life where I need to be the one on the other end of things. So can I be real with you? You’re enjoying this right?

Then bro, take it from somebody who knows….

If you’re an older dude, you need to think about getting screened for prostate cancer. 

And look, I get it. It’s a sensitive subject. But I’m not looking to sugarcoat this at all. I’m going COACH TURNER on you guys here, for real. It’s personal for me because not too long ago, I lost a beloved family member to prostate cancer. It was heartbreaking, and to say that it opened my eyes to the importance of early detection would be an understatement. 

Because they didn’t catch it sooner, at the time when he was diagnosed, in 2019, he was given a max of four more years to live. This was someone who was a towering figure in the family, someone everyone looked up to, and then, all of sudden, he gets the news: Stage 4 prostate cancer. From there, it was constant rounds of chemo. Before long, this strong and vibrant man, a man who had always been full of life, always energetic, had been rendered frail and incapable of prolonged activity — always feeling weak, always tired, very pale complexion. If you’d seen pictures of him from just a few years prior to the diagnosis, you almost wouldn’t have believed it was the same person.  

One of the last times I saw him before he passed away, I remember he took me and a few other family members outside and started talking about everything that was going on for him. Just being completely honest and open and heartfelt. He made it a point to say that he didn’t want us feeling sad or being afraid to broach the subject. He was like, “Let’s talk about this!”

And one of the main points he focused on was the fact that his life could have been saved had there been more conversations and education around prostate cancer when he was at an age when most men should get checked. He passed away at 73, but 30 years earlier … that’s when those conversations needed to be taking place.       

That really hit home. 

I know now that one out of every eight men in our country will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. And for Black men, the chances are even greater, and the mortality rate is almost twice as high as that of other men. Early detection is everything. It exponentially increases the likelihood of survival. And this issue doesn’t just impact us. Not talking about prostate cancer, not getting screened early … if things end up becoming a problem later, that impacts the lives of everyone who cares about us — family, friends, everyone. 

There’s no reason to be losing more lives to prostate cancer, when early screening and detection improves the chances of beating it by a massive amount. And especially now, when getting screened can be as simple as having a blood test done? I mean…. 

Come on now. 

This couldn’t be more of a no-brainer, for real. Get that information. Set up a timeline. Take a second and give your doctor a call today. I promise you won’t regret it. 

Just like Coach Turner told me all those years ago when I doubted him…. 

“You’re gonna thank me for this later.”

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Together with the NFL, Novartis is turning prostate cancer screening into the smartest play on the field. The new Novartis campaign, “Relax, it’s a Blood Test,” reframes the conversation from anxiety to action by empowering men to take charge of their health and engage in honest, potentially lifesaving dialogue about the importance of early detection. At its core is a dedicated suite of resources designed to help men of all ages and their loved ones overcome misconceptions about prostate cancer screening, understand their risk factors, and find credible information about simple pathways to testing. Find out if a PSA blood test is right for you at relaxitsabloodtest.com