Martellus is my actual brother, but my team is my brotherhood. They have sustained me, gotten me through the minefield of the NFL, and taught me to redefine how I understand family. It took a combination of a special city, a special coach, and a remarkable group of young men to make that a reality.
BROTHERHOOD
Ask not what your teammates can do for you; ask what you can do for your teammates.
—Magic Johnson
I went into the NFL thinking like a mercenary: this would be a business, and the goal was to get in, kick ass, and get out. I didn’t need to make friends. I just needed to provide for my family and move on. I learned this would also be the place where I’d find the truth about what I could be, and where I’d meet the people without whom I cannot imagine my life. It’s not the championships or the Pro Bowls. It’s the blood relationships that the intensity of this league allows you to build with the people around you.
I signed with the Seattle Seahawks in April 2009. Walking into that locker room for the first time, I felt so much doubt. When you are undrafted, the question of Do I belong here? shadows your every step. But then I saw people I knew from college, people I’d competed against, and they were kind to me. No one made me feel like I had snuck in the back door. All of a sudden I was just another rookie, and that’s exactly what I needed to believe. According to my coaches, I played like a first-round draft pick in preseason. Then, I was the last cut in training camp, and it rocked me. I was walking around in a fog. The team said they would re-sign me as soon as possible if I stuck around, but I couldn’t afford to take that chance. I signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and balled out. But Tampa was rough on Pele and me. We were a young couple, strangers in a strange land. Everyone assumed we were from somewhere in Latin America and spoke to us in Spanish. I love my Latino/Latina sisters and brothers, but it sucks when people try to talk to you, trying to make friends or something, and you don’t know how to respond. We were trying to build our family in a new city without a community.
I was also on a losing team, but I took my job so seriously, as prepared by Tellus, that my sole focus was on proving myself. I was trying to win respect as a player who wasn’t drafted, and I needed to feed my family, so that pushed me harder than most. I learned how to be a pro in Tampa, thanks to two veterans who might seem as different as Jekyll and Hyde in this league: Ronde Barber and Albert Haynesworth. Ronde Barber was a cornerback and, in my opinion, should be on the fast track to the Hall of Fame. His reputation as one of the most professional, personable people in the league is absolutely deserved. Albert Haynesworth was a defensive lineman, with as many physical gifts as anyone in the league: six feet six and 350 pounds of strength and speed. Big Albert was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2008, but he is known to fans as someone who has gotten in trouble off the playing field and as the player who once stomped on an offensive lineman’s head, which, while I’ve never done it … I can understand.
The public perceptions of Ronde and Albert are irrelevant to me. They were my mentors. I still call Ronde Barber, when I see him, “Big Bro.” The way he talked to me, seeing the way he trained and the way he took care of himself, were like taking a master class in being a professional. Albert Haynesworth took me aside and taught me the tricks about how to play on the line, things coaches don’t know unless they played. He also advised me to be smart with my money, something every player should learn, especially considering the statistics about how many NFL players end up broke. Albert took me and another young player, Gerald McCoy, the third overall pick in the 2010 draft, under his wing—two future Pro Bowlers—and made us into a couple of young beasts. Gerald McCoy is a really good person and friend. We thought we’d be in Tampa together forever, like Warren Sapp and Simeon Rice. We talk once a week, and to this day, we’ll see each other and say, “Man, if they’d just kept us together, people would have talked about our Tampa legacy forever.”
But when I became a free agent in 2013, I went right back to Seattle, signing a one-year deal even though I had better, longer-term offers from other teams. People ask me if that was a tough decision, given the way I was cut from Seahawks training camp as a rookie, but the truth is that even after four years in Tampa, I never stopped thinking about Seattle or its team. While on the Bucs I even had a dream that I would make it back to the Emerald City and we would win a Super Bowl. I wanted to see that dream through. Seattle’s vibe had connected with me: new ways of thinking, new ways of doing things. I saw people collaborating and respecting others for being different. That was so important to me and reflected the kind of life I wanted for my family.
The move back was good for Pele, also, given her family’s roots in the Pacific Islands. If that’s your background, Seattle is one of the few cities in this country, outside of Hawaii, where you have some representation and cultural connections. We wanted that not just for us but for our babies, too. Texas was so black and white and Florida was
