An NFL season spans all four seasons. You show up at the facility in April and start training with your teammates — running in the warm sunshine until it turns to the scorching rays of summer. During training camp, you endure nearly 100 degree temperatures, and if you make the 53-man roster, the season begins and the air starts to cool. Then, somewhere in the middle of the season, cool turns to cold and you get your first snowfall.
For a California kid like me, that first snow was exciting — and ushered in a new reality. All my life, before I became a pro football player, no matter where I was or what I was doing, when late November rolled around, I'd be home for Thanksgiving, and then home a month later for Christmas. The holidays, as they are for so many, were a comfort and a ritual — the smell of mom's kitchen, the trees outside my bedroom window, the hugs of my brothers and sisters and sitting on the couch watching football with my dad. Tens of millions of American parents and children sit down every Thanksgiving to watch the slate of NFL games together, with full hearts and full bellies.
But what happens when that kid grows up and achieves their dream of playing in the NFL? It means they won't be looking out of that childhood bedroom window, they won't be eating mom's cooking and they won't be on that couch next to dad. Though the love and longing for home never goes away, they have a new family that they'll be spending the holidays with — their football team.
When I ended up playing for the Denver Broncos, it wasn't because I decided to move to Denver. I didn't research job openings in Colorado. I didn't apply for jobs and look at housing and talk to my parents about leaving California and what that would look like.
One day I was living in California, where I had lived for all 23 years of my life, then the next, I was on an airplane headed to my new home — Denver, Colorado. It was mid-August and the middle of training camp with the 49ers when I was tapped on the shoulder and told that I was being traded to the Denver Broncos.
Once you decide on a life of football, you accept that many of these big decisions will be made for you. I do not decide where I go or when I go, I just work hard and hope I get that chance to go — anywhere — and play the game I love.
And so Denver became, for me, that place that kept my dream alive. I had never been to Colorado. I had a girlfriend, an apartment, a car — my entire family and history were right there in the Bay Area. And just like that, I left them all — just like the rest of my teammates did. Men from different towns, different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different beliefs and different accents all ended up on one team together with one common interest. They say you don't get to choose your family, and the same is true for your football family. You only hope you end up in a place like I did, playing for an organization that took your life seriously.
My first Thanksgiving away from home was my first season with the Denver Broncos. Over the next six seasons, I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas either practicing or playing in football games. The men whose faces were new to me when I walked into that locker room in August 2003 became the brothers I knew better than I knew myself. The coaches, the trainers, the equipment managers, the cooks, the support staff — they all became one big family that relied on one another for support, on the field and off.
The humanity of the men under the helmet can get lost in our love for the game itself. We live and die on the outcome of the game and the final numbers up on that scoreboard. But when those helmets come off, there are men who long for the comfort and ease of those that know them best, but who have traveled too far away to touch them.
My family was proud of me for chasing my dreams. And I was proud of myself for achieving them. But as the rest of the country sat around the table and carved the turkey, my new brothers and I sat in front of our lockers and strapped up our shoulder pads, heading out to a different kind of feast.
Though the spot on the couch was empty, I know my father smiled when he flipped on the TV and saw me run across the screen, embodying an American tradition, playing the game I always loved, at home with my new family.
About the Author: Former NFL wide receiver and tight end Nate Jackson played six seasons for the Broncos and is the author of the New York Times Best Selling book "Slow Getting Up."
