What the Shrine Game Meant for My NFL Career
The 90th East-West Shrine Game is set to commence Saturday at 4 p.m. ET at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. Here, a collection of some of the best football prospects you’ve probably never heard of will go head-to-head for a chance to catch the eye of an NFL team.
Although the game’s roots are founded on the principles of increasing awareness for the Shriners Hospital for Children, there’s a reason it will be televised on NFL Network. It’s the same reason dozens of NFL scouts pace up and down the sidelines jotting notes about every detail during the practices leading up to the weekend finale. The Shrine Game provides a rare opportunity for talent evaluators to observe NFL-caliber prospects in full pads competing on an even playing field.
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For many prospects, their post-collegiate careers are kick-started at the East-West Shrine Game. For others, the dream of donning the helmet of one of the NFL’s 32 teams dies forever, thanks in part to this annual tradition.
Sad as this reality may be, there are no apologies needed. Not by me or anyone else who ever played football. We fully understand the Darwinian nature of the game and the challenges one must overcome to succeed at the highest level.
I arrived onto the 2005 draft scene like those last few kernels of popcorn at the bottom of the bag. As such, I received a late invite to the Shrine Game after coming out of nowhere to set the single-season sack record (14.5) at the University of California. That year, I finished third in the nation in sacks and was named an All-American by Sporting News and Sports Illustrated.
Being a relatively unknown draft prospect, the decision to participate in this classic game was an easy one. After all, the East-West Shrine Game is the longest-running college football all-star game and has produced a number of success stories at the next level.
Admittedly, my senior season at Cal had taken its toll. I played nearly every single defensive snap that season and only missed one practice during that time. And that was because the training staff sent me to the emergency room after I told them I was peeing blood just before the start of practice. That incident turned out to be a minor one.
The 2004 season was also emotionally draining.
It was the same year my family discovered my father had prostate cancer that had spread into his bones and throughout his body. We only found this out after he was rushed to the hospital the night after one of my games because he had intense pain in his back and could barely move.
As it turned out, he would end up spending the next month bedridden in a northern California hospital, even though he and the rest of my family lived in Los Angeles. I would visit him in the hospital every day after school and practice.
This was a long and grueling season on many levels, to say the least.
By the time I arrived in San Francisco to begin practice for the Shrine Game, I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. Plus, I was still dealing with a torn hamstring I tweaked way back in October that never really had a chance to heal.
It’s hard for me to say how everyone else felt, because nobody wanted to go around telling other all-star athletes how weak and worn out they were before banging heads with them at practice.
Despite the layered fatigue, I went into that week with a ton of inner confidence and figured I’d just do the same things that brought me success throughout the season and show the NFL scouts what I was all about. (I previously wrote about what that week was like in another Bleacher Report article if you’d like to read about those details).
When the actual game rolled around, which at the time was located at AT&T Park where the San Francisco Giants play, the rain from the night before had completely drenched the playing field, making it impossible to find traction.
Keep in mind, this field sits right at sea level—meaning the rain water had nowhere to drain. It basically transformed the grass into a muddy, slippery mess. I understand how playing in the mud sounds like a lot of fun when you’re a kid, but for defensive players, it is one of the most frustrating things to deal with.
Offensive players have a distinct advantage on a slippery field because they know where they’re going, whereas defense is all about reacting. Changing directions on this field was little more than a series of follies, and because of my playing style, I was affected by this slippery surface more than most.
One of the more interesting elements about the Shrine Game is how the coaches determined the starting lineup and divvied up playing time.
From what I could tell, the only observable structure with regard to playing time was to vocally campaign for it. In the end, all of us defensive ends seemed to get a fairly equal split of the playing time, but it was only because we mutually worked together with the coaches to keep things somewhat equal.
I wish I could tell you I played the game of my life that day, but given the foreshadowing I’ve laid out leading up to this, it’s clear I did anything but. To put it bluntly, I played terribly.
Aside from the personal reasons I expounded on earlier, it would be irresponsible of me not to stress the fact the competition level during practice that week, and in the game itself, was significantly greater than any regular-season college football game I’d ever been a part of. The offensive linemen were bigger and stronger, and the skilled-positioned players were faster and hit noticeably harder.
In practice earlier that week, I nearly had my first concussion when I took on a fullback from the University of Texas. I had never been hit like that in a game, let alone in practice, and usually when there’s contact that hard, I’m not the one standing a bit wobbly after.
By the time both the week and the game had concluded, my confidence level about playing in the NFL had taken a pretty big hit. It may sound stupid to an outsider or fan, but I never realized just how big of a jump it was going to be trying to play in the NFL. After my experience at the Shrine Game, I had enough of a taste to be far more skeptical about my future.
They say most of the scouts and NFL personnel have already moved on and left town by the time the actual game comes around. This is true. But that doesn’t mean the game itself is not highly scrutinized by interested members of the NFL. I can assure you, hundreds of eyes have gone over that game tape several times before draft day, and many decisions about team building have been made based on this.
In fact, I can even offer up a personal story to illustrate just how a game like this can shape an NFL career.
We were about one-third of the way into my rookie year with the Oakland Raiders and struggling to find a pass-rusher who could complement Derrick Burgess on the other side. In the ongoing search for this player, I was called up to the office to have a chat with our defensive line coach and pass-rush specialist Keith Millard. Coach Millard was a former NFL defensive lineman best known for his time with the Minnesota Vikings and well known for his passion and energy.
When I walked into his office, he was sitting at his desk mulling over some game tape. At first, I couldn’t quite make out what he was looking at, but when I got closer I could see he was watching the East-West Shrine Game I had participated in less than a year earlier.
Once I saw this, my internal reaction was something similar to "Oh, God, no! Why would he be watching that tape out of all my college games to choose from?"
Sadly, the Shrine Game was quite literally the worst football tape you could find of me, and here was my NFL position coaching watching it. I sat there reflecting on what sorts of things he could be seeing on that tape. The entire game I could barely stand up without falling down.
In one particular play, the East team ran a reverse, and I was in perfect position to make a big tackle for a loss but whiffed on it. The ball-carrier reversed course and ran toward the other sideline. At this point, he was still behind the line of scrimmage, and I began chasing after him. He then stopped and changed directions to turn up field, and somehow I missed the tackle again.
I felt like a wet noodle bouncing off a baseball bat. The guy broke a few more tackles and changed directions a few more times before I had a third chance to make the tackle. Would you believe it if I told you I missed the tackle again?
Needless to say, Coach Millard was not impressed with the tape, and I think I made a comment explaining that this was probably the worst tape he could watch of me. Instead of bashing me, he offered up some praise for my play against the USC Trojans, who won the national championship that year, but he did seem concerned about the Shrine Game tape, though he never really said it.
That meeting was about him preparing to make a case for me to get some playing time at defensive end to see what I could do in the games. However, in order to do that, he would have to convince the late owner of the Raiders, Al Davis, it was a good idea.
Davis was infamous for his infatuation with speed and size, so it was no surprise he was of the belief I was both too slow and too small to play on his defense. The only reason I was even drafted by that organization was because the coaches banged the table for me with plans to turn me into the next Tedy Bruschi by switching me to inside linebacker.
Considering the opportunity to play defensive end never really came after that meeting, it’s reasonable to speculate my performance in the Shrine Game had something to do with it.
Who would’ve thought the importance of that college all-star game would somehow find its way into the middle of my rookie season and quite possibly help shape the rest of my NFL career? For the rest of my time in the NFL, I remained a project player trying to learn the inside linebacker position and was never given the opportunity to show my pass-rush ability in the regular season.
I’ve often wondered just how much that game, in combination with a below-average performance at the NFL Scouting Combine, hurt my draft stock. Going into the draft, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. had me valued as a midround prospect. I ended up falling well beyond that mark, lasting all the way to the bottom of the sixth round.
The East-West Shrine Game is a major test for these players to help or hurt their futures in the NFL. It’s not uncommon for most of these guys to believe strongly in themselves going into the week, but by the time the game is over, a large number of these prospects will have a much better understanding of the things to come.
What they won’t realize until later is this is just the tip of the NFL iceberg.
Ryan Riddle is a former NFL player who writes for Bleacher Report.
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