Aug. 19, 2009
By SKIP MYSLENSKI, NUsports.com Special Contributor
Doug Bartels, the offensive lineman, chuckles softly as he silently considers the singular job he holds. He is 6-foot-4 and 285 pounds and, as he muses, still decorated by that sweat delivered by an afternoon of hard labor. Finally, behind another chuckle, he is saying, "It's not natural for a 300-pound man to run into multiple 300-pound men. But it's a passion. We wouldn't be out there doing it if it wasn't a passion for us. We do it because we love the game. It's a grind. It's tough. Your body hurts. But being out there on the field makes up for it. 100 percent!"
They toil always in a world called The Trenches. But there, in a maelstrom of mean-spirited behemoths, they must perform with the precision of a prima ballerina. They are renowned for their size and extraordinary strength. But, at work, their success is determined by the quickness of their feet and their mastery of technique and the acuity of their minds. They are the smartest football players of them all. But, even in this age given over to self-promotion, they remain faceless warriors whose complex job is little understood and even less appreciated.
"It's probably the most humbling position there is," says `Cat center Ben Burkett. But, inevitably, they account for the complexion and determine the outcome of most every game that is played. For just as the composer's work cannot be heard without the orchestra, just as the penthouse cannot be built without the foundation, the quarterback and the running back and the fleet wide receiver cannot take their star turns without the work done by these anonymous laborers.
"We should look on our society as we look on the biological world, where the fungi, the manures and the worms make an extraordinary contribution...," the late-and-great futurist R. Buckminster Fuller advised in his book "I Seem To Be A Verb." "We tend to applaud the football player who makes the touchdown and overlook the lineman who does the heavy blocking. We should not only applaud the flower, the fruit and the ball carrier."
"I tell them that it's the most-important position on the field and we're going to play a giant role in the game and we don't have to worry about where the credit comes from because we know whether or not we've done our job," echoes the `Cat line coach, Adam Cushing.
That is true always and will most-certainly be true in this coming season with a `Cat offense so inexperienced at those positions routinely regarded. But Bartels and Burkett, Kurt Mattes and Desmond Taylor, Keegan Grant and Al Netter have all been starters and felt the heat of the spotlight and flourished in competitions fraught with high pressure and higher stakes.
So, says Netter, "We take it upon ourselves to be leaders out there and we take it upon ourselves to take charge, I guess. To take the leading role and make it easier for the quarterbacks and the running backs since we have the experience."
"We talk about 'Hog Pride,'" says Cushing. "What defines 'Hog Pride' is playing hard, playing smart and playing together."
"With the exception of me, no one touches the ball. Nobody scores, nobody tackles, you don't get any glory, it's kind of a hard life," Ben Burkett is saying. "But I could care less. It's not my personality. Ever since I was 12 starting football, I was playing offensive line. After awhile, it turned into your personality. I think if you talked to any of the guys on the team, they'd say the offensive line was the weirdest group of people ever. We do have a bit of uniqueness to us that we all share that's a little different from the rest of the team. It's kind of hard to put into words. Some people just think we're weird."
On a team that promotes itself as a family, they are a separate sect, a family within a family. Bartels and Burkett, Netter and Taylor and Burkett backup Colin Armstrong live in one house and there they eat together, watch TV together, study the playbook together, do yard work together and even help each other with homework.
"I really couldn't be closer to anyone than I am to the people on the offensive line. It really is like a family setting," says Bartels and this is not unimportant.
"It's important in a game," he continues, "because everything that football rides on is trust. Trusting in the man next to you, knowing that he's going to be there when you need him to be there. When you have a defensive lineman that's coming on a twist, I've got to know that my right tackle is going to be there when I pass my man off. It's all a trust issue. When I know my buddies are going to be there, it makes it a whole lot easier."
Little, of course, is easy in The Trenches, where far more than brute strength is needed to thrive and survive. This is often lost in the crescendo of the crashing bodies, in the cacophony of the grunts and groans. But the work done here in the midst of mayhem is choreographed carefully and constantly the lineman must perform a complex dance, a dance that demands constant adaptation, a dance that must be presented with the hot breath of the enemy blowing in his face.
The numbers help tell the story here. For any game, there can be 50 plays in the book. For any play, there can be up to a half-dozen formations and/or blocking schemes. That means, each week, some 300 variables are there in a lineman's mind, variables that must be considered as he moves from the huddle to his position; reconsidered when the opponent's defense is recognized; and, quite possibly, be reconsidered once more if that opponent shifts and his quarterback calls an audible.
"It is like dancing and when they change defenses, it's like changing the music," former Bear offensive lineman and current sportscaster Dan Jiggetts said years ago. "One second, you're ready to do the waltz. The next second, you have to be ready to boogaloo."
"You have a pretty good idea of what you're going to face, but you never really know," Burkett says when asked about that. "So I think the key to being a good offensive line is to be able to react and know what to do when something arises that you haven't seen or didn't expect."
"There's always a lot of stuff going on in your head," echoes Netter. "You've always got to be thinking, you've got to be listening, you've got to be looking, you've really got to be alert for everything. Your mindset can completely change. You can go down and block a 310-pound defensive tackle or you can pull out and go block a 220-pound, 4.4 linebacker. You kind of go through the play in your head when you get it. But then you've got to be quick, you've got to make your decision, know how you're going to block it, then get out and go."
"The amazing part about offensive line play is the attention to detail it truly takes to play the game," Adam Cushing is saying. "The quote I always use with my guys is from (former Steeler coach) Chuck Noll, who says, 'Champions are not champions because they do anything extraordinary, but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else.' So all the little parts of the game that come into offensive line play is what we need to be extraordinary at."
Sixty, 70, 80 times in an afternoon they dance their disco of destruction, their minuet of mayhem, and each time they pit their bodies, their minds, their wills against those toiling across from them. The hand out jolts, accept jolts, trade jolts and, in the midst of this all, they are adjusting, adjusting their hands and their feet and their steps and their angles in a desperate search for an advantage. "You have to have a little edge when you step onto the field. You need to be willing to do what others won't," Cushing says and this is understandable. This kind of hand-to-hand combat cannot be survived without an edge.
"But there's a stigma about offensive linemen, that it's big lugs out there, that we're out there because we're big tubs of fat," adds Bartels, thinking now of that minutiae that must be mastered, those intricacies that must be perfected. "That's the furthest thing from the truth. On any given play, we know what everyone on the field's going to be doing. It's integral to our success to know where (quarterback) Mike (Kafka's) going to be in the backfield, what our running backs are going to be doing, how our receivers are going to be running the routes. We need to be big, we need to be strong, we need to be physical. But a lot of what we do is finesse. If our footwork is six centimeters off, that could throw your hips out of place and you're not going to be able to complete your bloc k like you need to complete your block."
Nor can there be any success if any one of them fails, if just one of them fails to communicate clearly or adjust correctly or block effectively or win his personal battle. That is one more fact to remember. The offensive line must be a glove for, just like a glove, it is useless if one finger is frayed and worn through. There is little glory to any of this, no obvious glory accrued from sacrificing your body and honing your mind and battling boredom while mastering techniques so unappreciated by so many. But that is just one last fact to remember about these most-extraordinary men. Their egos are well-aimed.
"Personally, I like to see our running back in the end zone. Every offensive lineman wants to see the little guy in the end zone," Burkett says when asked where he finds satisfaction.
"Seeing our running backs be successful. Seeing our quarterback clean. Seeing our receivers catch big balls," echoes Netter. "As you know, the offensive line is an extremely selfless position. You do it for the team. That's the bottom line."
"It's a mindset. It's a nasty mindset. We love it. In our room, we wouldn't have it any other way," concludes Bartels. "We like doing all the dirty work and being in the trenches and battling every single play... Some things in life aren't going to be easy. But it's my job. It's what I do. I play offensive line. I beat up on the defense and that gives me an adrenalin rush like nothing else in life. I don't need publicity. I don't need to score touchdowns. I get my adrenalin rush off of putting a defensive lineman on his back."
The conversation has meandered through the many aspects of his job and now, at the end, there is just one more question for Doug Bartels and it is this. How is he the Sunday morning after a game? "It feels," he says quickly, "like you got hit by a freight train. But it's a great, great feeling knowing that you spent every last ounce of energy in your body to complete a pass. When you go out there and do your job, go out there and get a victory, and you wake up on Sunday morning and it's hard to get out of bed, then you know you've done your job as an offensive lineman."