Oooooh, MAN! It’s playoff time! I love this!
I feel bad for all those NFL players who never get a chance to experience the postseason. Fortunately for me, I’ve been blessed enough to be a part of the playoffs four times during my six year career. And I definitely don’t take this priviledge for granted.
However, I’ll admit there was a point in my career when I might have taken postseason births for granted a liiiittle bit -- like my rookie year -- and, if I’m being totally honest with you, my second year, too.
As an NFL newborn who had been to the playoffs during my first two seasons, I started to kinda figure...
“Oh, this is supposed to happen every year. If this trend keeps up its pace, I’ll be playing January football my entire career.”
Low and behold, that’s not true.
- My third NFL season was spent with the Carolina Panthers and we didn’t make the playoffs.
- Fourth season: Got the playoff birth (first round bye) and wound up losing to the Arizona Cardinals.
- Fifth season: Nope. Myself and the Panthers didn’t make it.
- Now my sixth season is being spent here in Chicago and we’re back where we belong: The Playoffs.
Now that I’ve been in the bigs for while and have matured as a pro, I know better than to take the postseason experience for granted, because they don’t come around very often. Sure, I’ve been fortunate to go during four of my six seasons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I should start expecting it to happen every year. Nowadays, I make damn sure I seize the moment to its fullest.
When you’re competing in a playoff game, everything you do is magnified by the public’s microscope. So, if I’m out there and I’m not seizing the moment by playing my best, I could potentially make a careless mistake that could cost us the game, and cause me to receive a lot of much-deserved flack. There’s just no room for errors during this time of the year, because you can’t say “I’ll fix my faults and go get’em next week,” because there is no “next week.”
I, along with everyone else on the team, will be comin’ with it, this Sunday. We’ll have our A-game, be on point, and do everything we can to not make any mistakes. After all... This is the postseason -- There’s no room for mistakes -- You either go to Dallas or go home. The time to GET IT is now!