The New York Times
March 10, 2008
By GREG BISHOP
BEND, Ore. — On the first day of the first football season after his retirement, Drew Bledsoe actually missed two-a-days. In the morning, he climbed into his boat and floated on Whitefish Lake in Montana and allowed for 30 minutes of reflection.
Then he started training camp.
This was not training camp like the ones Bledsoe reported to during his 14-year N.F.L. career. This was Camp Bledsoe, the beginning of his transition.
He grabbed a camera and asked his wife to snap a shot of him sitting on a deck, feet in the water, beer clutched between his legs. He sent the picture to dozens of friends still playing in the N.F.L., all sweating through training camp in the sun.
“As you can see from this first picture I am maintaining my strict workout regimen,” he wrote them. “You can see here I am alternating some 12-ounce curls with some toe swirls. I generally do these until the bottle gets too light to offer enough resistance then I start over with a fresh one.”
The messages continued through the first week of camp — Bledsoe riding his motorcycle, sipping wine, playing golf. By the end, Bledsoe knew deep down what he already suspected. His N.F.L. career was over.
“When training camp came and went, and I wasn’t there, that was when the official break happened,” said the 36-year-old Bledsoe, who announced his retirement last April. “I left that phase of my life and moved on to the next one.”
Last week, quarterback Brett Favre joined Bledsoe in the retired quarterbacks club. Next season, Favre will experience what Bledsoe went through this year, a transition from veteran signal caller to real-world rookie.
On a recent two-day tour of his new life in the city of Bend, Ore., Bledsoe conducted a business meeting over wine, coached third graders on the basketball court and closed a business deal on the ski slopes at nearby Mount Bachelor.
Bledsoe began planning his transition six years before his retirement, about the same time his tenure ended with the New England Patriots.
They selected him out of Washington State with the first overall pick in the 1993 draft, and Bledsoe’s entire family traveled to New York City, their first trip together on an airplane.
“Like the Waltons go to New York” Bledsoe said.
During his ninth season in New England, against the Jets in late September 2001, Bledsoe took the most vicious of hit of his career.
Linebacker Mo Lewis smacked Bledsoe along the sideline as he tried to run for a first down. Four liters of blood flowed into Bledsoe’s chest cavity, until his lungs failed to inflate.
Bledsoe went back into the game, but he could not remember plays he spent years practicing. He needed assistance getting dressed after the game.
In Bledsoe’s absence, the Patriots turned to a young and unknown quarterback named Tom Brady. Bledsoe threw a touchdown pass in the American Football Conference Championship game that year, but Brady started in the Super Bowl, and the Patriots’ dynasty began with Bledsoe on the sideline.
“I don’t play the what-if game much,” Bledsoe said. “And of course, I believe had I not gotten hit, we would have done the same thing. As an athlete, you have to believe that.”
After that season, Bledsoe felt a strong urge to walk away. Instead, he went to Buffalo, where he made his fourth Pro Bowl, then to Dallas, where he was benched again. His career ended with more than 44,000 passing yards and 251 touchdown passes.
The Cowboys pulled Bledsoe at halftime of a game against the Giants in late October 2006. He said he decided to retire then, but waited until the season ended to make sure he was not simply making an emotional decision.
Bledsoe says he is still bothered by the perception at the end of his career that he was too slow and his skills were declining. He insists his skills “had not diminished to any measurable degree.”Bledsoe wished he could show up at the scouting combine wearing a disguise, pretending to be from a small school, essentially starting over.
“Perception always bugged me,” said Adam Bledsoe, his younger brother.
“In the latter half of his career, he became a whipping boy.”
Bledsoe relished standing on the field, the center of attention, 80,000 fans packed in the stands. But after the second benching, after teammates started addressing him by Mister, he decided to fade into the background. He started to decline interview requests and began starting businesses.
He knew the statistics of recently retired players, the marriages that crumbled, the money that disappeared, the friend who refused to watch football for three years after retirement. Gone were the people who made his doctor’s appointments, gave him directions and planned nearly every minute of his day.
His biggest fear: finishing football and having no reason to get out of bed in the morning. As a result, Bledsoe said yes to everything.
During his career, a winery deal with three other N.F.L. quarterbacks
– Damon Huard, Rick Mirer and Dan Marino — fell through, so Bledsoe started his own vineyard. He planted the grapes three years ago, and the winery will start producing in 2010.
A coffee business, 11 Roasters, is in full swing. Bledsoe proudly shows off the fire-engine red roaster in his Bend offices and talks about his blends like a Starbucks chairman. (He says the Esmeralda special is a favorite.)
The idea behind all his endeavors, whether wine, coffee, real estate or the Drew Bledsoe Foundation, is to start slow, build small and then expand. Bledsoe said he believed every coffee blend, every bottle of wine, should tell a story.
His advice to Favre? Stay busy. Adam Bledsoe jokes that after his brother retired, he took golf as seriously as he used to take football. He raised $600,000 in four months to put in FieldTurf at the local high school.
Along the way, the strangest thing happened. Bledsoe sometimes awoke at 4:30 in the morning, excited to start the day.
He coached flag football in the fall and basketball in the winter. He and his wife, Maura, will celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary in May. Finger paintings from four children — Stu, 10, John, 8, Henry, 7, Healy, 4 — hang from the refrigerator.
Sometimes, Bledsoe’s family wonders the same things as everybody else.
Like when Healy asked the other day, “Daddy, when are you going to play football again?”
Arizona, Carolina, Cincinnati and Jacksonville called this past season. Jacksonville’s offer intrigued Bledsoe. The Jaguars had a strong running game, a solid offensive line, a coach Bledsoe liked, and they were offering an easy seven-figure paycheck.
Bledsoe seriously considered it, but he decided to turn down the offer. When he woke up the next morning with a giant smile on his face, he knew he made the right decision.
Toward the end of his career, Bledsoe learned he had chronic head trauma migraines. Every time he was hit in the back of the head, he lost his peripheral vision.
“I really don’t have any regrets,” Bledsoe said. “Most people leave the game angry, at least for a little while. I had that with the Patriots, but I got over it, moved on.”
Humor eases the transition. His e-mail address starts exqb11. The Bledsoes’ Christmas card pictured the family dressed in holiday gear, with its recently retired father sitting oblivious in the middle, watching television.
There were times when Bledsoe missed the game. At a restaurant in Montana, the Cowboys’ first preseason game was on television, and there were all his teammates, guys he played with only a few months earlier, moving on.During the Super Bowl, the Bledsoes went skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyo. They planned to leave on a Sunday, but snow forced them back inside the cabin, where they watched the Giants’ victory on television.
When the game ended, Maura held a glass of wine and toasted her husband on surviving his first season out of football. She noticed tears forming in his eyes.
At the end of the two-day Bend tour, Bledsoe pulled his Mercedes into the lot where the family is building its second dream home. The house will be about 10,000 square feet, with a wine cellar and a theater and an underground basketball court.
The last time Bledsoe built a home like this, he played for the Patriots, his career still in front of him. Scanning the mass of concrete, Bledsoe smiled. New dream house, new dreams, new life. This transition is complete.
“His career didn’t end the way we thought,” Maura said. “I always wanted it to end in the Super Bowl, ride into the sunset. But this works. He’s happy and busier than he’s ever been.”
