Putting the Ball on the Tee
Alright, I'll keep the football puns to a minimum now
For just about as long as I can remember, football has provided the backdrop to my life. But I’d be stretching the truth if I told you I’ve always found it exciting.
I remember wanting to change the TV channel when my dad was watching the host New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts square off in the 2003 AFC Championship game. You know, the one when Peyton Manning threw four interceptions just weeks after being named NFL co-MVP?
Yeah, that one.
“This is boring,” I thought. “It’s like golf.”
(You’re lying to yourself if you find anything about golf exhilarating.)
I was five years old. Soon enough, I’d caved in.
Then, I monopolized the Nintendo 64 at the Eagle’s Nest — essentially a Pittsburgh-area grocery store daycare — playing NFL Blitz while my mom shopped. Some trips, I’m sure, she had to peel me away from the controller.
I spent countless hours at home playing NFL GameDay 2004 on my PlayStation, with LaDainian Tomlinson on the cover, Dick Enberg on the call and blocky player avatars stiffly bumping into one another. Later came Madden 2004 and Madden 06 on the newer console.
It wasn’t just video games, either.
I loved the drama of NFL Films. The larger-than-life personalities. The incredible stories, like Terrell Owens playing in Super Bowl XXXIX with screws in his leg. The mythology. All of it.
More than 21 years after Bill Belichick’s team ousted the Colts on a snow-dusted evening in Foxborough, I stood on that same Gillette Stadium field last September.
The Pittsburgh Steelers beat Mike Vrabel’s eventual AFC champion Patriots, 21-14, and I’d been there writing about it.
The same stadium, a completely different perspective.
Day in and day out, I cover the Steelers — the same team I grew up watching every Sunday and cheering on — for Steelers Now.
For more than a year, I’ve regularly walked through the doors of an NFL locker room, learning what life is like behind the scenes and talking to stars such as Aaron Rodgers and DK Metcalf. I’ve covered a Steelers training camp, plenty of games, the NFL Scouting Combine and the 2026 NFL Draft.
It’s the job I dreamed of having from the moment I realized my mediocre high school receiver talents weren’t going to take me that far. I don’t take what I get to do lightly.
Now, as I continue taking steps toward becoming a full-time Steelers reporter, I’m launching this Substack as a place to tell the gridiron tales I want to tell — ones that go beyond the headlines and offer a unique twist on the sport we all love, reminding us what’s so special about it in the first place.
At least once a week, I’ll be sharing stories, observations and interviews from around the football world. For less than what a Starbucks cold brew costs, paid subscribers will get even more for $5 a month, including exclusive features and other content for those willing to come along for the ride.
This is just the first-and-10 on the game’s first series.
So if any of this sounds like your cup of tea, click subscribe and go long.
And, as a look behind the curtain of my style of storytelling, here’s an excerpt from a high school football feature I wrote in 2024:
“In a TV commercial for NFL Blitz, a 1997 arcade-style video game, then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart enters a cavernous room — dreary, damp and cement-walled.
Seconds later, milk splashes into a metal bowl filled with rusty nuts and bolts, which Stewart shovels into his mouth. Another rugged football player slurps a corroded steel chain like spaghetti, while others bite into circular saw blades and a broken glass bottle.
‘Blitz players don’t pump iron,’ the gruff narrator says. ‘They have it for breakfast.’
Knoch’s Codi Mullen would fit right in at such a brute banquet.
Buoying the battered Knights (2-3, 1-0 in Greater Allegheny Conference), the senior do-everything player has shown commendable grit while dealing with bumps and bruises himself.”