Every fall, thousands upon thousands of kids from across the United States and around the globe throw on a football helmet for the first time. In 2016, a Sports and Fitness Industry Association survey estimated that 982,000 children ages six to 12 were organized participants in tackle football. The last census by Statista reported that in 2018-2019, there were roughly 1,000,000 boys and 2,500 girls playing high school football across the U.S.A. Of that massive pool, 7.1 percent of high school players go on to play in college, and 1.6 percent of college players end up reaching the professional level.
It’s not often that a person is afforded the opportunity to interact with someone who played in the NFL, but just after Week 1 of the 2019 season, I was able to sit down with Kyle Adams -- who suited up for 29 games between 2011 and 2013 for the Bears and Buccaneers. I ended up coming into contact with him through a good friend, Marcia, who works in the cafeteria at my office. I researched Adams’ history and was compelled to learn more about his experiences playing this game we love at the highest level. While playing at Westlake in Austin, Texas, Adams was high school teammates with Super Bowl LII MVP Nick Foles and with the all-time leader in field-goal percentage, Justin Tucker. At Purdue, Adams played alongside a number of eventual NFL guys, and for two years backed up former Jets tight end Dustin Keller before taking on the starting role as a senior. In the NFL he shared a locker room with Jay Cutler for two seasons.
This man I had to speak to.
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It was a random Purdue polo that I found at Goodwill that catalyzed this interaction. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with the Boilermakers, but something about this shirt -- the grey and black piping on the shoulders, the material it was made of, the fact that the logo was stitched, all led me to pulling the trigger. Not so much the team necessarily.
Two weeks or so later I am at work, down in the cafeteria of an office with dozens of businesses headquartered within the building. There’s a massive man standing in front of me at the checkout line, and I think to myself that he is built like a guy who would dominate in pickup basketball.
As he’s walking out he stops at the salt and peppering station, turns, sees my Purdue polo and says “nice shirt” before heading out.
I approach the register, at which point Marcia leans forwards and says in a semi-whispered tone, “HE PLAYED IN THE NFL.”
I tell her that I am a sports writer and that I would be interested in interviewing him and composing a story, if she would be willing to put me in contact. She was happy to do so, and a week later, Adams and I were sitting down over lunch as I inquired about his family, his faith, and his football career.
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Adams’ father is originally from Boston, and Kyle grew up outside of the city in Wellesley until the age of eight when the family moved out to Austin for his dad’s new job in sales for a software company. He brought with him a deep love for football, instilled by his grandfather’s fanhood of the game. “I loved football already,” Adams reflects. “My grandpa was a huge football guy, huge Pats fan. So I grew up just really loving football and loving the NFL. Texas is a great place to come if you love football.”
Coming up, Adams had quite an intriguing and formidable trio of influencers in his life between his grandfather’s deep-rooted passion for the game, his father’s career as a marine, and his mother’s past as a star athlete. Kyle’s dad was a “disciplined, intense guy” as he put it, and inspired in him a desire to be excellent in whatever craft he chose. His mom was an All-Big Ten volleyball player at Purdue, and taught her son how to throw a football. He loved football as soon as he could possibly know what it was. It was always his favorite sport.
Adams was a big kid. He said that he was athletic and generally a pretty good football player from a young age, but not “All-World” by genetics alone. He had to work at it.
“When you’re young, you’re just having fun. But going to Westlake High School here in town, big-time football program, it got pretty intense. Even in middle school, ninth grade we started weight lifting, sprints, and stuff like that. Then once I got to varsity, my sophomore year, we started watching a little bit of film, the play-calling gets a little more nuanced.” Early in his high school career young Nick Foles was identified as a stud, and he was quickly elevated to starting quarterback as a sophomore, which Adams assures is a relatively rare and special honor. Adams speaks glowingly of Foles, describing him as a “good teammate who cared about other people,” and “a heck of a competitor.” Most surprising about his impression was that Foles was a phenomenal basketball player, and actually preferred basketball to football during high school. No matter what sport Foles was playing, Adams says that if there were one word to describe Foles it would be “clutch”.
“Pressure didn’t bother him. He always stepped up to the moment in high school. He could throw the ball really, really well and he had a competitive spirit. Nick was just one heck of a quarterback.”
Foles was one year behind Adams at Westlake, and as Foles was carving his way towards a scholarship offer from Michigan State, Adams was mounting a case for himself to play at a Power Five school. Adams estimated that among all the players on the Westlake varsity roster his senior year, nine or 10 ended up playing Division I. He said that at all of the team’s games, and even at spring practices there were college scouts in attendance.
Adams said that he was a two-star recruit when he was coming up at Westlake, and that he and his dad had to do some proactive outreach to secure an offer from a big-time college program. The pair assembled a compilation of Kyle’s standout plays from his junior season and sent the tape out to a list of 25 or 30 schools that were likely fits for his academic and athletic aspirations – including Texas A&M, Duke, as well as a number of Ivy League programs. Adams described it as “light-to-medium recruiting.”
Adams elected to attend the alma mater of both his mother and father, signing on with Purdue between his junior and senior high school seasons.
His highlight reel was limited partially in scope because Adams was second on the depth chart behind another Division I wide receiver/tight end as a junior, before he shifted out to wide receiver, and Adams inherited the starting role as Westlake’s tight end to begin his senior campaign. The sixth game of his high school senior season, Adams suffered a back injury to his vertebrae and had to sit out the remainder of the year – saddling him with the lowest recruit rating of the Boilermakers’ 2006 class.
Adams blossomed as his collegiate career matured, eventually becoming one of just two members from his recruiting class to play in the NFL. Things go up a level in terms of the commitment required to be elite, and many of those who were top-shelf prospects out of high school do not develop and go on to play even a single regular-season snap in the NFL. “In college, I mean, the film sessions, the weight lifting, the year-round training, it just gets to a whole new level. Like football’s all you do.”
I asked Adams if there was a moment, a single play or game during his career up through his time at Purdue, when he knew that he could make it to the NFL if he stayed the course. He cites how during his first two seasons at Purdue he backed up Dustin Keller, who went on to be drafted in the first round by the Jets in 2008 and have multiple 50-catch, five-touchdown years for Gang Green. Those two years at Purdue Adams played in a rotational role and caught 14 passes for 167 yards and three touchdowns, but after Keller moved on to New York, Adams inherited the starting role and racked up a combined 65 receptions for 493 yards during his junior and senior seasons.
He notes that it was in the midst of that second-half resurgence that he saw himself graded by many NFL analysts to be a fourth-to-seventh-round talent.
Adams believes that it was his senior campaign that was his best on film and in total contribution, though the stats don’t necessarily reflect as such. The Boilermakers sputtered to a 4-8 finish, down to their fifth-string quarterback by season’s end. Adams had also evolved more into a pass-catching role between his junior and senior seasons, which docked his value because NFL scouts were envisioning him as a pass and run-blocking tight end at the next level.
He played in the East-West Shrine Game following the 2010 season, but did not receive an invite to the NFL Combine, which Adams says may have been an indicator that he would not ultimately be drafted.
Instead of the Combine, Adams participated in Purdue’s Pro Day, where he ran a 4.7-second 40-yard dash – around the time he expected to clock in at, but not considered blazing speed for an NFL tight end.
Adams, who did not get selected in the 2011 NFL Draft, was put in a unique situation given that the NFLPA and National Football League team owners were in the midst of a lockout while renegotiating terms on the Collective Bargaining Agreement. This meant that teams were barred from contacting undrafted free agents for the time being, leaving Adams in the dark as to where he might end up. He likened himself to “Rudy” from the 1993 sports movie classic, working as a maintenance guy to earn a little money while his football future lay in the balance. “I remember in July, I'm clearing out a clogged toilet,” Adams said. “I’m thinking, man, it’s been like three or four months, nobody’s been able to give me a call.”
Purdue let Adams get some hours on the maintenance team on a part-time basis, putting in four or five hours of work per day before going to lift and train for five or so more hours in anticipation of a potential training camp bid.
“By the time late July rolled around I’m saying to myself, what’s going to happen here? Is someone going to pick me up? But eventually the lockout broke.”
It was July 25th of 2011 that the lockout came to an end -- the four and a half month stalemate resolved. Adams and his agent had developed an idea of who was interested in picking him up as an undrafted free agent, with the Bears and the Bengals ultimately rising to the top with the two highest signing bonus offers to acquire his services. Adams got a call from his agent and the two agreed that Chicago would prove to be the better fit.
It was time for Adams to make the trek from West Lafayette, Indiana to Bourbonnais, Illinois in an attempt to earn a roster spot with the Bears. “I remember showing up to training camp in my 2001 Honda Accord with nothing but a duffle bag, and I was like, ‘Here goes nothing.’”
His first year Adams made the team as an undrafted rookie, and was active in every game that he wasn’t injured. It was an uphill battle to a roster spot that year especially for a player in his position, devoid of OTAs and forced to attend a proverbial crash course on the offensive playbook.
“The NFL, it’s just the highest level. Tons of film sessions, tons of really nuanced playbooks, understanding pass-blocking schemes, route-running schemes, understanding the offense, how to read defenses. The mental aspect of the NFL is what separates people.” Adams shifted offensive coordinators four times throughout his career, with former Rams and NFC Champion head coach Mike Martz as his first OC in Chicago and Lovie Smith his first NFL head coach.
“We just needed to learn that playbook as quick as we could in training camp, and coach Martz is notorious for having a pretty complicated offense, so it helped that I was a little more of a cerebral player.”
Adams tore his hamstring in Week 9 of that debut 2011 campaign, but was able to rehabilitate and make the Bears’ active roster each of the subsequent two seasons.
The exhibition slate of the preseason is a high-pressure situation in its own right for someone on the roster bubble. But the weight and intensity of a preseason contest pales in comparison to the regular season. I asked Adams what he felt like when he was sitting in the locker room, counting down the minutes to his first ever NFL game against the Falcons.
“Preseason you’re playing against backups like yourself. The starters, you know, they’ll work in but they’re not going crazy. Soon as the regular season switches on, it’s like, a whole different world.”
“It was September 11th of 2011, so it was the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. And we strung this big American flag across the field, there were a bunch of military service members around,” Adams recalls. “They did a fly over, it was a noon game at Soldier Field, just a gorgeous time of year in Chicago… it was one of the coolest moments of my life, and the butterflies were off the charts. In that game I remember missing a couple of tackles on Eric Weems (coming off an NFC Pro Bowl nod as a kick and punt returner), guy was a stud.”
An NFL player’s debut obviously seems like the highest of high leverage games. Even with each and every one of the 16 regular-season games being so crucial in pursuit of a playoff bid, some undoubtedly carry more weight than others. Adams never played for a team that reached the playoffs in his three professional seasons, but he says the biggest game he ever played in was in 2012, when the 7-2 Bears went into Candlestick Park for a Monday night showdown against the Jim Harbaugh-led 49ers -- a team destined for a Super-Bowl run that would end in defeat at the hands of the Ravens. A second-year quarterback by the name of Colin Kaepernick got his first career NFL start for San Francisco, and completed nearly 70 percent of his pass attempts for 243 yards and two touchdowns as the 49ers skated past the Bears by a 32-7 tally.
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Drawing from his career as a professional athlete, Adams has established habits and mindsets that he carries into his post-football life. “So I think very applicable in terms of work, just the ability to deal with pressure. The ability to compete, and then the ability to work hard, because you have to work so hard in the NFL to get any kind of edge, and it’s so hard to win a game.”
“One thing also that football did for me is it made me realize that I am not fully in control. Like, I can’t control everything around me, it’s kind of a chaotic game. And so my Christian faith was a big part of my dealing with that pressure. Dealing with that stress in the NFL. And I think just turning to God to deal with that was big for me. I think that produced a calmness in me that I try to carry with me into life.”
Adams says that growing up his family would go to church somewhat, but they weren’t necessarily week-in, week-out attendees. He came to his faith while in college, where a Purdue chaplain mentored and helped Adams grow in his pursuit. That development led to Adams taking a mission trip to Haiti, where he first truly came to grips with all of the luxuries he had been afforded in life to that point. “You know, I’m from the suburbs of Texas in a really nice area. And then you go down to Haiti and see that kids are starving, there are people with all sorts of terrible diseases. It just made me realize like, ‘Hey there’s more to life than just being comfortable and focusing on myself. There’s people suffering out here.’ That was a big wakeup call for me.”
One organization Adams is involved with is the Ephraim Orphan Project, which cares for orphaned Haitian children who are victims of poverty and neglect, with the vision of providing “each child (with) wellness of body, mind and spirit -- regardless of the abuse suffered, illness contracted, or abandonment endured.” Adams used to go to a mission complex in Haiti once a year on mission trips through Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “We went down before the earthquakes. It happened in 2010, and what people don’t realize is 220,000 people died. Just think about that, that amount of tragedy is just, mind blowing. And after that there was a woman, a Haitian woman, who we worked with at the mission complex -- a couple of people who were very involved in Haiti rallied around her and then they asked me to join and said, hey, ‘while you’re in the NFL, you can use your platform to help market what we’re doing.’”
“I was on the board for about four years, and then I just rotated off my board service as a kind of best practice. I’m no longer involved day-to-day, but I’m still in contact with them and still think very highly of them.”
Watching an NFL game you will often see players congregating at midfield for prayer after the battle is over. I asked Adams if he believes that a higher concentration of football players believe in God than do average Americans. “Probably. I’ve actually thought about that,” Kyle says. “So you and me go about our days, you know, I’m sure work is hard. You might have a fight with who you’re dating or married to. Or like, your car breaks down, hard stuff happens. But if your car breaks down there’s a repair center. There’s a lot of good jobs out there. It’s just, your day is challenging, but you can make it through most days feeling like you’re in control.”
Adams expanded, “But I believe we don’t even control our next breath, right? I don’t know what’s going to happen to my family, what’s going to happen when I drive home. I think it will be fine, but I don’t know that. You don’t necessarily have to come face-to-face with that everyday.”
“In the NFL, people get cut every week. And you’re literally competing against the best players in the world. So I failed in the NFL more than I succeeded, like truly. It just makes you realize, ‘Hey, I’m not in control of this.’ It’s super stressful. And then when you’re playing in an NFL game -- you know, 70,000 people in the stands, millions of people watching at home. Your family is watching, your friends are watching. There’s a lot of pressure, and you’ve got to have some way to deal with that.”
“Because what happens if you do fail? For me, my faith was a way to say, ‘Hey, whether I fail or succeed, whether we win or lose, whether I get cut or continue playing, I am loved by God and that gives me worth. I believe there’s someone looking out for me.”
Everybody deals with stress and life’s unanswered questions their own way, but there seems to exist an elevated percentage of athletes and military service members who consider themselves people of faith. “Maybe it’s because (in those situations) you’re confronted with things that are beyond your control, or beyond your abilities,” Adams poses.
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In an August podcast I passed on a saying to my co-producer Dwight -- “You know what they say, the game of football is undefeated in that it has a 100 percent retirement rate.” He being the sharp guy that he is responds, “What career would not have a 100 percent retirement rate? Positions in which you die?”
Fair enough. But, of course, a career in the NFL is an inherently finite period of time. Given the physical nature of the sport as well as the annual infusion of a new crop of talented 20-to 23-year-olds primed to usurp the starting roles their childhood heroes once held, the average span of an NFL career currently stands at 3.3 years, per a 2019 study by Statista.
When Adams entered the league his full intention was to enjoy an enduring NFL career of a decade-plus, but joining Chicago as an undrafted free agent instilled in him more of a day-by-day, incrementally-focused mindset. First, of course, to secure a spot on the 53-man roster. Then to play in a regular-season game, log his first career catch, play for a full active season, and get himself eligible for retirement benefits. His dream job, ultimately, was to be a starting tight end and play as long as he could.
Chicago posted records of 8-8 and 10-6 in Adams’ two full seasons with the franchise between 2011 and 2012, but he was cut after playing in the Bears’ 2013 season opener against the Bengals. From there, Adams spent a couple of weeks evaluating his options and attending workout sessions with a number of teams. Tampa Bay was the first to extend an offer to the young tight end, after tracking Adams’ progress through his first few seasons as a pro and remaining optimistic on the trajectory of his career.
The vibes were conceivably very different with the Buccaneers compared to the Bears, a franchise with a founding date in the mid 1970’s compared to the roaring 20’s, and a home stadium in West Florida rather than the Windy City. The feel in Chicago was that of a more established operation, with a storied history and high expectations year-after-year -- despite the roster construction sometimes not meriting them. Besides the obvious, Tampa Bay was fostering a far younger roster at the time, coming off a 7-9 campaign and owning a 3-8 record when Adams suited up for his first game as a Buccaneer in Week 14 of the 2013 season.
It was that year Adams became saddled with mounting injuries, as his back and hip really began bothering him and inhibiting his ability to make as much of an on-field impact. Given that Adams was never overly-athletic by NFL standards, the slight decline to his agility and mobility put him below a certain threshold of utility that previously had enabled him to make a roster.
By the end of his third season Adams had become qualified for retirement, while his back injury had become somewhat debilitating and his level of play admittedly declined. He knew at that point that his professional playing career could be on its last legs, but Adams’ goal was to spend the offseason rehabilitating and putting himself in a place where he would be pain-free and capable of making an impact once again. “That never happened, and so by the summer of 2014 I began thinking more about my post-NFL career,” Adams recalls. The transition was made more seamless in nature based on the fact that Adams was preparing to get married -- the beginning of a new chapter in his life.
Kyle loves the family aspect of his life and that very much fills the void of leaving behind the game he so much fell in love with. ”I got one kid, my wife and I hope to have more. We got one little nugget running around now. He’s a little under two, yeah, he’s fun but he’s high energy.”
He did not yet have kids while he was playing in the NFL, but played with guys who can testify to that unique genre of work/life balance. “I think the challenge with guys in the NFL… you know, the offseason is great. You can spend a bunch of time with your family,” Adams says. “The season, you’re working six days a week. You might only be at the facility from, call it 7 AM to 6 PM, which is a full day. But then you get home, spend time with your family but you kind of have to watch film, there’s stuff you have to do to take care of your body. So it’s just the season is a real grind and it consumes your whole life… and again I’m just speaking from other peoples’ experiences… you’re traveling a lot, the season puts a lot of strain on your family. Guys navigate it well and they love their families well, but that’s a challenging time.”
Adams’ agent received a few calls during the summer of 2014, gauging his client’s interest in a potential training camp invite. Kyle wanted to keep playing, but reports that he was continually besieged by back pain at the time, and was just not healthy enough to give it another run. “Hard decision, but it was the right one with my health,” Adams says.” I toyed with the idea of trying to make a comeback in the subsequent years, but never pursued it seriously.”
“I think it was a good decision. I was beat up and in a lot of pain, and I had done well in school and thought I could have a good career post-NFL. I took the time to really rehab my body, and I now live a very functional life from a physical standpoint -- playing with my kid, working out, playing pickup basketball.”
Oh, so he does play pickup basketball! And more importantly, he plays fantasy football. His roster? “I’m in two leagues. In one, Christian McCaffrey is crushing it for me. Devonta Freeman has been up and down, I’ve got Aaron Rodgers, a couple good wide receivers, I’ve got Ertz at tight end. In my other league, I’ve got Deshaun Watson, Julio Jones, a couple other stud guys.”