EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The Giants will trim their 89-man roster to 53 by Saturday’s 4 p.m. deadline. The 36 players who get the dreaded call to turn in their playbooks over the next 48 hours will leave East Rutherford with memories, a few thousand dollars and gear. Lots and lots of gear.
NFL teams furnish players with a seemingly unlimited supply of shorts, t-shirts, sweats, hoodies and jackets. That’s great … until a player leaves the team. Then, in most cases, the gear becomes a physical reminder of the team that told the player he wasn’t good enough.
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“That’s bad memories,” said defensive tackle Robert Thomas, who was cut by five teams in less than three years before finding a home with the Giants in 2016. “I just leave it and keep going. I literally leave it. I don’t even take it with me. Especially when it’s short stints, you just leave it like, ‘All right, appreciate you guys,’ and keep going.”
The Giants are cornerback B.W. Webb’s seventh stop in a six-year career. He is similarly unsentimental.
“They don’t want me, so I don’t want it,” Webb said. “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Some players take the opposite approach. Cornerback Leonard Johnson has become an equipment hoarder after playing for five teams during his seven-year NFL career. His garage is stocked with gear from his various stops.
“I have game pants, I have practice pants, I have helmets, I have hats – I keep it all,” Johnson said. “Not even joking, I literally probably have over 1,000 pairs of gloves. I literally have over 400 pairs of cleats.”
Running back Eddie Lacy held a garage sale to unload all of his Packers gear when he signed with the Seahawks last offseason after four years in Green Bay. The sale drew an enormous crowd with all of the proceeds going to charity. Some Giants players have conducted similar giveaways on a smaller scale.
“I try to have social media auctions for all the fans that connect with me on Twitter and Instagram,” said safety Michael Thomas, who spent the past five seasons with the Dolphins. “After games, I try to auction off gear. I try to auction off my game-worn jerseys just to have a connection with the fans. It’s a bunch, so you can’t keep it all.”
The proceeds from Thomas’ auctions go to his foundation. Wide receiver Hunter Sharp, who spent parts of the past two seasons in Denver, is happy to ship his Broncos gloves to fans for free.
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“Old Broncos fans will hit me up on Instagram and I’ll send (the gloves) out to them because I’m not going to do anything with them,” Sharp said. “Some people pay the shipping and handling, so if all I have to do is drop them off, then that’s fine.”
Left tackle Nate Solder was picked by the Patriots in the first round of the 2011 draft. He spent his first seven seasons in New England before signing a four-year, $62 million contract with the Giants in March.
Solder didn’t realize just how much Patriots gear he had collected until it was time to move to New Jersey this spring.
“That was a problem I didn’t even think about until I had to move,” Solder said. “You accumulate it over seven years. Every year I would give away a little bit of stuff and I would keep the best stuff. Even at that point, you still have a ton. I don’t how many carloads of clothes when you’re cleaning out a house.”
Solder gave some gear to friends he made while in New England. But finding people who could wear clothes from a 6-foot-8, 320-pound offensive lineman proved to be a challenge.
“I would give it to my neighbors and friends, but who’s 3 or 4 XL?” Solder said. “They can’t wear that.”
Solder donated clothing to Lynn Ministries, which serves the homeless in the Foxboro, Massachusetts, area. He also dropped off gear in clothing donation bins in parking lots.
Of course, Solder didn’t part with everything from his time in New England.
“The Super Bowl stuff and that sort of stuff, I just keep,” said Solder, who won two Super Bowl rings with the Patriots.
Family members are the primary beneficiaries of the old gear, but there’s a catch.
“I told them I don’t want to see it,” Michael Thomas said. “It’s out of sight, out of mind. But they can wear it as much as they want.”
For the gear that is kept, most players have it stored in boxes in the back of a closet. While it won’t be worn now, they know there will come a time when they’ll be happy they saved the mementos from their NFL journeys.
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“If I have kids one day, there are stories behind that,” said wide receiver Kalif Raymond, who played for the Broncos and Jets before joining the Giants last season. “It’s an experience. Good, bad or indifferent, I’m playing in the NFL. My son or daughter or nephew or niece may pick something up and say, ‘You have a Jets shirt?’ I’ll say, ‘Oh, I played there.’ Or, ‘You have a Denver Broncos shirt?’ I’ll say, ‘I started there my rookie year.’ You can’t give away those experiences. It’s just some paraphernalia just so I always have that memory locked in.”
(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
