Thank You, Football

I’m not very good at goodbyes. I don’t like getting sentimental. So I’ll cheat here and start with a funny story instead. 

Out of everybody I told that I’m retiring from the NFL, I think the one guy who was the most bummed out was my son Charlie. He’s our oldest. He’s about to turn 6, and at that age, kids have absolutely no filter. It’s beautiful. 

I came home a few weeks ago, and I told him, “You know, bud, Dad’s not going to be playing football anymore.”

He said, “Yeah, I know. Football starts next year. It’s done for the summer.” 

“No buddy, I’m done forever.” 

“Well what are you gonna do?” 

“What do you mean?”

“For your job.”

(I’m gonna play golf, kid! Daddy’s tired!) 

“I…… I’ll figure it out. Plus, I get to spend a lot more time with you guys.” 

“Mmmm.” 

“Isn’t that cool?”

“Mmmmmmmmm.”

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

“But… what about CeeDee?” 

“What about him, buddy?”

“Am I still gonna get to see him???”

Hahaha. That was his main concern. He’s obsessed with CeeDee. That’s his guy. 

I said, “Don’t worry, buddy. I’ll still take you to see him. I think they’ll still let me in the building.” 

“Mmmm. OK then.”

I felt so bad, because he’s at that age where everything about the NFL is so awesome to him. But when Dad is an O-lineman, there’s a limit to how cool you can be to a 5-year-old, you know? Me and my buddies on the line, we’re kind of cool in a barbarian kind of way, I guess. But every time I bring him to the facility and he’s playing with a muddy kneebrace or whatever, I can see his head whipping around looking for CeeDee to walk in. One of the highlights of my life just as a dad was being able to bring Charlie onto the field at AT&T to give CeeDee and Dak a pound before the game. 

One of the big reasons I kept pushing through all the injuries the last few years was to give him those little moments when he can actually remember it. 

As tough as last season was, Charlie kind of got me through it in a way, because every time I came home, he had some hilarious new analysis waiting for me. I think he gets it from my mom. It’s in his DNA. He’s more brutal than Stephen A. I remember one day, Dak was already out, and we were so banged up, and we had a game where we just got smoked. It might have been Detroit. I get home, and I’m fuming. I get into the kitchen, and I’m thinking: There’s nothing on earth that can make me feel better right now.

I see Charlie, and I’m going through the motions, trying to be a dad. 

“Hey buddy. You watch the game?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Tough one, huh?”

“Mmm yeah. You guys are not very good.” 

“We’re trying, buddy.” 

“Well, maybe you should try really hard next time.” 

“OK, buddy. Was I OK though?” 

“No. You let too many guys push you around. They were getting Cooper.” 

“Sorry, buddy.” 

“You know who was really gweat today? CeeDee.”

“OK, buddy. Thank you for your analysis.”

“CeeDee …. he’s always just gweat.” 

“OK. Bath time.” 

Charlie did the impossible. He put a smile on my face every single week. When I think back on this final season, it will be bittersweet, because the ride didn’t end the way I wanted it to. 

But it was still a damn good ride. 

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It’s funny that I’m the one writing a letter here. From the time I was a freshman in high school all the way up until my final NFL game, my father was the one writing me a letter. I don’t know how the tradition started, but one day he wrote me a note on a piece of looseleaf paper, folded it up, and handed it to me at the breakfast table before school. 

“Just a little something. Read it before the game,” he said. 

I read the letter at my locker before the game, and I went out and played like I had my whole family pushing behind me for the hard yards. 

I must have played more than 200 football games since then. My dad has never missed a letter. And my parents have barely missed a game. The entire way, it was an us thing. When I think back on what this game has meant to me, the wins and losses all kind of blend together. I had a couple pancakes I’ll remember very fondly. But if you asked me right now to think of what the word football means to me, I’d probably think of something totally random. Just a little moment of camaraderie and brotherhood, in the middle of a grueling training camp or spring ball routine where all you can think about when you’re pushing the sled is how good it’s going to be when you’re out on a boat with your buddies and 100 miles away from your O-line coach.

Something like me and my best buddies from Notre Dame out on the lake at night with a cooler of beers and a bluetooth speaker, singing along to “Colder Weather.” Just getting increasingly louder and more confident until we think we are the Zac Brown Band and people are yelling to us from the shore to please shut it down, for the love of God. 

Hey, if you get it, you get it. Not everybody can be a ramblin’ man who ain’t never gonna change.

To me, that’s football. Me, Tyler Eifert, Chris Watt, Dan Fox and Tommy Rees, out at the lake, talking about how the season is going to be, and everything we’re going to accomplish. I feel like God put those guys in my life for a reason. We all lived together in a house for four years at Notre Dame, and it was exactly what you probably imagine. Walls of protein tubs and dirty laundry, basically. It was shameful. I remember trying to smuggle my T-shirts and underwear into the Notre Dame Football laundry loop. It got so bad that I called my mom, like, “Hey, I miss you, Mom. When are you coming up to visit?” 

It was too suspicious. 

“I’m not doing your laundry again. You’re a big boy.” 

“Mom! I just miss you!” 

“Uh-huh……”

We were animals. I can’t lie. We had this routine called “Trash Night.” It wasn’t a weekly thing. It was more like a monthly thing. See, we had an empty garage in our house, and that basically turned into our trash closet. Fill up a hefty bag to max capacity, tie it off, launch it into the garage, and slam the door. Problem solved. If we can’t see it, we can’t smell it. 

Inevitably, someone’s girlfriend would complain, and that’s when it was officially Trash Night. We threw on some dark hoodies, waited until it was late, and piled like 35 Hefty bags into the back of my old Silverado. We crept onto campus and found some dumpsters behind one of the dorms and did our little CIA disposal operation. To the Notre Dame Facilities Management staff: I apologize. I can’t imagine opening one of those dumpsters on a Monday morning and seeing 750 Whey Protein tubs and empty milk cartons. 

What can I say? Animals. 

But those times are so priceless. So much of football is just pure suffering. Especially as a lineman. You spend 95% of your day getting beat up, or pushing a sled, or getting your ass handed to you by your O-line coach. The thing that gets you through it – the thing that really makes you love it – are all the times that you spend laughing (or bitching!) with your buddies when it’s over. 

Those guys were put in my life for a reason, and it led me to meeting my wife, who has been such a huge part of this journey. One day, Tyler Eifert invited us all up to his family’s cottage on Lake Gage. His whole extended family was there, and I started kind of talking to his sister, Morgan. We really hit it off, and I don’t know if he was just in denial, or he didn’t see it, but the next morning, it was like a scene out of Wedding Crashers or something….

Everyone’s down at breakfast, and his uncle, who’s a big character, is smiling from ear to ear, and he’s like, “How about Zack and Morgannnnn. Wowwwww.” 

Tyler is beside himself. He’s like, “Zack? No.” 

“Yes.” 

“No.

“Yes.”

I came down the stairs with bedhead, looking for some cereal, and Tyler’s entire extended family is looking at me in disbelief, and Tyler’s uncle is laughing his ass off. He was trolling Tyler so bad. And Tyler, he’s just like….

“No. This is not happening. Shut it down right now.” 

It was an uphill battle, that’s for sure. 

Morgan was going to Purdue, and whenever she would come visit us at the house, Tyler would be like, “Morgan, you’re staying in my room. Zack, stay in your little goblin lair, dude. Don’t come out of the basement.” 

But we made it work. Eventually, Tyler saw how close we were, and he gave me his blessing. That’s why I say that football is about family to me, first and foremost. Even when I think of the highest highs at Notre Dame, like when we beat Stanford in overtime with “The Stand” in 2012, rushing the field with my teammates in the cold and the rain and the mud was a 10/10 feeling. But the 11/10 feeling was after we’d showered and changed and walked across campus to the family tailgate lot. Seeing my mom and dad and Morgan and all our friends and just reminiscing about the game in the pouring rain, you never forget those moments. You feel like you’re floating. That’s why you play the game. For that hot dog and a beer with your dad, talking about all the little moments from the game and just going, “Man….. that was awesome.” 

I’m so happy that I came back for my fifth year so that I could experience it all with my younger brother, Nick. He was our center that season, and it was such a surreal feeling getting to be in the huddle with him, and just looking across at him with his classic goofy grin on his face, thinking, “God help us. Same as when we were kids. Not a care in the world.” 

It was just awesome. We even moved him into the Dude House, and he was like our little pledge. (I know you loved taking out that trash, buddy.) 

If I didn’t come back for that fifth year, who knows where I would’ve ended up in the draft. Probably not in Dallas. So I have to give a special thanks for Harry Hiestand, because he’s probably had as big of an impact on my football life as anyone. When he came in as our O-line coach, he changed everything for me. I’ve never met anyone with more conviction. He lived by one rule: No bulls***. All ball. 

A lot of coaches can say that, but he lived it. He was like something out of an old NFL Films video – like he was born in the Lombardi Era. 

I remember one time one of our guys fell asleep in the meeting room – and honestly, I don’t even think he was really asleep. He was just kind of dozing off. Coach Hiestands face just went blank. Followed up by an explicit rant. The next morning, Coach had taped to his door the Greyhound Bus Schedule. 

It was a timetable for the city where the dude was from.

To this day, we have a group text with all of the O-linemen from that time, and it’s in honor of Coach Hiestand. We have his picture as the group icon, and we just talk about the legendary ass-rippings that he would give us. Any time we see somebody make a mistake during a random game on TV, the Hiestand impressions and the memes start flying around. 

Without him, I don’t end up in Dallas. He was the one who convinced me to come back, and for that, I owe him everything. Because Dallas is the place I was supposed to be. It was fate, for sure. 

I don’t know if the fans saw it that way, on draft night! Hahaha. I recall some boos when my name got announced, I’m not gonna lie. I saw a couple shocked faces in the crowd. I was rewatching the clip the other day, and one lady looked like she just saw her dog get kidnapped. And I get it, man. A guard is not exactly the sexiest pick in the first round. 

It’s funny because I definitely didn’t think I was going to Dallas, either. 

I thought I might be going to the Giants at 12. They ended up picking some guy named Odell Beckham Jr. Decent pick. 

Then I thought I might be going to the Rams at 13. They took some guy named Aaron Donald. OK pick. 

When Dallas was up at 16, I got a call from a 214 area code, and I was honestly kind of shocked. 

It was Jerry Jones. And I cannot even remember what he said. I was the Spongebob meme. Everything went blurry and was swirling around. Then Tony Romo called me, and he said Tony Romo stuff. Super cool. “Can’t wait to have you here.” 

When you are a Dallas Cowboy, it just hits different. That’s the God’s honest truth. You see that star next to your picture on ESPN, and you kind of have to pinch yourself. That night, I was on top of the world, but it’s funny because I remember getting on a plane to actually go down to Dallas, and I was filled with more anxiety than I’ve ever been in my life. I almost didn’t want to get on the flight. I don’t know what came over me, but I was like, “I’m really a Cowboy. This is crazy. I’m a kid from Indiana, man….. I can’t be teammates with Romo and Dez and Witten and Tyron Smith. This is insane.” 

But I have to give so much credit to my teammates, because from the day I got down there, my rookie season was honestly the most fun I have ever had playing football. Maybe it was because I was just so young and dumb and full of juice, but I could not have had a better time.

Priceless times. Our whole O-line room was like a repeat of college. A lot of the guys were young enough to not have kids yet, so every Monday after we came in for the film session, we’d head out as a group to a bar to have some beers and food and just shoot the s***. The NFL is stressful, but it’s also the only profession in the world where they pay you millions of dollars to go to work in sweatpants and a hoodie and hang out with your buddies, so no matter how banged up you get, you can never really complain. 

Those days were awesome, and all those guys were phenomenal to me as a rookie, but I have to give a special shoutout to my guy Travis Frederick for taking me under his wing and sharing so much wisdom with me about the NFL and about life. Big Trav and Doug Free made it so easy for me to come in and focus on being an ass-kicker like them and nothing else. 

That first season was magic. We went 12-4, and I got to block for DeMarco Murray who finished the season with – 2,200 all-purpose and 13 touchdowns. We were having the time of our lives in the trenches with him running behind us. The only thing that ruined it was the way that it ended in Green Bay. 

With the Dez Catch. 

And yes, I’ll always call it the Dez Catch, and not The Reversal or whatever, because any kid who has ever played football in a backyard can tell you that Dez Caught it. 

Still, what a fun season…. What a great group of guys for me to learn from. 

I’ll never forget I made the Pro Bowl the next season, and that was one of the last ones they ever did in Hawaii. As fate would have it, my buddy Tyler made it, too. How crazy is that? Two animals from the Dude House at the Pro Bowl. We’re chilling at the pool one day with a bunch of other guys, and who comes strutting over but Jon Gruden. He was doing his the ESPN thing back then, so he immediately just started roasting everybody. And these are Pro Bowlers, but he was still doing his whole routine. He’s wearing the Gruden visor and everything. 

He’s telling Tyler, ‘Eifert! Christ almighty. This guy. Hold on to the ball, Eifert! Fundamentals!” 

Then he gets to me and he’s like, “Martin.” 

He’s kind of searching for something. 

Then he goes, “You know your problem, Martin? You hold too much, kid. Cut the penalties out and maybe you can be somebody in this league.” 

Ever since that day in the pool 10 years ago, I think I had three official holding penalties. 

So thank you, Jon. I never forgot that. Because of you, I can proudly say that I finished my career with more Pro Bowls than holding penalties. I think I got you 9–7, Coach. I owe you a beer. (And I owe a couple beers to all the refs who definitely missed a few over the years.) 

The beautiful thing about the trenches is that you never do it alone. I’d have been nothing without the guys next to me, and all the O-line coaches who stayed in my ear 24/7 (even when I was dreaming.) I’d put some of their one-liners here, but kids are probably reading. They are a special breed. 

There were so many people who allowed me to grow and thrive in Dallas, but at the end of the day, it’s all meaningless without our fans. I’ve been blessed not to just play here, but to live most of my adult life here. For the last 11 years, I’ve shown up to autograph signings and I’ve seen the same people – fathers with their sons who were just my son’s age when they first started coming, and now they’re almost going off to college. One guy, a true diehard, comes every year, pops off his prosthetic leg, and has me sign it. I think I’ve signed that same leg literally 11 times, and it never got old. 

You all allowed me to be a part of your lives for over a decade, and I appreciate that so much. 

I could go on for days about all the people who helped me in Dallas – it’s honestly a list so long that I’ll try to save it for my press conference, because we’d be here all day. But this letter, like my father’s letters from when I was a kid, is about more than just football. So the people who I really want to thank are the men and women at Medical City Plano Hospital. Because my family owes you everything.

Last year, right after the season ended, my wife was due with our third child. Our son Charlie and our daughter Remi were easy deliveries, so we didn’t expect any issues. We were just excited. We went to the hospital, and everything seemed totally normal. But as soon as our son was born, it felt like the energy was different than the other times. A nurse was holding him and she went and got another nurse, and then four more nurses came into the room. 

They weren’t really telling us anything, but we could sense something was really wrong. 

Then they rushed him out of the room. They explained they had to take him for some tests and that we’d see him soon. Soon turned into 10 days in the NICU. Tests revealed that he was born HIE, which means that he wasn’t getting enough oxygen and blood in the womb. They actually had to put our little guy in an induced coma for three days. That was the scariest time of our lives. Just absolutely brutal, especially trying to explain to our two other kids what was going on, and that everything was going to be OK. 

Thankfully, doctors and nurses at the hospital were unbelievable, and the support from my teammates and the whole Dallas community was above and beyond. I could list 100 names but Big Trav, Tyrone Crawford, Sean Lee, Jeff Heath, Doug Free, Ron Leary. Zeke, CeeDee, Terence Steele, Tyler Biadasz, and last but not least, Dak Prescott…. just thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know I’ve told you this before, Dak, but you’re the kind of person and leader I aspire to be like in my own life. I’ll miss having your back out there, buddy. But our bond goes well beyond football. 

The fact is, we could not have gotten through that dark time without the brotherhood of football. Without the city of Dallas. Without the love from all of you. 

After 10 very scary days, my son pulled through, and today he is the strongest and feistiest 1-year-old kid you could ever ask for. 

His name is Hudson Gage Martin. 

Gage, after the lake where my wife and I met, and where I spent some of the best days of my life out on the water with my football buddies. 

Unfortunately, Hudson won’t remember anything about his dad’s former career. I couldn’t quite hang on long enough. YouTube will have to do. But we do have an amazing picture of him, happy and healthy, hanging out down on the field before a Cowboys game at AT&T, wearing his little extra-small number 70 jersey. To him, it was probably all a blur. 

He did have a ball just rolling around in the grass, though. 

Getting his hands dirty, having the time of his life. 

You and me both, buddy. 

You and me both. 

Thanks for the memories, 

– Zack