PA Season Ticket Holder
06-08-2003, 08:42 PM
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- Tom Petty was right. The waiting really is the hardest part.
For every free agent signee like Jake Plummer or Daryl Gardener, men who are wooed and subsequently snapped up as soon as NFL bylaws allow, there are others like safety Lee Flowers. They sit and wait as weeks turn into months, as the opening league-wide mayhem of early March that resembles the start of the Kentucky Derby settles into memory as attention is focused elsewhere, particularly on the draft.
• BRONCOS TV: DAY 1 OF JUNE CAMP
Flowers waited through that. And through the parade of mini-camps around the league in early May, as well. By the time he finally visited the Broncos facility on May 22, the team was nearly two weeks removed from its mini-camp and already more than halfway into its quarterback camp.
When he signed with the team on June 3, one day before the team's six-session voluntary June camp commenced, it brought a resolution to 12 weeks of waiting and wondering. He knew his NFL career would continue somewhere -- but not knowing the specifics of that somewhere proved excruciatingly difficult.
"Oh, Lord, I wish you were a fly on the wall in my house. My wife was so glad I got out of the house," he said, recalling the tension caused by three months of limbo. "It was very frustrating. I saw a lot of guys that went before me. You listen to your agent and you read the reports in the media and you try to compare your talent to that guy, but it is what it is."
But he's been passed over before. In the 1995 NFL Draft, his name wasn't called until the fifth round, in spite of a dominating college career at Georgia Tech -- but one that was overshadowed by a difficult senior season that saw a coaching change and a 1-10 finish -- the worst for Tech in its 24 years in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
"I got drafted in the fifth round, so I've been fighting my whole life," he said. "I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me because I'm definitely not feeling sorry for myself. It is what it is."
Now there are just two things left to do as he begins preparing for next
http://www.denverbroncos.com/front-features3/index.php3?clmn=/front-features3/060503_1.prm&go=shownews
For every free agent signee like Jake Plummer or Daryl Gardener, men who are wooed and subsequently snapped up as soon as NFL bylaws allow, there are others like safety Lee Flowers. They sit and wait as weeks turn into months, as the opening league-wide mayhem of early March that resembles the start of the Kentucky Derby settles into memory as attention is focused elsewhere, particularly on the draft.
• BRONCOS TV: DAY 1 OF JUNE CAMP
Flowers waited through that. And through the parade of mini-camps around the league in early May, as well. By the time he finally visited the Broncos facility on May 22, the team was nearly two weeks removed from its mini-camp and already more than halfway into its quarterback camp.
When he signed with the team on June 3, one day before the team's six-session voluntary June camp commenced, it brought a resolution to 12 weeks of waiting and wondering. He knew his NFL career would continue somewhere -- but not knowing the specifics of that somewhere proved excruciatingly difficult.
"Oh, Lord, I wish you were a fly on the wall in my house. My wife was so glad I got out of the house," he said, recalling the tension caused by three months of limbo. "It was very frustrating. I saw a lot of guys that went before me. You listen to your agent and you read the reports in the media and you try to compare your talent to that guy, but it is what it is."
But he's been passed over before. In the 1995 NFL Draft, his name wasn't called until the fifth round, in spite of a dominating college career at Georgia Tech -- but one that was overshadowed by a difficult senior season that saw a coaching change and a 1-10 finish -- the worst for Tech in its 24 years in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
"I got drafted in the fifth round, so I've been fighting my whole life," he said. "I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me because I'm definitely not feeling sorry for myself. It is what it is."
Now there are just two things left to do as he begins preparing for next
http://www.denverbroncos.com/front-features3/index.php3?clmn=/front-features3/060503_1.prm&go=shownews