Hammock Parties
05-06-2007, 06:04 AM
http://www.kansascity.com/180/story/96140.html
OE POSNANSKI
COMMENTARY
Priest still hard to catch
Is he coming back or not? Elusive Chiefs great says he doesn’t know.
WACO, Texas | Here in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame you see that the Lone Star State isn’t a state of cowboys. It’s a state of runners. Everywhere you look in this hall there’s another display featuring another amazing Texas running back who tore away from defenders or sprinted around them or blasted through them. There’s a picture of Earl Campbell, the Tyler Rose, who did a little bit of all three.
There’s a display for Eric Dickerson, a big back from a little Texas town called Sealy, who used to run so effortlessly that coaches would scream at him to run harder. “Coach, I’m going as fast as I can,” Dickerson would tell them. “If you don’t believe me, have someone try and catch me.”
There are photos of little Texas backs like Greg Pruitt and Joe Washington, who would spin away, and big Texas backs like Ricky Williams and Billy Sims, who would slam in helmet-first, and pass-catching backs like Thurman Thomas. There’s a whole display for the first great Texas runner, Doak Walker, who electrified the entire state, who would slip in and out, swerve back and forth, disappear and reappear like a ghost.
And speaking of running ghosts: One walks in.
“Are you coming back?” people ask the ghost.
“I don’t know,” Priest Holmes says. “I really don’t know.”
Priest Holmes just disappeared on that day 18 months ago when San Diego linebacker Shawne Merriman’s helmet cracked his own. That was weird. One day he was the best running back in the NFL and the singular sports star in Kansas City. The next day, he was gone. No retirement announcement. No public appearances. No explanation of the injury. No discussion of the future. No nothing. He was just gone.
Friends say they haven’t talked to Holmes in months. Teammates gripe that Priest changed his cell number more often than most people change socks. And Kansas City Chiefs fans have moved on to the next guy, Larry Johnson, who carried the ball more times in 2006 than any running back in the history of the league. That’s the NFL.
“If there’s one thing every athlete needs to know,” Holmes says, “it’s that you not only can be replaced. You will be replaced.”
Holmes laughs. He wears a white shirt with two metal crosses on it. He looks a bit thicker than he did in his prime, but not much thicker. His trainer, Bay Bay McClinton, says Holmes needs only two months of hard training to get back into football shape. But Holmes doesn’t show up to see Bay Bay. He just doesn’t know yet.
“I’ve come back from a lot of injuries,” Holmes says. “I came back from two ACLs. I came back from the hip injury. But this is different.”
Different. In training camp 2005, Holmes took a hit, and he felt his whole body tingle a bit. The sensation only lasted for a little while, but it was uncomfortable — Holmes felt as if he had lost his sense of touch. In the second game of that season, he took a hit in Oakland and felt it again — only more, a prickling sensation rang through his whole body. He felt like a giant funny bone. Again, he ignored it and played the rest of the game.
“To be honest with you,” he says now, “I didn’t even feel the hits after that.”
A few weeks later, Merriman clocked him while he was being held up. His next memory is looking up at his friend and teammate Tony Richardson. He was on the sideline.
“I’m ready to go back in,” Holmes remembers saying.
“Go in?” Richardson said. “You’ve been out for 30 minutes.”
Doctors told him to rest. Holmes went in frantic search of second opinions, third opinions. He says that while everyone was busy speculating how he felt, the truth was Holmes did not even know how he felt. Was he finished? Was he endangering his health if he came back? What would happen if he didn’t come back?
He went home to San Antonio. He didn’t go into hiding, not exactly. He showed up for all his sons’ pee-wee football games. He sat in the stands at some of the big Texas track meets — “I’ve always loved to be around track,” he says. For the first time since he was a child, he appeared at family functions. But after a while, he found that no matter where he went, people asked him the same question: “Are you coming back, Priest?”
He didn’t know the answer. So he disappeared.
“I’m a private guy,” he says. “If you give me the chance, I’ll slip right by you.”
•••
Priest Holmes has stopped going to San Antonio Spurs games, even though he loves his Spurs. In this case, it isn’t about privacy. It’s about adrenaline. Something riles up inside Holmes whenever he’s around the Spurs, the intensity, the athleticism, the crowds. He went to a preseason game last year, and by halftime he found himself out in the parking lot, running sprints between cars.
“I had to see if I still had that explosion,” he says.
Did you?
“Yes.”
Did you go back into the basketball game?
“No. It hurt too much.”
Holmes says he simply cannot be around professional sports right now, even basketball. The flame still burns hot inside him. And let’s be honest, it was that flame that made Priest Holmes a unique athlete. He isn’t big, and he isn’t fast, and he isn’t particularly strong. He was a backup in college. He was not drafted by any NFL team. Even when he signed a deal with Kansas City, he was viewed as a part-time guy, a third-down back.
Instead, he became a phenomenon. He led the NFL in rushing in 2001. In 2002, he was on pace to break just about every meaningful running back record going — most touchdowns, most yards from scrimmage, maybe even most rushing yards. He was pulled down awkwardly in the 14th game on his longest run of the season. He badly hurt his hip. Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson was so unsure of Holmes’ return, he drafted Larry Johnson.
The next year, 2003, Holmes scored 27 rushing touchdowns, an NFL record.
The next year, 2004, he was on pace to do even better, and he got hurt again. Then came 2005, the Merriman hit, the speculation, the questions, the uncertainty.
“I’d say 50 percent of my friends want me to come back,” Holmes says. “I had one friend say: ‘You know Priest, your whole life is about overcoming. Don’t run away from it. This is just another chance to overcome.’ And I think about that.
“And I’d say 50 percent of my friends say: ‘You don’t need to come back. You’ve proven everything already. You’re one of the great backs ever. You don’t need to risk getting seriously injured. You have nothing left to prove’ ”
There’s Priest Holmes in the middle — doubters to the right of him, cheerleaders to the left — and he doesn’t know what to do. Some days he’s plenty happy at home, away from the whirlpool and the ice bags, away from the linebackers who want to kill him. And other days he finds himself outside his home, measuring off 40 yards and timing himself.
“I still have a lot left in the tank,” he says. “How do you walk away when you’ve got a lot left in the tank?”
•••
Priest Holmes’ favorite doctor moment came earlier this year when one of his many doctors (he has doctors in Miami, Kansas City, San Antonio and California) looked him dead in the eye and told him it was time to quit or get off the pot. He didn’t use the word “quit,” of course, but the sentiment was the same. Holmes was amazed.
“I’m tired of seeing you in my office,” the doctor said. “It’s time for you to make a decision.”
“He’s right,” Holmes says. But what is the decision? Holmes says that doctors tell him there’s a slight risk if he comes back. How slight? It depends on which doctor you ask. One tells Holmes that another solid hit from the wrong angle could cause him to lose feeling for a long time, maybe even permanently. So that’s not slight at all. Another doctor tells him that now that he’s rested for 18 months, he is not in any danger.
A third says what Holmes suspects: Nobody really knows the risks for a neck and spinal injury like his.
“Look,” Holmes says, “football is a risk. It’s a dangerous game. Especially at the running back position. I understand that. It isn’t a matter of if you will get hit, but when and how hard. So I’ve played with risk before. I don’t have a problem with risk.
“But I’ve had former players — you know, they’re walking around with canes, they’re in great pain — and they’ve told me: ‘Priest, be sure.’ … It’s important. If I come back, I can’t look over my shoulder. I can’t worry about what might happen. I have to just go all out and run like I did when I was young. I have to be sure I can do that.”
While he talks, someone comes up and asks for his autograph. Holmes signs his name, his number (31) and then he writes “KC.”
“Are you coming back?” the man asks.
“I’m still making a decision,” Holmes says.
“I hope you do,” the man says. “I really enjoyed watching you run.”
As he walks away, Holmes smiles.
“I’ll bet he’s a fantasy football player,” Holmes says. “Those guys really want me to come back.”
•••
Priest Holmes is here in Waco because he’s being inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame. They have a lot of Halls of Fame in Texas — in this one building they have the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the High School Football Hall, the High School Basketball Hall and the Texas Tennis Hall. Down the road is the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. Not the baseball team. The real Texas Rangers.
Anyway, this is a special honor for Holmes because he knows how many great players — and especially great running backs — played high school football in Texas. His whole family joins him. He’s proud of how far he came; he began his football dreams while playing with his sister in the living room, with the two couches being end zones.
“The good thing,” he says, “is I have no regrets. I can’t look back and say, ‘Well, if I had just practiced a little harder.’ I practiced hard every day. I practiced like I played. I gave my all. That’s a good thing. No regrets.”
For a minute, he sounds like he’s going to retire. Then the conversation spins.
“How about Larry (Johnson) getting all those carries?” he asks. “He set the record, right for most carries, right? Well, he wanted the ball. To me, the best thing is for a team to have two running backs — one takes the pounding and the other scores the touchdowns. It looks like Larry can take the pounding. I’ll be happy to score the touchdowns.”
He smiles. He sounds like he’s coming back. The conversation spins again.
“People ask me about announcing,” he says. “I don’t know. I mean it sounds like fun. I think it would be fun. But I guess I don’t see myself that way yet. I still see myself lifting weights and being a football player.”
In the end, every great athlete goes through these feelings. They retire. They unretire. They hang on too long. They leave too soon. Priest Holmes is 33 years old, he hasn’t played football in a season and a half, he has an uncertain medical condition and plenty of money and an intense passion that will not quiet down. He also has an open door to the Kansas City Chiefs — Holmes says he will meet with Peterson in the next month.
“I would not be surprised by anything Priest Holmes does,” Peterson says. “He’s an amazing guy and an amazing football player. He hasn’t made any decisions, but I would not be surprised if he was playing in 2007.”
Most people would be very surprised. I ask Priest Holmes if he would be surprised to be playing in 2007. He shrugs. “Some people write me off,” he says. “But I’ve been written off all my life. Maybe this will just be the greatest comeback of all.
“I keep a close eye on the Chiefs, believe me. I’m really grateful that they have kept the door open for me. I’m so grateful. I love the Chiefs. I was watching close when they couldn’t run the ball in the playoff game. I think they needed to give Larry some help. I think I could have helped.”
One more time, it sounds like he’s coming back. But again it’s just a false alarm. It’s clear now: Priest Holmes honestly does not seem to know if he will come back.
So I ask him the question in a different way: Priest, if you never play another game, will you be able to walk away and feel satisfied with your career?
Holmes smiles and shakes his head.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “I’d really like at least one more game.”
OE POSNANSKI
COMMENTARY
Priest still hard to catch
Is he coming back or not? Elusive Chiefs great says he doesn’t know.
WACO, Texas | Here in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame you see that the Lone Star State isn’t a state of cowboys. It’s a state of runners. Everywhere you look in this hall there’s another display featuring another amazing Texas running back who tore away from defenders or sprinted around them or blasted through them. There’s a picture of Earl Campbell, the Tyler Rose, who did a little bit of all three.
There’s a display for Eric Dickerson, a big back from a little Texas town called Sealy, who used to run so effortlessly that coaches would scream at him to run harder. “Coach, I’m going as fast as I can,” Dickerson would tell them. “If you don’t believe me, have someone try and catch me.”
There are photos of little Texas backs like Greg Pruitt and Joe Washington, who would spin away, and big Texas backs like Ricky Williams and Billy Sims, who would slam in helmet-first, and pass-catching backs like Thurman Thomas. There’s a whole display for the first great Texas runner, Doak Walker, who electrified the entire state, who would slip in and out, swerve back and forth, disappear and reappear like a ghost.
And speaking of running ghosts: One walks in.
“Are you coming back?” people ask the ghost.
“I don’t know,” Priest Holmes says. “I really don’t know.”
Priest Holmes just disappeared on that day 18 months ago when San Diego linebacker Shawne Merriman’s helmet cracked his own. That was weird. One day he was the best running back in the NFL and the singular sports star in Kansas City. The next day, he was gone. No retirement announcement. No public appearances. No explanation of the injury. No discussion of the future. No nothing. He was just gone.
Friends say they haven’t talked to Holmes in months. Teammates gripe that Priest changed his cell number more often than most people change socks. And Kansas City Chiefs fans have moved on to the next guy, Larry Johnson, who carried the ball more times in 2006 than any running back in the history of the league. That’s the NFL.
“If there’s one thing every athlete needs to know,” Holmes says, “it’s that you not only can be replaced. You will be replaced.”
Holmes laughs. He wears a white shirt with two metal crosses on it. He looks a bit thicker than he did in his prime, but not much thicker. His trainer, Bay Bay McClinton, says Holmes needs only two months of hard training to get back into football shape. But Holmes doesn’t show up to see Bay Bay. He just doesn’t know yet.
“I’ve come back from a lot of injuries,” Holmes says. “I came back from two ACLs. I came back from the hip injury. But this is different.”
Different. In training camp 2005, Holmes took a hit, and he felt his whole body tingle a bit. The sensation only lasted for a little while, but it was uncomfortable — Holmes felt as if he had lost his sense of touch. In the second game of that season, he took a hit in Oakland and felt it again — only more, a prickling sensation rang through his whole body. He felt like a giant funny bone. Again, he ignored it and played the rest of the game.
“To be honest with you,” he says now, “I didn’t even feel the hits after that.”
A few weeks later, Merriman clocked him while he was being held up. His next memory is looking up at his friend and teammate Tony Richardson. He was on the sideline.
“I’m ready to go back in,” Holmes remembers saying.
“Go in?” Richardson said. “You’ve been out for 30 minutes.”
Doctors told him to rest. Holmes went in frantic search of second opinions, third opinions. He says that while everyone was busy speculating how he felt, the truth was Holmes did not even know how he felt. Was he finished? Was he endangering his health if he came back? What would happen if he didn’t come back?
He went home to San Antonio. He didn’t go into hiding, not exactly. He showed up for all his sons’ pee-wee football games. He sat in the stands at some of the big Texas track meets — “I’ve always loved to be around track,” he says. For the first time since he was a child, he appeared at family functions. But after a while, he found that no matter where he went, people asked him the same question: “Are you coming back, Priest?”
He didn’t know the answer. So he disappeared.
“I’m a private guy,” he says. “If you give me the chance, I’ll slip right by you.”
•••
Priest Holmes has stopped going to San Antonio Spurs games, even though he loves his Spurs. In this case, it isn’t about privacy. It’s about adrenaline. Something riles up inside Holmes whenever he’s around the Spurs, the intensity, the athleticism, the crowds. He went to a preseason game last year, and by halftime he found himself out in the parking lot, running sprints between cars.
“I had to see if I still had that explosion,” he says.
Did you?
“Yes.”
Did you go back into the basketball game?
“No. It hurt too much.”
Holmes says he simply cannot be around professional sports right now, even basketball. The flame still burns hot inside him. And let’s be honest, it was that flame that made Priest Holmes a unique athlete. He isn’t big, and he isn’t fast, and he isn’t particularly strong. He was a backup in college. He was not drafted by any NFL team. Even when he signed a deal with Kansas City, he was viewed as a part-time guy, a third-down back.
Instead, he became a phenomenon. He led the NFL in rushing in 2001. In 2002, he was on pace to break just about every meaningful running back record going — most touchdowns, most yards from scrimmage, maybe even most rushing yards. He was pulled down awkwardly in the 14th game on his longest run of the season. He badly hurt his hip. Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson was so unsure of Holmes’ return, he drafted Larry Johnson.
The next year, 2003, Holmes scored 27 rushing touchdowns, an NFL record.
The next year, 2004, he was on pace to do even better, and he got hurt again. Then came 2005, the Merriman hit, the speculation, the questions, the uncertainty.
“I’d say 50 percent of my friends want me to come back,” Holmes says. “I had one friend say: ‘You know Priest, your whole life is about overcoming. Don’t run away from it. This is just another chance to overcome.’ And I think about that.
“And I’d say 50 percent of my friends say: ‘You don’t need to come back. You’ve proven everything already. You’re one of the great backs ever. You don’t need to risk getting seriously injured. You have nothing left to prove’ ”
There’s Priest Holmes in the middle — doubters to the right of him, cheerleaders to the left — and he doesn’t know what to do. Some days he’s plenty happy at home, away from the whirlpool and the ice bags, away from the linebackers who want to kill him. And other days he finds himself outside his home, measuring off 40 yards and timing himself.
“I still have a lot left in the tank,” he says. “How do you walk away when you’ve got a lot left in the tank?”
•••
Priest Holmes’ favorite doctor moment came earlier this year when one of his many doctors (he has doctors in Miami, Kansas City, San Antonio and California) looked him dead in the eye and told him it was time to quit or get off the pot. He didn’t use the word “quit,” of course, but the sentiment was the same. Holmes was amazed.
“I’m tired of seeing you in my office,” the doctor said. “It’s time for you to make a decision.”
“He’s right,” Holmes says. But what is the decision? Holmes says that doctors tell him there’s a slight risk if he comes back. How slight? It depends on which doctor you ask. One tells Holmes that another solid hit from the wrong angle could cause him to lose feeling for a long time, maybe even permanently. So that’s not slight at all. Another doctor tells him that now that he’s rested for 18 months, he is not in any danger.
A third says what Holmes suspects: Nobody really knows the risks for a neck and spinal injury like his.
“Look,” Holmes says, “football is a risk. It’s a dangerous game. Especially at the running back position. I understand that. It isn’t a matter of if you will get hit, but when and how hard. So I’ve played with risk before. I don’t have a problem with risk.
“But I’ve had former players — you know, they’re walking around with canes, they’re in great pain — and they’ve told me: ‘Priest, be sure.’ … It’s important. If I come back, I can’t look over my shoulder. I can’t worry about what might happen. I have to just go all out and run like I did when I was young. I have to be sure I can do that.”
While he talks, someone comes up and asks for his autograph. Holmes signs his name, his number (31) and then he writes “KC.”
“Are you coming back?” the man asks.
“I’m still making a decision,” Holmes says.
“I hope you do,” the man says. “I really enjoyed watching you run.”
As he walks away, Holmes smiles.
“I’ll bet he’s a fantasy football player,” Holmes says. “Those guys really want me to come back.”
•••
Priest Holmes is here in Waco because he’s being inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame. They have a lot of Halls of Fame in Texas — in this one building they have the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, the High School Football Hall, the High School Basketball Hall and the Texas Tennis Hall. Down the road is the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame. Not the baseball team. The real Texas Rangers.
Anyway, this is a special honor for Holmes because he knows how many great players — and especially great running backs — played high school football in Texas. His whole family joins him. He’s proud of how far he came; he began his football dreams while playing with his sister in the living room, with the two couches being end zones.
“The good thing,” he says, “is I have no regrets. I can’t look back and say, ‘Well, if I had just practiced a little harder.’ I practiced hard every day. I practiced like I played. I gave my all. That’s a good thing. No regrets.”
For a minute, he sounds like he’s going to retire. Then the conversation spins.
“How about Larry (Johnson) getting all those carries?” he asks. “He set the record, right for most carries, right? Well, he wanted the ball. To me, the best thing is for a team to have two running backs — one takes the pounding and the other scores the touchdowns. It looks like Larry can take the pounding. I’ll be happy to score the touchdowns.”
He smiles. He sounds like he’s coming back. The conversation spins again.
“People ask me about announcing,” he says. “I don’t know. I mean it sounds like fun. I think it would be fun. But I guess I don’t see myself that way yet. I still see myself lifting weights and being a football player.”
In the end, every great athlete goes through these feelings. They retire. They unretire. They hang on too long. They leave too soon. Priest Holmes is 33 years old, he hasn’t played football in a season and a half, he has an uncertain medical condition and plenty of money and an intense passion that will not quiet down. He also has an open door to the Kansas City Chiefs — Holmes says he will meet with Peterson in the next month.
“I would not be surprised by anything Priest Holmes does,” Peterson says. “He’s an amazing guy and an amazing football player. He hasn’t made any decisions, but I would not be surprised if he was playing in 2007.”
Most people would be very surprised. I ask Priest Holmes if he would be surprised to be playing in 2007. He shrugs. “Some people write me off,” he says. “But I’ve been written off all my life. Maybe this will just be the greatest comeback of all.
“I keep a close eye on the Chiefs, believe me. I’m really grateful that they have kept the door open for me. I’m so grateful. I love the Chiefs. I was watching close when they couldn’t run the ball in the playoff game. I think they needed to give Larry some help. I think I could have helped.”
One more time, it sounds like he’s coming back. But again it’s just a false alarm. It’s clear now: Priest Holmes honestly does not seem to know if he will come back.
So I ask him the question in a different way: Priest, if you never play another game, will you be able to walk away and feel satisfied with your career?
Holmes smiles and shakes his head.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “I’d really like at least one more game.”