NFL cut day Best and worst day for rookies on the

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Silence is golden -- at least it is this week in the NFL as teams around the league first trim their rosters to the mandated 75 men by Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET before making the deeper cuts necessary to get down to the final 53 by 6 p.m. ET Saturday.
It's cut week in the NFL and it's absolutely brutal.
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By now you've probably heard or seen the math. There are 2,880 elite athletes in NFL training camps. By the end of the day Tuesday, 480 of them will either get the dreaded telephone call asking them to bring their playbook to the facility, or else have the "turk" -- also known as the bearer of bad news -- grab them in the locker room or hallway to inform them that the head coach needs to speak to them.
The same routine goes for 700-plus players on Saturday, though a small percentage of them will continue to earn a living making $6,000 per week on the practice squad, which isn't bad work if you can find it.
It's the worst week of the year in the NFL and most NFL fans have a pretty good grasp of how the cutdown process goes thanks to shows like HBO's "Hard Knocks" that go into great detail about that harsh reality of life in the NFL.
I know it all too well. I've been there. Too many times, in fact. Four in all if you are counting and, yes, I am. I wish I could say you get used to it but actually,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], each cut went a little bit deeper.
But what about the other side of the equation? What about the players who make the team? How about a positive, uplifting story during this dismal time of year?
It's a tale that often isn't told because it is strangely uneventful. You know what happens when your lifelong dream comes true and you earn a coveted spot on an NFL roster?
Nothing. Not a gosh darn thing.
I didn't know it when it happened to me as a rookie in 2001 on Marty Schottenheimer's lone Washington Redskins squad, and I am pretty sure that none of the other rookies that year knew it either. In fact, my guess is that more than 90 percent of the rookies still on NFL rosters right now are unaware that they will get no call or confirmation on Saturday letting them know that they made the team. They just won't hear anything.
How crazy is it that the best moment of your life comes from not receiving any news from anyone?
I still remember it like it was yesterday. Coach Schottenheimer told all of us to be in our hotel rooms from 8 a.m. to noon on cut day. I assumed that meant that they would give us a call either way. I was wrong.
I literally just sat there watching both the TV and my clock until my phone rang at 10:30. I was nervous, but not overly so because at this point I was so naive that I thought maybe they were calling to give me good news.
"Justin,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]?" came a voice on the other end.
"No, this is Ross," I replied.
"Ross, this is Tag Ribary from the Redskins. Is Justin Skaggs in your room?"
"No."
"Do you know what room he is in?"
"No."
"OK, thanks,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]," said Ribary, and I could sense he was done with the call.
"Wait!" I said. "What about me? Do you have anything to say to me?"
"I don't think we'll be calling you today, Ross."
"Does that mean I made the team?"
"I gotta get in touch with Justin Skaggs." Click.
Talk about frustrating. At that point it had been two and a half hours on pins and needles and I just wanted some clarity. I thought what he'd said was a good sign, but then again, he'd said, "I don't think" and wouldn't confirm I made the team. So, I wasn't about to count the proverbial chickens before they hatched. I later learned Ribary was trying to alert Skaggs they were going to release him with the intent to bring him back on the practice squad.
It was finally noon, but I waited a couple of minutes more just to be sure. I still didn't know if I had made the team. I called a teammate, fellow Pennsylvania native Kenny Watson, a running back out of Penn State. He was none too pleased. He thought I was someone from the Redskins calling to cut him and he said I nearly gave him a heart attack.
"Neither one of us got a call by noon," I said. "I think that means we made the team."
"Really,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]?" replied Kenny. "You sure?"
"No. Let me call my agent."
I then phoned my agent, Joe Linta, and told him that other than the call for Skaggs, I hadn't heard from the Redskins during the allotted time. He said that's a good sign, but they could still be putting me on injured reserve (I had a broken hand at the time) or something and to hold tight and he would call me back.
My phone rang five minutes later.
"Congratulations, you will be making over $12,000 a week for the next 17 weeks to play football for the Washington Redskins," Linta proclaimed.
"I made the team?" I just wanted to be sure.
"You made the team!"
Finally! Confirmation from somebody who would know that all of my hard work over the years had paid off. It's kind of funny now looking back on it as a somewhat hardened professional, but the money was totally immaterial to me at that point. All I could think about was the journey and the accomplishment. Typing this 12 years later, my eyes immediately fill up.
Hey, it's an involuntary reaction, what can I tell ya?
We had to report back by the next evening so I immediately hopped in my 1990 Jeep Cherokee and headed back to my parents' house in Pennsylvania to get more clothes. All I had with me at that point were the basics for training camp because I wasn't exactly counting on the fact I'd be staying for a while.
Looking back on it now, that drive was one of the top five, three-hour periods of my life, along with the birth of my two young daughters and of course my wedding day. I called my parents, my girlfriend who is now my wife, my friends, my high school coach, my college offensive line coach, and basically anybody else I could think of who had ever helped me get to that point. I derived so much joy from the excitement they all had in sharing in my accomplishment. It was special.
My subsequent seven years in the NFL weren't as eventful, as I knew then that no news from the team was good news and the newness of making an NFL roster wore off a little bit each year as the goals shifted toward playing time and starting positions and new contracts and things of that sort. As is often the case in life, it was never quite like the first time.
Keep all this in mind as the hundreds of names scroll across the bottom of your television screen over the next five days. Yes,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], a lot of dreams will unfortunately die hard,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but there are a number that will come true as well thanks to the wonderful sound of complete and utter silence.