WHEN I was thirteen， I told my mama I would make a mil-<br > lion dollars playing football by the lime I was twenty-one.<br > I was off by a year.<br > I don t know why 1 said that to her. I was probably think-<br > ing of the million bueks--I was a runt of a kid then and<br > made my spending money selling bootleg candy at school.<br > But I believe I was born for football the way some people are<br > barn to be engineers or musicians.<br > In the NFL， being born for football doesn t guarantee<br > you a thing. You ve got to survive from game to game， from<br > year to year. Teams don t put out hospital lists every week for<br > nothing. The name of the game， no matter how much they<br > pay you， is survival.<br > Last season opened with a loss in Dallas and ended with<br > a win in the Super Bowl. You never plan on storybook sea-<br > sons. You just play the game. The game is something so up-<br > speed and uptempo you can t begin to describe it--it s in<br > your body and you know it in the same way you know hun-<br > ger or pain. Your life is on the line out there and you look<br > forward to risking it rather than running away. You are<br > crazy--and you can never explain why. I get so worked up<br > before a game that I can barely keep my food down. 1 know<br > what s out there. When the day comes that I let up and go out<br >