By Sam Ekstrom
Tight end Brandon Bostick has a lot to think about now that the Vikings have converged on Winter Park for their first set of organized team activities (OTAs). He’s adjusting to a new environment in Minnesota. He’s learning a complex new offense under a coordinator with an eye for tight ends. And he’s battling a plethora of purple-clad peers for a spot on Minnesota’s Week 1 roster.
But compared to what Bostick endured in the offseason, beating out a handful of talented tight ends and winning a roster spot – probably equivalent to a 30-1 longshot beating American Pharaoh next weekend – should be a piece of cake.
On Jan. 18, Bostick lined up for a basic onside kick recovery play that, if executed correctly – about an 85 percent likelihood – Bostick’s Green Bay Packers would be headed to Super Bowl XLIX. What ensued became the defining moment of an NFC Championship Game collapse that even made Vikings fans blush. Instead of blocking Seattle’s gunner and allowing the ball to flutter into the sure hands of Jordy Nelson, Bostick leapt for the ball, missed it and allowed the pigskin to deflect off his helmet into the awaiting arms of Seattle’s Chris Matthews.
“I became the singular scapegoat,” Bostick wrote in a first-person account of the debacle on The MMQB. “Social media didn’t help, either. I don’t know how many death threats I received, but there have been a lot.”
Having been villainized in football-crazy Green Bay, an unforgiving status as Brett Favre can attest, Bostick was released on Feb. 16 after three seasons where he made nine catches, scored two touchdowns and played primarily on special teams. He was picked up two days later by Minnesota, becoming the latest in a long line of ex-Packers signed by their rival to the west, joining former teammates Dujuan Harris and Charles Johnson on this year’s roster.
In an interview on Wednesday, Bostick expressed his appreciation for a “fresh start” in Minnesota. “I got here and everybody welcomed me with open arms,” Bostick told Cold Omaha. “Nobody even asked me about anything, so it’s been good since I got here.”
Bostick has not shied away from addressing his costly gaffe, as evidenced by The MMQB feature. The infamous play burned – and likely still burns – at him, particularly as a special teams player who had very few chances to impact the Jan. 18 game in a different way. It eats away at Bostick, who knows how legacies can hinge on a single blunder. The nightmarish bobble is also Bostick’s fuel; it pushes him to redefine his career for the better. “I know 2015 won’t be easy,” Bostick wrote on The MMQB. “I will still be haunted by that onside kick, and I will still be remembered as the guy who blew a trip to the Super Bowl. That’s just the way it is. Even though I will think about it every day, I hope one day I will be remembered for something else.”
Bostick believes his raw and honest account of the event and its aftermath on The MMQB helped ease the rampant criticism. “I think a lot of people felt where I was coming from; to put themselves in my shoes,” he told Cold Omaha. Bostick was also helped through the ordeal by another scapegoat from a conference championship game, Earnest Byner, who reached out to Bostick after the NFC Championship loss. The former Cleveland Browns running back coughed up the football inside the 5-yard line to cost his 1988 team a chance at the Super Bowl and prolong a city-wide championship drought that is still alive to this day. “He still reaches out to me and shoots me a text message every now and then,” said Bostick of Byner, now 52 years old.
Bostick, the former Division II player from Newberry, has chosen not to hold a grudge against the team that released him. Frankly, a player in Bostick’s position can’t afford to burn bridges. “My time [with Green Bay] was good,” said Bostick. “Unfortunately it didn’t end the way I wanted to. There’s no hard feelings. I’m just trying to be the best I can be here. Of course when I see all the guys, I’ll go extra hard, but there’s no hard feelings from there.”
It’s heartening to see that Bostick has chosen to move on following his pantheon-level mistake, but his road back won’t be easy. He’s competing with Chase Ford, Rhett Ellison and rookie MyCole Pruitt for the second and third tight end spots, and he began OTAs taking third-team reps with presumed third-string quarterback Mike Kafka. It may require an untimely injury to one of last year’s stalwarts for Bostick to slip in the door.
His story is a sad one. A young, undrafted football player who perspired and persisted to make a mark on one of the NFL’s signature franchises, only to see his effort dissolve into thin air as a kittywampus football from the foot of Steven Hauschka glanced off the front of his yellow helmet. In an instant, Brandon Bostick – and his pro football career – changed.
“It reminds me that I’m human,” Bostick told Cold Omaha. “Everybody thinks NFL, pro football players, can’t make no mistakes, but I’m human. Every time you have to make the best of an opportunity because it could be taken away from you just like it was with me.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.”