Redskins Review Burgers, Talk Mohawks
Posted by Matt Terl on November 13, 2009 – 3:58 pm
There’s not a lot of free time for the players on road trips. Travel days start with meetings, a mock game, and treatment. After that excitement comes the bus-plane-bus-hotel combo. For a few of the players, there are production meetings with the TV broadcast crew immediately upon arrival at the hotel. And in the evening, there are more meetings and a curfew. Obviously there’s no free time on gameday.
This means that for all intents and purposes, there are maybe four hours per road trip that the players have to use as they please: from 4:00ish when they check into the hotel through 8:00ish when meetings start back up.
With that limited free time in Atlanta, Casey Rabach got a group of guys together to go get burgers at The Vortex Bar & Grill, which he had seen on Man vs. Food. The Vortex is a sort of hipster/biker bar, the kind of place where the menu offers burgers with grilled cheese sandwiches in place of buns and has 1,200 words of rules designed to warn off the easily offended.
In most circumstances, burger orders probably don’t reveal that much about the psyche of the person ordering them, but after hearing the details of this trip, I found myself wondering.
Rabach, for example, had the Elvis Burger: a burger with, as the menu says, “a King-sized helpin’ of smooth peanut butter, bacon, and fried bananas.” (That’s it pictured above.) This is a bizarre assortment of toppings for a burger, but it somehow suits Rabach. “It was good,” he said. “It was really good, actually. [Heck], I’ll try Cooley’s [peanut butter, ham and mustard] sandwich now. Why the [heck] not? I’ve had peanut butter and beef and bacon together.”
Then there was punter Hunter Smith, who — presumably since he wasn’t going to be playing on Sunday — had something called the Coronary Bypass burger, a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg and a side of mayo. “It certainly did taste like something that would give you a coronary bypass,” Smith said. “I think it greased up my injury pretty good, though, but we’re not gonna know for certain yet. I would absolutely eat it again.”
Todd Collins ordered that American classic, the Patty Melt. (Basically a grilled cheese sandwich with grilled onions and a burger on it, if you’re unfamiliar.)
“It was pretty good,” Collins said, shrugging his Todd Collins-y shrug. “I mean, it was just a patty melt. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it, but then, I didn’t order anything particularly special. I used to have patty melts that I really liked at this diner in Kansas City on Friday afternoons after practice, so when I went to this place, I went back to that.”
Collins’ choice represented the careful move of a cagey veteran. “I didn’t go crazy,” he explained, “like having grilled cheese as buns sandwiching a cheeseburger with peanut butter and bananas — I mean, I don’t see how that could contribute to the game. But I had a patty melt, a salad, no fries, and a good walk back to the hotel. So that wasn’t bad.”
(I did ask Rabach if his Elvis Burger had helped his game. He nodded and said “yes” in an ominous tone of voice, but wouldn’t elaborate.)
Todd Yoder’s mohawk was still new on Saturday, and he hadn’t yet caught his toe-tapping touchdown in the back of the Georgia Dome end zone. The burger that fueled that catch, though? The Cowboy Burger, ironically enough, a burger — Yoder opted for the bison patty in place of beef — with ham, jack cheese, and barbecue sauce.
“I mean, obviously, the Cowboy Burger fits my personality,” Yoder said, “as I’m kind of a cowboy. I opted for the bison Cowboy Burger, though, to make it a little bit more authentic western.”
“Howdy,” Collins interjected from his seat nearby.
“Howdy, Todd,” Yoder said. “The burger was good, but the biggest contributor to my gameplay and touchdown was obviously the new Mohawk I was sporting, which just gave it whole new look. I think I’m gonna have to bring it back for another week and just see where it goes.”
Collins eyed Yoder’s mohawk skeptically. “The last time I did that had to be pregame sophomore year in high school,” Collins said. “I didn’t have the bleached blonde, but I had the Mohawk style with my number — 10 — shaved into both sides.”
“The question,” Yoder said, “is how did you play?”
Collins was enthused. “Oh, great! I still have the picture.”
“See?” Yoder said. “That’s what it is! It’s the Mohawk!”
And long-snapper Ethan Albright, one of the steadiest guys on the team? A guy who has by all accounts never thrown back a bad snap in his fifteen NFL seasons? What would his selection of burgers say about him?
“Y’know,” he said amiably, “I had the plain ol’ classic cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, American cheese. And it was excellent. I know what I like; I didn’t want the Elvis burger. I didn’t want the cardiovascular, or whatever the other burgers were. I like cheeseburgers, and it was a good cheeseburger.”
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