Big Shot | ✓

bonus 02 | late night with the devils

The record for total touchdowns (that's a combined passing and rushing) by a rookie in the NFL was 35, set by Cam Newton in 2011.

It was the quarterback Reid had drawn the most comparisons to throughout his transition from college to the NFL. Cam Newton was also the last person to ever earn the Triple Crown of college football, meaning he'd won the Heisman, won the National Championship, and been selected first overall in the NFL draft in the same year - at least until Reid had this year.

I remember at the beginning of the season last year, Reid telling me how much he resented comparisons. But I think he was finally starting to take the comparison in stride - it was now mid-November, and Reid was currently on pace to break Cam's records. He was currently the front runner for Offensive Rookie of the Year, and he even had some actual MVP odds in his favor. Rookies never won MVP, but with Reid, everything was on the table. It was kind of incredible. Not that I was at all surprised. A bust he was decidedly not.

He'd become a phenomenon in New York (despite the fact that the New York Jets don't actually play in New York - they play in New Jersey), and everyone wanted a piece of him. We'd been given courtside seats at Knicks games, he was about to have a Gatorade ad on a big digital billboard in Times Square, and his home Jets jersey was currently the third highest-selling jersey in the NFL, just behind Patrick fucking Mahomes and Joe fucking Burrow.

Of course, the biggest piece of him belonged to me (do with that what you will).

We had a gorgeous three-bedroom condo in Hoboken with a view of the New York City skyline across the Hudson River, and Reid traded in his decidedly unfit for city living Ford Raptor for a devastatingly sexy black BMW M3 that he could speed and maneuver through the narrow Hoboken streets to the Jets practice facility in suburban New Jersey.

We were happy. Like, honest to god, well and truly happy. We were binging White Collar at night in the king-sized bed we shared. We were talking about getting a dog. We slow danced in the kitchen when we cooked dinner together.

I thought about where we were at this time last year, fighting with ourselves and each other because even though we wanted each other, we were tricked into thinking a future with each other would never work. Well, it did. It fucking worked.

And me? I was a contracted media editor for ESPN College Gameday. I put together longform video segments that were shown during College Gameday - something I could do from home, so I could "enjoy my boyfriend's dynamic rookie season in the NFL." In my boss Mariah Roe's words.

When I wasn't doing that, I'd become Reid's de facto manager. Sure, he had an agent (Max - we loved him), but he was for money stuff and legal stuff. But fun stuff? That was all me.

Fun stuff included Reid's debut on late night television. Maddox Madsen was one of the hottest new late night hosts in the city, and so it stood to reason that he wanted the hottest upcoming athlete in the city. He'd sent a big black Suburban to pick us up from our condo on Thursday night after Reid had come home from practice and showered, and we participated in a few bedroom extracurriculars before we got dressed and ready to leave.

Reid kept his gaze out the window almost the entire ride out of Hoboken, and thankfully I had some emails to address so I could give him a bit of quiet time before I started poking at him.

"I haven't seen you this nervous in a long time," I finally said to Reid as we rolled through the never ending stream of traffic in the heart of the city. "You wanna talk about it?"

"What?" Reid had finally ripped his gaze from the window and looked over at me, his chocolate eyes illuminated in bright flashes of light from Times Square. "I'm not nervous."