For a decade he made his living crashing into NFL linebackers, which has left him at age 46 with aching joints, a surgically repaired neck and a firm understanding of the Faustian bargain players strike with the game.
That bargain being this: Yeah, it can be fun to hit people — really fun — but there is a price to be paid for that, later in life.
“I always say I don’t think your body was meant to play football, honestly, just because of the wear and tear you put on it,” Dan Kreider said Wednesday night, before he was among those honored with the Chryst Award at the Lancaster County Sports Hall of Fame banquet at the Eden Resort & Suites.
“But at the same time,” he added, “I’m very fortunate to have had the opportunities I had.”
After a standout two-way career at Manheim Central in the mid-1990s, Kreider weathered repeated ankle, knee and neck injuries as a fullback at the University of New Hampshire. Then he fashioned that 10-year pro career – the first eight of those with Pittsburgh, the others with the Rams and Cardinals – despite going undrafted in 2000.
He came to be known as the “Bus Driver” because his blocking opened avenues for the Steelers’ bulky backfield bellcow, Jerome “The Bus” Bettis, and indeed Bettis enjoyed two 1,000-yard seasons while playing alongside Kreider. Less remembered is the fact that Kreider helped Willie Parker exceed that yardage total on three occasions. One of those seasons – 2005 – ended with Pittsburgh beating Seattle in the Super Bowl.
Kreider carried the ball only 32 times himself in his career, which ended in 2009; just three of those carries came over his last four seasons. He also caught 64 balls.
There was, in short, no mystery as to why he was out there.
“I think there’s a handful of times where when you hit a guy, you hit him just right and the technique and everything comes together,” he said. “I think I had a few of those in my career.”
He remembers in particular a shot on no less a player than Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis in the 2001 playoffs, and another a few years later against Eagles ‘backer Jeremiah Trotter. Certainly there were a few others, too – enough that somebody took the time to compile a Kreider highlight video on YouTube.
Asked what it’s like to make one’s living colliding with men such as these, Kreider was succinct: “It’s painful.”
And, he added, “You get a good hit, and they get a good hit. It’s just a back-and-forth battle for four quarters.”
Again, it takes a toll.
“I would say sometimes the hits that don’t look like they hurt, do hurt,” he said, “and the ones that looked like they should hurt don’t hurt. It just depends on whose energy is greater at that moment. Yeah, I’m thankful that I was prepared to do it and was given the opportunity, but you look back and say, ‘I’m not sure how I did it.’”
He also wonders if maybe he hung on a year too long, since he suffered a neck injury his final season, while playing for Arizona. He has undergone no fewer than three surgical procedures to repair that damage, and suffers from chronic pain elsewhere in his body as well.
“You wake up and the joint pain’s always there, especially with the neck and the back stuff,” he said. “It’s been kind of a struggle, but it’s better than it was. So I’m kind of thankful for that.”
Understand that he’s also cognizant of the dangers of CTE. As he once told LNP’s Jeff Young, “It’s kind of like, ‘Am I walking around with a ticking time bomb in my brain that I don’t know about?’ ”
But his health concerns lie elsewhere at present, and they are alleviated only slightly by the fact that he has dropped 45 pounds since his playing days. Where he once carried 255 pounds on his 5-11 frame, he now weighs 210. As he put it, “muscles just tend to atrophy” when you’re not doing the sort of weight work required of NFL players.
“I don’t know how else to say it other than you just kind of shrink,” he said.
He looks good, to the point that most people hanging out in the Eden’s lobby before Wednesday’s banquet probably wouldn’t have identified him as a former NFL player. But his body reminds him all the time.
“You always hope that losing the weight will make the joints feel better,” he said. “The problem is, the damage has sort of been done.”
A married father of four, he now helps run his family’s property management and construction firm, while doing some volunteer coaching under another former Central player, John Brubaker, at Penn Manor. And when he looks at his old employer, he sees that there has been a great deal of downsizing, especially when it comes to the position he once filled. A scan of rosters Friday on NFL.com showed that just nine fullbacks are currently active throughout the league, with three others on the injured-reserve list.
That’s right – nine fullbacks among 32 teams. And just two of them, San Francisco’s Kyle Jusczcyk and Baltimore’s Patrick Ricard, could be said to have significant roles within their team’s offenses. Most clubs rely heavily on sets involving multiple receivers and/or tight ends, and on the rare occasions when they do line up in an old-school I-formation they have a tight end masquerade as a fullback.
Kreider had heard, as far back as when he played, that the fullback was a vanishing breed, so he’s not surprised at the way things have played out. Hell, his own college coach, Chip Kelly, was among those who contributed to the changing face of offense.
“I think things evolve, things change, probably for the better,” Kreider said. “I don’t know that I feel … whatever about it.”
What he does know is that he fully embraced the role he was once asked to play.
“The unique thing about the NFL is you are trained to just think about the next play, the next game,” he said. “You’re never thinking and looking back. You’re never thinking you can’t do it. You’re just constantly being told we have to do this. You’re doing the next play. And you’re constantly just striving ahead, striving ahead. And it’s not really ‘til you get out of it that you sit back and realize what you put your body through.”
So yeah, he fully understands the deal he struck with the sport. Way back when, growing up on the family farm – first a vegetable farm in Manheim Township, then a dairy farm in Mount Joy – he always wanted to play, always relished the idea of being able to put a lick on someone within the confines of a game. And if it turns out there is a toll to be paid for doing so (as there most certainly is), the one-time Bus Driver can certainly accept that. He chose it willingly, relished it fully. And now he’s just going to keep rolling down the road.