By Skip Foreman | News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.
With their NFL careers at an end, Markus Pierce-Brewster and Marshall McFadden were in search of something else to do with their lives.
As it turns out, their Sundays are still booked, and for much of the year. And while neither man is close to a football field, they’re both plenty close to the action.
Pierce-Brewster and McFadden are jackmen for Kaulig Racing, based in Welcome, North Carolina. Simply put, when their drivers hit pit road, it’s up to them to get the car up off the asphalt in a hurry so the tire changers can swap out either two or four tires and get the car back out onto the track as soon as possible. McFadden works for AJ Allmendinger, while Pierce-Brewster works with the Ty Dillon.
While they still look like they could suit up and be ready on game day, no question, they say they absolutely love what they do now, and that it’s not entirely different from what they used to do.
“Never thought I would in a million years, but I’ve come to love this sport,” McFadden said. “I’ve got pride in it. Just me and my other four crew members take pride in being the No. 1 team on pit road. That will get any athlete or competitor up.”
McFadden, 38, was a linebacker at South Carolina State, and despite a season-ending injury, he made the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 53-man roster in 2012. He would eventually play single seasons for Oakland and the St. Louis Rams. Injuries began to pile up, but he counts the blessing of being able to play in the NFL.
“Once that was done and I was looking to my future, this kind of fell in my lap,” he said. “So, just taking advantage of it, jumped out of one pro sport, then jumped in another one.”
Born in Lamar, South Carolina, McFadden grew up in the shadow of Darlington Raceway, although he had never been to a race there. He knew nothing about stock car racing. But he was invited to a race and went down a new career path.
Ultimately, a friend who worked for Chip Ganassi Racing—and knew that McFadden was looking for something new in his life—put the change in motion. It didn’t hurt that McFadden played in the NFL.
“And he thought because of my character, my build and my athleticism, that this would work out perfect for me,” McFadden said. “He invited me out, and I was shocked because I seen a lot of athletic guys. ... It was everything I wanted to see. ... I just took advantage of the situation.”
Another thing that attracted McFadden was just how similar pit crew life was to playing pro football.
“The locker room vibes, because that’s what it gave me,” he said. “You have 30 guys out there and the music blasting, but they’re competing, and they’re competing at a high level, and I want to get in the mix because I could see myself being a top-notch jackman or gas man or a carrier or a (tire) changer. I think that was the biggest thing for me because what I saw gave me the locker room vibe that I left from.”
Ask McFadden to describe his job as a jackman, and he reverts to his football days.
“I’m like the quarterback of the whole operation. It don’t run without me because it starts when I jack the car up, and it ends when I put the car down,” he said. “And I got to make sure everything is in the right order and everything is timed before that car can leave out the box. That’s my job.”
Another comparison to football for McFadden is that after a practice, he and his pit crew teammates will study film, go to meetings and sit for film sessions with the goal of correcting mistakes.
“Absolutely, it’s intense,” he said.
Pierce-Brewster, 33, grew up near San Diego and played college football at Syracuse and West Texas A&M. He spent his NFL years with the New Orleans Saints and the Tennessee Titans. He also spent time in the Canadian Football League, although he admits that didn’t quite work out.
His brother, Ernest, played football at Kansas State before he became a jack man for Stewart-Haas Racing. It was he who suggested that Markus consider a new career.
“And my whole time when I was trying to make football work, he kind of told me, ‘Hey, listen. If you’re interested, I’m in this sport,” Markus said.
Ernest arranged for his brother to travel to Charlotte Motor Speedway to see the Bank of America 600. Markus was hooked.
“I think what really got me into this was going to that first race,” Markus said. “So I was able to be right beside him the whole day, which is about a four- or five-hour day.
“I just remember, like, my heart was racing, like I just did something that was OK.”
Being a jackman requires the same regimen it takes to play football, Pierce-Brewster said.
“We’re all working out constantly, but in terms of, like, the actual choreography, the skill set to be a jackman, that takes months and months of practice and film reviews,” he said. “It’s almost exactly like football in terms of the way you have to watch film constantly to prepare.”
Admitting that his football mentality caused him to perform at break-neck speed, Pierce-Brewster soon determined he would have to slow his roll, so to speak, to be a successful jackman.
“It took some time to learn that there’s a different rhythm, there’s a different cadence to all this,” he said. “There’s a different skill set, so once I kind of learned to take my foot off the gas in certain aspects of the intensity, and learn more about making it sort of a finesse thing, I think that’s when things started to click and I started to get more proficient and started to excel.”
When it came to the Pit Crew Challenge, the two Kaulig teams finished out of the running for the $100,000 grand prize. McFadden’s team fell out of contention when it had trouble changing the right rear tire. Pierce-Brewster’s team had a better stop, but not good enough to get the championship.
The Michael McDowell pit crew took the grand prize, and while the team doesn’t have any NFL players, they have plenty of former college football players, including ex-Wake Forest tight end Brandon Chapman, who is a fueler.
Back near the car hauler, McFadden let out an audible “Ahhhhhh!” after the challenge to express his frustration over the lost chance. But the challenge is behind him and Pierce-Brewster. The Cup Series will be their focus for the rest of the year.
“A win is hard to come by in the sport, so getting up every weekend, going to compete not only to win on pit road but actually to win on the track,” McFadden said. “And that in itself just brings so much joy, not only for me and my team, but for the owners, for the drivers.”
And Pierce-Brewster plans to find as much joy as he can, for as long as he can. He thinks he’s good for the next four or five years — or more.
“But again, man, I’m sure that four or five years will come and I feel like I can get two or three more,” he said. “So I would just like to keep doing this until there’s a time where I no longer feel excited about it, which I find that hard to come by.”