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We meet Friday afternoon at a coffee shop near his house, but Brett Basanez requires no caffeine. He's sufficiently wired.
The Carolina Panthers reduce their roster today from 75 to 53. Twenty-two players, enough for a starting offense and defense, turn in their equipment and playbook and exit Bank of America Stadium as civilians.
Worried you'll be one of them?
“Very,” says Basanez, until Friday Carolina's third-team quarterback. “I talked to a veteran, I won't tell you who. He said, ‘Brett, the only time I wasn't worried was the day after I signed my second contract.'
“I'm married,” says Basanez, 25. “I want to be able to provide. And I don't like uncertainty in my life.”
We talked before the Panthers traded late Friday afternoon for quarterback Josh McCown.
Arizona selected McCown with a third-round choice in 2002. Basanez was not drafted out of Northwestern in 2006. He impressed the Panthers anyway.
He was athletic and smart and quick to adjust, and by the end of his first training camp, he expected to be Carolina's third quarterback. He had never been cut in his life.
He had heard the Panthers would call between 7 and 7:30 a.m. if they were going to release him. He and his fiancée, (now wife) Kristin, woke up that Saturday morning three years ago and stared at the phone. It didn't ring at 7, 7:30 or even 7:45.
They were prepared to be ecstatic. Alas, at 8, Basanez's cell phone rang. He picked it up and saw the number he didn't want to see. OK, fine, but he had a secret weapon. His phone was broken. He couldn't hear the Panthers and they couldn't hear him.
“I hung up and kind of hoped they wouldn't call back,” Basanez says.
They did. Again, the phone failed. So he borrowed Kristin's and called Bryan Porter, then an assistant in football operations. Porter said coach John Fox and general manager Marty Hurney wanted to talk, and bring your playbook.
“Man,” Basanez said after he hung up. “Oh, man.”
Yet he wanted to go to the stadium, wanted to talk, wanted to find out what he had to do to prevent this from ever happening again. Although Fox and Hurney were complimentary, they told him they would keep only two quarterbacks.
Basanez grabbed two pairs of cleats, some shorts and personal items and left Bank of America Stadium.
Because he was not claimed by another team in the next 24 hours, Carolina was able to sign him to its practice squad. The Panthers promoted him to the active roster in December of '06.
He missed last season after tearing a ligament in his right wrist.
“This is what I want to do,” Basanez says. “I love this team, I love this organization. I really want to be part of it.”
If he were in any other business, he would have spent Thursday telling Fox he looked as if he had lost weight, or holding the door for him.
Basanez laughs and says: “If that's what I need to do, I should have. I didn't notice anybody doing it, but now that you say that, I probably should have brought him an apple, or a beer. I should have done something.”
Basanez did do something. He led the Panthers to their only touchdown in the exhibition against Pittsburgh.
And here we are, Saturday already. And this time the phone works.
