A half-hour before kickoff at a recent Redskins game, FedEx Field was abuzz.
Fans streamed down the aisles to their seats. Players stretched on the field as music pulsed through the speakers. Stadium workers, team and league officials, media and VIPs converged on the sidelines.
Amid the hubbub, Ricky Ervins stood alone in a place he knows oh so well: the end zone. But instead of carrying a football, he had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other.
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From 1991 to 1994, Ervins was a running back for the Redskins, helping the team to victory in Super Bowl XXVI as a rookie. Since 2014, he’s worked for the NFL as a uniform inspector.
As the Redskins warmed up before the Cowboys game, Ervins looked the Redskins players up and down. All 46 of them.
Any T-shirts hanging out?
Socks pulled up to the knee pads?
Anyone not wearing knee pads?
Ervins recorded each violation.
There are always violations.
“The NFL is a brand,” Ervins explained later. “They want you to look a certain way. They want you to uphold the image that gets put out on the TV and in the media.”
“Don’t look sloppy,” he added. “You’re in the NFL.”
When Ervins broke into the league nearly three decades ago, he wasn’t always in compliance with the NFL’s uniform policy. Until, that is, the league began docking his paycheck.
“I go and get my check and it’s minus $1,500 because of a uniform infraction,” Ervins said, recalling a payday early in his rookie season. “I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?'”
Players policing players
Ervins, the Redskins’ third-round pick in 1991, appeared in 62 games for Washington. In the Super Bowl win, he was the game’s leading rusher, racking up 72 yards on 13 carries as the Skins beat the Buffalo Bills, 37-24.
The next year, Ervins signed with San Francisco and suited up in 14 games before hanging up his cleats at the end of the season.
“I loved the sport, but I wasn’t in love with it anymore,” Ervins said of his decision to walk away at 27 years old. “I needed to be doing something else.”
Seeking a break from pro football, Ervins returned to Ashburn, Va., where he’d built a house in a manicured neighborhood during his playing days in Washington. The Redskins’ headquarters is just five miles down the road.
Ervins founded Xtreme Xplosion, a personal-training business that caters to young athletes and adults in Northern Virginia. He also earned his real estate license and began working part-time for a local agent.
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Life was good. But he’d started missing the game that had given him so much.
Then the NFL came calling a second time — literally.
“At first, I said, ‘Hell, naw,'” Ervins recalled. “They used to fine me; I don’t want to do that. I hung up the phone. But then I got home and I was like, ‘Man, that might be kinda cool. Just to be around the game again.'”
More than 20 years had passed since his last carry.
He was ready to return to football.
He’s now one of 63 former players who work for the NFL in the same capacity.
The league employs two uniform inspectors in each city. One monitors home team uniform compliance. The other handles the visiting team. From 2014 to 2017, Ervins inspected the road team at FedEx Field. But when Tony McGee left for Atlanta after last season, Ervins inherited home uniform duty.
The dos and don’ts
The players know the rules.
League officials meet with them during training camp. There are posters on the wall in the locker room. Malcolm Blacken, the Redskins’ director of player development, constantly reminds them of the regulations and works with Ervins to ensure everyone complies before stepping onto the field.
“We let them know, ‘If you look like this, you will not get fined,'” Ervins said. “‘But if you look like this, you’re going to get fined.’ It’s that simple. And it’s a lot of money.”
Ervins’ workday begins when the players hit the field for warmups.
From the end zone, he watches closely for uniform violations, marking each one down.
As the players return to the locker room before kickoff, Ervins hands Blacken a sheet of paper that details each violation and who committed it.
Said Blacken: “Ricky gives me the list, and I tell the guys, ‘Pull your socks up. You can’t wear that color headband. You can’t have that kind of headband on. You can’t have that color sleeve on. Your towel can’t look like a streamer.’ And we go from there.”
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“You can’t fine them until the game starts,” he added.
Most players make the corrections.
But not all of them do.
After warmups, Ervins watches the game from the press box alongside members of the media and the Redskins’ public relations staff.
While tens of thousands of people are glued to the action on the field, Ervins uses his binoculars to look for players who did not fix the issues he’d pointed out before kickoff.
Ervins leaves the press box about 10 minutes before halftime and heads back down to the sideline. Again, he marks down all players who aren’t in compliance and gives a sheet to Blacken, who, for a second time, brings the violation to the attention of the player.
Once the third quarter begins, that’s when it can get costly for a player.
Ervins returns to the press box and continues to scan the field. If something isn’t right, he dials the phone on the sideline and speaks to a team official, who relays the message to Blacken. The player has until the next series to make the correction.
“If the kid is out there on the field playing, and I get the call, I wait until he comes off the field or the next possession,” Blacken said. “I’m not going to go get into his head while he’s thinking about an offensive play. I don’t mess with that. I’ll wait until he comes over to the bench and the defense is on the field, and then I’ll go over and talk to him.”
Players who consistently flout the regulations end up getting fined.
And these days, it costs a lot.
Unsnapped chin strap? That’ll cost a player $10,026 for the first offense, $13,369 for a second.
Personal messages on shoes, gloves or eye black? A player will cough up $6,683 for the first offense, $13,369 for a second.
Untucked jerseys, unapproved socks, items bearing the logo of a company that doesn’t have a licensing agreement with the NFL? That’ll be $6,683 for a first offense and, you guessed it, $13,369 for a second.
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After the game, Ervins files a report to Akil Coad, the NFL’s compliance manager.
“If you do it to letter of the law, 80 to 90-percent of the league would be out of compliance,” said Jon Runyan, a former NFL tackle and U.S. congressman who now serves as the league’s vice president of policy and rules administration. “We’re just trying to get the worst ones to come back down to where everyone is.”
“About 5 percent keep coming back,” Runyan added. “It’s usually not the next week. It’s usually a week or two later and they’re just doing what they want to. It is a uniform. The Latin root of the work is ‘uni’ … it’s meant to be one.”
Fine money goes to programs for former players, although Runyan says he gives players every opportunity to avoid a fine, which can be appealed.
“We’re not trying to take money out of people’s pockets. What we’re trying to do is get compliance,” Runyan said. “And we give them every opportunity to comply.”
Uniform police aren’t interesting
The Redskins are like most teams when it comes to uniform compliance: they’re a mixed bag.
On one end of the spectrum, there’s Adrian Peterson. He’s the standard to which everyone should aspire, Ervins said. During his time in Minnesota, Peterson was the example on the poster in the locker room.
“I love looking classy,” Peterson said. “It’s kinda my style. For me, you look good, you play good.”
Ervins said Peterson looks like RoboCop.
“He doesn’t try to tweak his pants up here,” Ervins said. “He doesn’t try to do none of that. He’s like, ‘Just give me the ball.’ That’s why I call him old school.”
At the other end of the spectrum, well, there are the players who occupy the majority of Ervins’ time.
Ervins didn’t name names. He also wouldn’t say who gets fined. But you don’t need to have followed the Redskins for too long to figure out who breaks the rules.
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Just watch a game.
Six-time Pro Bowler Trent Williams routinely leaves his jersey untucked or has a T-shirt hanging out. Ditto for tight end Jordan Reed. Meanwhile, cornerback Quinton Dunbar has a thing about his socks. He doesn’t like to pull them all way up to his pants, as rules require.
Williams politely declined to discuss the matter, joking, “Who wants to do a story on the uniform police? That’s not interesting.”
For some players, breaking the rules is about looking different.
For others, it’s about doing what’s comfortable.
“You’re not supposed to have skin showing,” Dunbar said of the sock rule. “I guess I abuse that. And the thigh pads. I don’t really like thigh pads.”
Dunbar said he started the Green Bay game without thigh pads. He got away with it for a quarter, but Ervins spotted him before halftime.
Dunbar had one series at the start of the third quarter to rectify the issue. He did, and that was the end of that.
As for wearing his socks too low, that’s an ongoing issue. Dunbar said he got popped twice last season, at a cost of $6,683 per infraction.
“That’s just my tradition, man,” he said. “I’ve been doing it since I was 5 years old. I don’t want my socks all the way up my leg. If I wanted that, I would just wear tights. It’s just something I’m comfortable with.”
Twenty-seven years ago, Ervins was Dunbar. He liked to wear his socks a certain way. They felt better his way. They looked better his way. Or so he thought.
The irony is not lost on Ervins.
“It’s funny to me because now, here I am, the FBI, sitting here policing these guys,” he said. “And I know that feeling because I wanted my socks to be a certain way.”
“But once I knew the rule and I got fined,” he said, pausing for effect, “I complied.”
(Top photo: Daniel Kucin)