The words flow easily, for some reason, during games.
When Bears guard Matt Slauson moved to center in an emergency Sunday, he made calls to his teammates and helped to identify the Raiders’ middle linebacker.
In a role where communication is paramount, never once, he said, did he stutter.
“As far as making calls,” he said. “I don’t know why. It just works.”
Slauson has stuttered his whole life. The condition runs in the family; his grandfather, a judge, had it.
He struggled in grade school. Neglect and frustration from teachers meant he didn’t learn how to read until the fifth grade.
As a boy, his condition was severe.
“I couldn’t even say my own name,” he said.
• • •
Back in Sweet Home, Ore., teasing classmates and unfit teachers caused Slauson to shut down.
He slumped at his desk in the back row, praying that, despite his massive size, no one would see him.
“Trying to stay as little as I can,” he said. “Invisible.”
Even with speech therapy, he struggled to speak clearly.
For years, he pretended to read when he didn’t know how.
“I did a pretty good job of hiding it and faking it,” he said. “My teachers before that were pretty awful. They recognized that I had a speech issue. When I started hiding, common sense would say, ‘There’s an issue here.’”
His fifth-grade teacher was the opposite of the others. She focused on him. Slauson estimated he was six years behind — performing, perhaps, at a kindergarten level before she rescued him.
“She made it her mission to bring me up to speed,” he said.
Socially, though, Slauson said he’d “separated himself” from his classmates. In sixth grade, a boy asked him to play football. He said no, but agreed to go watch practice.
“I’m seeing all the kids that made fun of me throughout the years,” he said. “I’m seeing what my friend now gets to do with them with pads on. …
“The reason I started playing was because I wanted to get some payback.”
The coach spotted the huge kid on the sideline — Slauson would grow to 6-4, 295 pounds by his first day of high school — and begged him to play.
Slauson’s classmates — either out of respect or self-preservation — started treating him better.
“Once I started getting payback, they were like, ‘Oh, I think we better start having this guy as a friend,’” he said. “Now, I have a whole slew of friends, I’m doing better in school, and life is good.”
• • •
Life at home, though, was more complicated.
Slauson’s twin older brothers were born via emergency C-section that threatened the lives of them and their mother. One, Chris, was fine. He went on to become a rocket scientist. He flies a cargo plane in the Air Force.
The other, Nick, was born with a prenatal brain injury. He and his family rallied around Nick, he said, the way the football players do in a locker room.
Doctors and specialists said Nick would never be able to graduate high school. He did. They said he couldn’t play sports. He was a state champion swimmer.
“He’s been a constant inspiration through my whole life,” Slauson said.
Nick now lives in Lincoln, Neb., now, where he works as a cook. He and their mother will attend Sunday’s game in Kansas City. It’s the closest NFL stadium to their home, and Slauson’s first pro visit to Arrowhead Stadium. He might play center again.
“He drives, he’s got a kid and he’s got a job,” Slauson said. “All three things the specialists said he’d never had.”
• • •
Slauson was able to snap, he said, because he didn’t let himself think about it.
When Will Montgomery broke his left fibula on the first drive of Sunday’s win against the Raiders, Slauson — who joked he’d made six snaps this season — stepped in. The Bears’ backup center, rookie Hroniss Grasu, was inactive.
“If I started to worry about snapping and doing this and trying to block techniques I’ve never done,” he said, “then I would have just fallen apart.”
He didn’t. There were two bad snaps — one was a turnover — but Slauson played so well he was given a game ball.
Offensive coordinator Adam Gase called his performance “phenomenal.”
“He’s very vocal,” defensive tackle Jeremiah Ratliff said. “He gets everybody lined up and in the right place.”
Slauson has a “soft, squishy side” that belies his on-field demeanor, tackle Kyle Long said.
“He’s one of the baddest men I’ve been around,” he said.
But when Long makes a mistake, Slauson, off on the sideline, is often the first to console him.
“He can relate to how you’re feeling,” he said. “He has empathy for others, and sympathy.”
• • •
As a rookie, Slauson was asked to break the Jets’ huddle one day at practice.
He was nervous. He stutters more when he’s nervous.
When his words wouldn’t tumble out, a teammate teased him, not knowing his issue. Later, he apologized. Slauson said it was fine; over the years, he’s even connected with teammates who shared his stuttering.
Since he starred at Nebraska, it seems, experts in every place he plays find out about his stutter. Speech clinics and pathologists invariably email him, saying they can help fix him.
“I immediately reply back and say, ‘I do not have any issues,’” he said. “I am not interested.”
Slauson rejects that there’s anything broken about him.
He embraces being different.
When he speaks to schools now — maybe, to other kids sitting in the back of the room, hiding — he tells kids to do the same.
“It makes you unique,” he said. “It took me a long time to get to that point.”
Follow me on Twitter @patrickfinley
Email: pfinley@suntimes.com
