Chase Rice could hear it in the silence.
The murmurs of fans started to echo throughout the concrete corridor as he and his team got closer to the field. Their huddles gave Rice a nostalgic feeling of high school football as they chanted, “Good, better, best. Never let it rest, until your good gets better and your better gets best.” As Rice followed the familiar-feeling concrete path, it mirrored the walks he made as a North Carolina football player. But when he stepped onto Ford Field, the chatter turned into a steady, ear-piercing roar as more than 74,000 fans welcomed him to Detroit.
He couldn’t help but smile as he looked around the Lions’ stadium that night in February 2020. The rush of being on the field surrounded by fans in the stands, the adrenaline pulsing through his body just like before every game. Rice had finally realized his dream of playing in an NFL stadium, but it looked differently than he once expected it might.
Instead of an opposing team and a pigskin, he was greeted by a 360-stage and a microphone stand, as the former linebacker opened for country music legend Garth Brooks.
Rice hit the ground running with “Lions,” fitting for the venue. As he moved through his upbeat half-hour set, he suddenly pulled an Ed Sheeran on the crowd.
He donned his acoustic guitar, slowing down the crowd as he strummed the opening notes of “Jack Daniels & Jesus.”
The last time Rice had been to a Garth Brooks concert with his brothers was in 1998 in Charlotte. Now, he was opening for one of his childhood heroes in an NFL stadium with his family in the stands, performing a song that changed the trajectory of his life.
“It’s deep; it’s real,” Rice says. “Songs are meant to pull out emotions, good or bad. And that one pulls out emotions that if it can save a life, you can’t really ask to write a song better than that.”
In a way, the song ultimately saved him. Rice has taken his own ride in the devil’s Cadillac—watching his NFL dreams implode, when his father’s sudden death just before a senior year of college already full of unknowns. From being a part of Ryan Newman and Jimmie Johnson’s pit crews and going on , to writing “Cruise” with Florida Georgia Line and making it in Nashville, Rice kept his head down, eyes up as he figured out who he is and navigated his wild ride to redemption.
“Everything that is a blessing is a curse,” Brooks says, “and everything that is a curse is a blessing.”
