Joe Hawley retired from NFL. Then he moved into van and hit road in search of new path

Tom Schad | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Former NFL player gave away possessions to travel the country When former Buccaneers and Falcons center Joe Hawley left the game of football, he decided to give away most of his possessions, buy a van and hit the road with his dog.

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — For eight years, Joe Hawley's life followed an inescapable rhythm — the monotony of practice, film study and offseason workouts, all of it on a seemingly endless loop. The NFL dictated where he had to be and what he had to do. It wrecked his body. It consumed his life.

"It’s very structured. My whole life has been like that," Hawley says. "I felt like I just kind of wanted to experience life, be free."

So when Hawley's career came to an end at 29 — a finish line he saw coming long before the Tampa Bay Buccaneers declined to renew his contract this spring — the former offensive lineman decided to adjust course.

Hawley moved out of his Tampa apartment and donated most of his belongings to charity. He sold his Mercedes-Benz C300 coupe and purchased a 2007 Ford E-350 cargo van. He shed almost 50 pounds on an unusual diet that has him putting slices of butter in his coffee. He adopted a 2-year-old boxer mix from a shelter and aptly named her "Freedom." And now, he plans to spend the next however-many months driving around the country and living out of his van — meeting new people, exploring different regions and blogging about the whole thing.

To say that Hawley is at a crossroads in his life is probably a bit dramatic. He prefers to describe all of this as an adventure or, more broadly, the first step in a “huge transition” away from football — the pursuit of "my next dream."

One of his former teammates, however, had a different word for it.

"I thought he was crazy," Alan Cross said with a laugh.

At its core, Hawley’s trip is really just an attempt to re-prioritize his life — to dedicate his time and energy to the things that matter, all while attempting to fill the void that 16 years of football left behind.

"(You try) to be great at something and put your mind to something. It just goes away," Hawley told USA TODAY Sports from the couch in his van, roughly two months after he effectively retired from the NFL. "So you have to figure out: What else can I be great at?"

'I got to live a kid's dream'

At a campsite along the banks of Lake Lanier in northern Georgia, Hawley seasons four ribeye steaks with salt and pepper and arranges them on the grill.

It's a breezy, overcast Wednesday morning, and he's insisted on cooking lunch.

"How do you guys like your steaks?" he asks.

Hawley has kept the grizzly beard from his playing days, but he's a slim shadow of the offensive lineman he once was.

A fourth-round pick out of UNLV in the 2010 NFL draft, he spent the first five seasons of his career with the Atlanta Falcons. Then he followed former offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter to Tampa Bay, where he started 29 games in two years before moving into a backup role.

All told, Hawley played 93 games and earned a little more than $13 million in his career.

"I always gave him a hard time about being the instigator," said Koetter, who is now the head coach of the Buccaneers. "Joe was that guy who was always around the pile, was always trying to get the defense mad at him, trying to get them off their game."

Hawley was smart and relentless, former teammates said, but his career was littered with injuries. Today, he says he doesn't have any cartilage left in either of his knees, which grind and pop as he moves. He's got bone spurs in both ankles. Torn labrums in both shoulders. A bulging disc in his neck. And a hip that he describes only as "pretty messed up."

The mental side of the NFL also started to weigh on him — the anxiety that comes with always having to be at your best. Hawley says he lost 10 pounds last season due to a series of ulcers, which he believes were stress-related. His older sister, Ashleigh Stone, said he was so emotionally wrapped up in football that sometimes "you couldn’t even talk to him."

"I think this pressure of the NFL, it was ruining him," she said.

Last season, Hawley's role was more or less to mentor Ali Marpet, a 24-year-old guard, as he switched positions and took Hawley's job. In past years, Hawley would've been determined and fighting to get back onto the field. This time, it was different.

Midway through the season, he was already thinking about purchasing a converted bus or van and hitting the road.

"I’m so grateful I got to live a kid’s dream," Hawley says. "A lot of people just grind it out because they want to make more money. I have plenty of money to be happy. And I want to challenge myself to do something new."

On the road again

By early afternoon, the steaks are gone, the van has been packed and Hawley is drying off Freedom with a beach towel after she jumped in Lake Lanier. He shakes his head.

“What are you doing, girl?” he says with a chuckle. “You’re soaked.”

Hawley knows they need to get back on the road if they hope to get to Pensacola, Fla., before dark. He will join children with cancer in a fashion show that doubles as a fundraiser for the Rally Foundation — one of several events in these first few months that have kept him tied to the southeastern part of the country.

Hawley has only been on the road for a month, but he's already grown comfortable with the tricked-out, four-wheel-drive diesel he now calls home. He bought it used for about $55,000 and paid another $15,000 or so to customize it. Among the most notable features are a 16-gallon fresh water tank, tiny sink, mini-fridge, pop-top roof, solar panels, retractable awning and customized front bumper.

Freedom cranes her neck out of the passenger side window as they leave the campground, and before long, Hawley is streaming an afternoon baseball game between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels through the van's sound system as he drives. He’ll switch to the Washington Nationals game later simply because Max Scherzer is on his fantasy team.

"Watching him pitch will make you fall in love with baseball," he says.

Until recently, Hawley thought he had a good sense of where his life was headed: He was going to marry his girlfriend of five years, retire and become a football coach. Then he wound up walking away from that relationship and discovering that he’s “kind of footballed out,” at least for the time being.

This particular week, for example, talk of the NFL draft has consumed the sports world. “I could give two (expletives) about it,” Hawley says. Maybe he'll enjoy watching as a fan when the new NFL season starts, he adds. But for now, he'd rather stick to baseball.

Behind all of Hawley’s excitement about living on the road, there’s also a lingering fear that it will get lonely. That’s one of the main reasons why he got Freedom. He always knew he wanted a co-pilot for his trip, and his ex-fiancée kept their old dog. He found Freedom shaking in fear in the back of her cage at the Hillsborough County Pet Resource Center and figured any dog who hated being cooped up that much would be grateful for a nomadic lifestyle.

"Outhouse to the penthouse," he says while scratching her neck and smiling. "Or, uh, the van house."

Living with less

The sun is beginning to set when Hawley's van pulls into a Jet Pep gas station off Route 113 in rural Alabama. One of the cupboards on the inside of the back door came unhinged as he drove through Atlanta, so he scrounges around the van for his screwdriver and tightens it back into place.

"If this is the worst thing that happens to me on the road, I'll be a lucky man," he says before dropping a chunk of cocoa butter into a cup of gas-station coffee.

Hawley always wanted to be skinny. He wanted to have a six-pack. But the NFL demanded that he pack 300 pounds onto his 6-foot-3 frame. Since retiring, he says, he’s lost nearly 50 pounds thanks to an unusual ketogenic diet that’s high on fats and low on carbs — the sort of thing that usually prompts a “wait, what?” among non-believers. He eats a lot of meats, eggs, almonds and butter while losing weight and, he claims, thinking more clearly.

Hawley has also adopted a minimalist lifestyle in retirement, using a philosophy of “live with less, experience more” to de-clutter his life.

"You don’t realize how much (expletive) you have until you try to get rid of it," Hawley says. "If you buy something new, it fills you with all this excitement, but that fades so quickly. Next thing you know, you want something else new to fill that void. And then it’s a cycle."

In the months since donating most of his possessions, and about 70% of his wardrobe, Hawley says it's like "a physical weight" has been lifted.

"I think there’s the common misconception of people that are in the NFL — that they’re all ballers, they all want to live extravagant lifestyles," his older sister, Ashleigh, said. "(With Hawley), it wasn’t a big jump, if that makes sense. … He always kind of lived a really conservative lifestyle."

A co-pilot named Freedom

A little more than six hours and 380 miles after leaving his campsite off the lake, Hawley arrives in Pensacola, Fla., just before 8 p.m., parking the van at an RV resort near the beach. He grabs dinner at a nearby sports bar — plus a coffee with butter to go — and returns to site No. 72, where Freedom has been patiently waiting in the back of the van.

Hawley isn’t sure exactly how to describe the void that football leaves behind, but he says it’s a tangible, physical feeling. He mentally prepared for this moment for years, and still found himself unprepared. He’s chosen to combat feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt by not just diving into his trip but also visually documenting it.

In addition to his “Man Van Dog Blog” — which, among other video entries, includes an MTV Cribs-style tour of his van — Hawley has already racked up more than 13,000 followers on Instagram, most of them people who want to follow his travels — and, in some cases, be a part of them. Since he hit the road April 4, he’s already received unsolicited offers for dog dates, places to stay, random meet-ups and everything in-between.

“What a time to be alive. Seriously,” he says. “Doing this 20 years ago would be like me out there on the road... figuring it out.”

And, just to be clear, there’s certainly still some of that.

"It’s not something everybody does. Not something hardly anybody does," Koetter said. "But Joe is definitely a unique individual and his own man. I think it’s a really cool thing what he’s doing."

Hawley doesn’t have a planned route as he zig-zags across the country this summer, but he does have a few stops in mind. He wants to see Glacier National Park in Montana and Redwood National Park in his home state, California. Niagara Falls, too. Baseball stadiums. Lots of baseball stadiums. And he wants to stop at children's hospitals along the route and hand out toys to kids.

"He’s the ultimate free spirit," former teammate and close friend Mike Johnson said. "You look at his beard, you can kind of see his personality."

Hawley still isn’t sure where he’ll travel, or for how long. He wonders if he’ll get lonely. Shoot, he wonders if he’ll just get sick of living out of a van. But that’s OK, he says. After eight years in the NFL, he can afford to wander. And, with Freedom as his co-pilot, he’s never been happier to have no idea where he’s headed.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.