We all make mistakes. Some of them are real beauts, and they have consequences that spread out around us like nasty rumors.

And some of them seem trivial, and some of them really are trivial … except to the people who decide they’re monumental.

In sports terms, rookies are more inclined to make mistakes than are veterans, and in the NFL some of those rookie mistakes have nothing to do with missing a block or dropping a pass.

A Rookie's Responsibilities

In 2003, Jordan Gross was such an NFL rookie. The Carolina Panthers made him the eighth overall pick in the draft, quite a distinction for an offensive lineman. When Gross and his wife came to Carolina, they didn’t know what to expect.

"Here we go, to this world we’ve never been into and this place we’ve never visited," Gross says. "I kinda had my guard up a little bit. I had this idea that nobody was going to be able to pick on me or haze me or take advantage of me."

Obviously Gross had heard that NFL veterans were inclined to give rookies a hard time. As it turned out, he was OK with that, within limits. The veteran linemen wanted him to order Mexican food for them? No problem. Except there was always a problem.

"They had to have this black salsa," Gross recalls. "And I would always stress to the order: 'I need the black salsa.' Every time. And they would forget it at least 65 percent of the time. And when they forgot the black salsa, you would’ve thought that I’d fumbled the football on the 2-yard line going in for the game winning score, 'cause all hell would erupt. 'Ah, come on, rookie. You can’t tell a rookie anything!' I would get so mad, because I’d confirm it, but nobody had any sympathy or pity for me. Because I forgot the black salsa."

"Were you taking all this as, 'Oh, this is good fun. I’m just becoming one of the lads?'" I ask.

"I don’t think I ever said, 'I'm one of the lads,' but I know what you mean. Yeah, I did. I knew that all of those types of things were rookie responsibilities," Gross says. "Other guys were laying out towels. So I said, 'Hey, this is all part of it.'"

Even in 2003, Mexican food for the offensive line, with or without black salsa, wasn’t going to make much of a dent in a rookie’s salary.

Drawing The Line

But that’s not all the veterans wanted. Or at least that’s not all left tackle and two-time Pro Bowler Todd Steussie wanted. He’d been in the league since 1994, and with the Panthers since 2001, and by late afternoon, he would get tired. He wanted a cappuccino machine in the room reserved for meetings of the offensive linemen, and he wanted it right away, and he wanted the rookie to take care of it.

"That’s when I said, 'I draw the line here. This is unnecessary, and I’m not going to let any veteran take advantage of me,'” Gross says.

Except that’s not exactly the way he put it when he was face-to-face with Todd Steussie, 6-foot-5, 310 pounds:

"I told him, 'Uhh, let me think about it,'" Gross says. "And that made him mad, because he wanted an immediate, 'Yes.'”

The dispute might have ended in one of two ways: Todd Steussie might have shrugged off that particular rookie’s stubborn resistance and picked on somebody else. Or, Jordan Gross might have decided that better coffee all around wasn’t such a bad idea, and he might have bought the coffee machine.