Now, here’s my NFL story …

In 2002, the Detroit Lions selected me at No. 3 overall. The four years I spent there absolutely crushed me. By the time I left, I was a shell of the player I once was. Here’s an example of how broken things were by the end.

I remember walking into the office of then head coach Steve Mariucci and telling him, “I need you to give me permission to throw the ball down the field.” I’d never felt so down. At that point, I was just searching — grasping — for some kind of support.

“Why do you need permission?” he asked.

“I’m afraid to make a mistake,” I said. “You tell me every day, if it’s close, check it down … and I’ve gotten into a rhythm where all I do is check it down, and I’m afraid to throw it down the field.”

He got up, went to his closet, grabbed a toothbrush, and started brushing his teeth. Then he walked towards the door, and said, “I have to go do some interviews. I’ll be back. If you want to come back later, we can talk.”

He just left.

That was at the very end, when things had all but collapsed around me. Mariucci was a good guy who was trying to save his job, but when one of my teammates went out and said I was the reason our coach got fired, it created a situation where I just imploded mentally. I couldn’t handle it.

This wasn’t football. This wasn’t team. This wasn’t fun.

Through the gentle nudging of general manager Matt Millen — who was, in my opinion, one of the only stand-up guys in that organization — I spent a lot of time with a sports psychologist, trying to figure out how to get my confidence back. In the NFL (and especially at the quarterback position), if you don’t have confidence, you’re done.

There are 100 guys out there who can throw a comeback route, and 100 more who can throw a post. But there are only a handful of quarterbacks who can have the route picked off, then come back and throw it again. Who can get knocked down or get hit in the teeth … and throw it again.

That, to me, is the difference between making it to the NFL, and being great in the NFL.

I’m sometimes asked if I was put in an unfair position in Detroit. My answer is always immediate and the same: No. Saying so implies I was the only one in that kind of a position. Welcome to the NFL. Pick a year, and I’ll give you five guys who were in the same type of spot I was. For all of my prior success — all the balls I had bounce my way through college — I wasn’t prepared to deal with it when things no longer went my way.

If we’re being honest, not a lot of people are.

Toward the end of my tenure in Detroit, Millen and I sat down and talked. He asked me flat out if I wanted to be there anymore. I told him I didn’t know. He’d just brought in Mike Martz — at the time one of the NFL’s most celebrated offensive gurus, just a few years removed from having helped take the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf” to the Super Bowl. It was Millen’s belief that Mike could get me back on track. After Matt, I spoke with the new head coach, Rod Marinelli.

“Look, Rod,” I said. “If you want me to be here, I will be here, because I respect you, and I respect Matt. But with the exception of one or two guys in that locker room … the rest of them can go to hell.”

At that point, I felt like I’d given everything, had sacrificed for my teammates, and all they’d done was hang me out to dry. The day everything happened with Dre’ Bly — the scapegoat saga — only two people came up to me and said anything: One guy in the locker room, and the chef in the cafeteria.

My message to Rod was, “I’ll play for you. I respect the fact that you can sit down and have an honest conversation with me. But you need to know what’s happened up to this point.”

What I wanted, like any player does, was options. So when I met with Nick Saban — I remember this very clearly — we sat down at the dinner table and he said, “We traded a second-round pick for Daunte Culpepper. We’re going to trade a fifth-round pick for you. I don’t care what we’re paying him; I don’t care what were paying you. He’s going to get the first-team reps, you’re going to get the second-team reps. If he plays better than you, he’s going to play; if you play better than him, you’re going to play. Can you handle that?”

I said, ‘‘That’s all I’ve been looking for.” After that, I told Matt I was going to Miami. I still talk to Matt Millen to this day. He’s a fantastic, wonderful guy. But it was time for both sides to part ways.