At the time, Roberson figured he would have a shot to make it in the CFL in the spring of 2018, but in September 2017, he and his wife, Amanda, were expecting their first child. So he went home to Indianapolis and took a job driving a box truck for Westmoreland Transportation. His first shift started at 7:30 a.m. and ended in the early afternoon. Most days he would start a second shift at 4 p.m., which meant driving to Ohio, where he would sleep for about two hours in the truck waiting for his load, then to his destination in Fort Wayne, Ind., before returning home at about 3:30 a.m. That’s when he would head to Lifetime Fitness to train with the dream of returning to the NFL.

“Then I’d try to steal a little sleep in the morning before I had to be up to do it all over again,” Roberson said. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, right? I tell people I probably slept 24 hours the whole 2017 season.”

Roberson’s grandfather Larry Highbaugh, a standout defensive back at Indiana in the late 1960s, went to Canada after a brief shot with the Cowboys. Highbaugh, inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 2004, had 66 interceptions in a 13-year career and was part of six Grey Cup championship teams. Highbaugh was undersized at 5-9 and never returned to the NFL.