By Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Spear Reporter // Photo by Emilee Chinn/USFL/Getty Images
Boogie Roberts used to love being asked if he played for his hometown Los Angeles Rams.
“Think of the pinnacle. The top of the top,” recounted Roberts, who signed with the Rams as an undrafted free agent in 2019.
But when the Rams cut Roberts, it was the last thing he wanted brought up.
“People asking for tickets and me sitting there like, ‘Well, I don’t have any tickets to give because I’m not on the team anymore,'” said Roberts. “It just slipped me into a depression.”
From there, Roberts, a former San Jose State defensive lineman, endured multiple bouts of depression and brutal setbacks. But through sheer resiliency and SJSU’s Alonzo “Zo” Carter, Roberts is succeeding in the USFL. He’s turned the Pittsburgh Maulers from the league’s punchline in 2022 to the No. 1 seed in this year playoffs, which begin this Saturday.
He’s also discovered a passion for acting, appearing in a Super Bowl Ad earlier this year.
“He never gave up. Never. Not once,” Minnie Booker, Roberts’ mom said.
Two days after the 2019 NFL Draft, Roberts received a text from SJSU head coach Brent Brennan: “Who signed you? Where are we going?”
At the time, nowhere.
“He’s [Brennan] like, ‘There’s no way. Give me thirty minutes,’” said Roberts, who played at SJSU from 2015-18. The next morning, Roberts received a call from the Los Angeles Rams. “They’re like, ‘Coach Brennan spoke highly of you, we just watched some more film … and we want to sign you.’”
Roberts thought to himself, “What better way to play professional football than to represent your hometown team?”
But it was more than just his “hometown team.” He was playing for the Super Bowl runner-ups and was three-time Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald’s rookie during training camp.
“Just a dream come true,” Roberts said.
His identity as the “Hometown Hero” only grew. He threw out the first pitch at Dodgers Stadium and traded laughs pre-game with the Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“I’m on a high right now. I’m feeling amazing,” Roberts said. “Recognized when I go out, ‘Oh there’s Boogie.’”
But the ecstasy was short-lived.
When the Rams pre-season concluded, Roberts thought worst case scenario he’d be on the team’s practice squad. However, he didn’t make it past the second wave of team cuts and was released.
“That’s where my world came crashing down,” Roberts said.
From there, Roberts experienced the dark underbelly of life as the “Hometown Hero.” It seemed like wherever he went, someone brought up the subject.
“It happened so many times I couldn’t count it. At family events, local events, just going out, you run into people. In LA everybody knows everybody,” Roberts said. “I would just get tired of having to explain that same story over and over.”
So he stopped leaving the house altogether.
But a corner turned in the spring of 2020 when Roberts found a new Los Angeles team to call home: The XFL’s Los Angeles Wildcats.
It wasn’t the Rams, but it kept Roberts’ NFL aspirations alive. The competition was comprised of former players from the NFL and Division I schools. If he performed well enough, there was a chance he’d be offered an opportunity to break camp with an NFL team.
As the season went on, Roberts showcased glimpses that he was an NFL-caliber talent. In a March 8 matchup against the Tampa Bay Vipers, Roberts’ was a tour de force. Racking up multiple tackles for loss and notched a scoop-and-score in the fourth quarter.
The touchdown helped land Roberts a mini-documentary about his life for the XFL’s YouTube channel, broadcasting his infectious, larger-than-life persona and his hometown ties.
Roberts’ life was back on the upswing, unfortunately, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
A couple of days into filming, COVID-19 made its rounds through the XFL, and within a few weeks the league was shut down. In the subsequent months, Roberts didn’t receive a contract from an NFL team.
“I was on the path to getting back and it got stripped away from me again,” Roberts said.
By the end of 2020, Roberts was back home working two jobs for a total of 17 hours a day to help support his younger brother and his mom, who developed blood clots in her lung, which left her unable to work.
“I was having shut-off notices,” said Booker. “He had to help here, so he had to come live with me.”
During the day, Roberts tended to his younger brother and worked with kids who had special needs and worked the graveyard shift at a local airport.
“I was just miserable just everyday like, ‘This isn’t what I’m supposed to do,'” Roberts said.
Booker saw the toll it took and remembers that, “There wasn’t a light in his eyes at the time.”
But in the summer of 2021, Roberts’ career slowly took off again. Still “hungry” to play football, he paid the $750 fee to attended HUB camps in San Diego twice. The camps offered Roberts a chance to run through drills and face stout competition in front of NFL scouts.
“I would’ve done anything to get in front of an NFL scout at that time. Whatever the cost was,” said Roberts.
At the camp, scouts saw Roberts could still be a valuable asset upfront. He played a couple games for the Arena Football League’s Arizona Rattlers and said the Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats reached out to him.
“They were like, ‘If you get vaccinated we’ll bring you in,'” Roberts said.
But it ended up being a dead end after the Tiger-Cats decided to offer the roster spot to somebody else.
“I’m just like, ‘Man. A bunch of broken promises,'” Roberts said.
There was still one option available: The USFL.
Earlier that summer, the USFL, a minor league football organization, announced it was returning for spring 2022, which presented Roberts another path. With no agent at his disposal, Roberts immediately began doing deep dives on the USFL’s eight head coaches.
When he saw Pittsburgh Maulers head coach Kirby Wilson was from Los Angeles, he thought to himself, “‘Man, somebody has to know him.'”
So he reached out to his former coach at San Jose State Alonzo Carter.
The two grew close at SJSU. Carter respected Roberts for becoming the “backbone” of the SJSU teams that endured disastrous seasons in 2017-18.
“He’s [Carter] like, ‘Yeah I know Kirby Wilson that’s my guy,’” said Roberts.
Carter came to know Wilson two decades ago when he trained future Pro Bowl cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha for the upcoming 2003 NFL Draft and kept in touch ever since.
So Roberts dialed Wilson up and this time, his Los Angeles roots were more breakthrough than burden.
“So I called him and he’s like, ‘The only reason I answered your phone call is because we shared the same area code,’” Roberts recalled.
And unbeknownst to Roberts, Wilson was at the second HUB camp he attended and was impressed. Shortly after their phone call Wilson took a closer look at Roberts’ tape and said that he was going to draft him.
Still, Roberts was nervous. All he’d known was heartbreak and disappointment. “I remember picks are going by and I’m texting Kirby … he’s like, ‘Don’t worry I got you, I got you.'”
And on March 10, 2022, Wilson stayed true to his word and drafted Roberts. But to Roberts’s surprise, Wilson also drafted three other former Spartans: quarterback Josh Love and wide receivers Tre Walker and Bailey Gaither.
“I was just like, ‘The boys are back in town. We’re getting the band together,’” Roberts said.
When the 2022 season began, Roberts became an electric and compelling personality in the USFL’s documentary series “United by Football.” His quick wit and natural comedic personality jumped through the screen.
In one episode, he displayed a hilarious aversion to buoyancy while learning how to wakeboard. But in another episode, Roberts revealed a softer and more emotional side. He was shown receiving news that he was on the cusp of earning his master’s degree from SJSU and relayed it to her over FaceTime.
However, on the field the 2022 season was unmitigated disaster akin to the ones Roberts suffered through at SJSU.
They finished 1-9, endured the “Pizza Gate” scandal and Wilson stepped down as head coach.
Afterwards, Roberts found himself climbing back into a state of depression after not garnering any interest from NFL scouts. “Not working out, not do anything, not talking to nobody,” he said.
But Roberts found a way out of it through acting. Upon receiving multiple texts and direct messages from people notifying him that CW’s hit show “All-American” needed an extra, Roberts gave it a shot. He already had on-camera experience through the USFL’s documentary series.
He got the part and the overall experience was a moment of clarity.
“Acting kind of saved my life,” Roberts said. “It was a wake-up call,: ‘You can be so much more. Don’t let football consume your life and take you to those dark places.’”
Over the next several months, Roberts appeared in an ad from Apple to hype up Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime show and Fox’s tribute to the 1972 Dolphins. He’s also transitioned into the sports media field, making regular guest spots on the Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show and in “talks with the USFL to maybe broadcast some games.”
Entering the Maulers’ 2023 campaign, Roberts trained harder than ever and lost “20 pounds.” He became a key component in the Maulers’ turnaround, registering 32 tackles, eight tackles for loss and three sacks.
And now he enters the playoffs, hoping to follow through on his pre-season tweet, when he said the Maulers would go “from worst to first.”
If the Maulers fall short and his NFL aspirations don’t pan out, Roberts now has the comfort of knowing there’s another world out there waiting for him to explore.
“Football gets me in doors and my personality and how I am keeps me in the room.”
