What Happened to That Guy? Tom Zbikowski

The former Ravens safety's drug and alcohol addiction led to an early exit from football, leading to working as a firefighter and a return to his first love of boxing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Greetings, and welcome to the final episode of the first
season of What Happened to That Guy, a Ravens podcast
about former players and life after football. I'm your host,
John Eisenberg. I hope you've enjoyed listening to these stories
as much as I've enjoyed telling them, and I hope
you've learned as I have, that a lot of former
Ravens are doing interesting things, like Trevor Price writing for

(00:27):
Netflix or Chris Carr defending clients in federal immigration court.
But I don't want to leave you with the impression
that the entire world of former players and former Ravens
is just as they say, all sunshine and bunnies. Some
guys do reach the end of their careers with a
clearer idea of what comes next, or they find a

(00:49):
path that works. But other guys, lots of them, don't
have it so simple and easy. Maybe they're out of
football sooner than they expected. Maybe they aren't sure what
to do next. Maybe they have issues that gum up
the transition into real life. Tom Zibikowski checks all of
those boxes. That's one reason why I'm ending this first

(01:11):
season with an episode about him. Zimby as he was
known to all around the under Armor Performance Center. He's
got quite a tale to tell, and he isn't afraid
to tell it. Another reason I'm giving him an episode
is he's just one of the truly original characters in
Raven's history. I am not exaggerating. More than a thousand

(01:32):
players have worn the uniform, and quite a few, let's
face it, have faded into the gray mists of history,
but not Tom Zibikowski. A decade or so ago, he
played safety in Baltimore for four years at the outset
of the John Harbaugh era. And he wasn't a starter,
but he was Let's see, how do I put this?

(01:54):
He was one of those guys you just don't forget,
blazingly intense, A professional boxer, that's all right, you heard me,
A boxer, A guy who didn't just relish contact, but
craved contact. You know. That's saying, play like a Raven.
If Zibikowski had been a better player, he could have

(02:16):
been the poster child, the embodiment of the whole concept.
He acknowledged that recently when we spoke by phone. If
you look at what I am as a person that
should have been, you know, John Hardball's favorite player ever.
He came to the Ravens from Notre Dame, where he
was such a ferocious performer that he was a team

(02:36):
co captain and something of a cult hero. When the
Ravens made him their third round draft pick in two
thousand and eight, there was every reason to believe he'd
have a long career here. Third round picks those are
building blocks. But Zimby was out of the NFL after
five years, gone on to the next chapter of his life.
At age twenty seven. That's seven years ago, and he's

(02:59):
still for his next big thing. It's just been a
journey of all journeys, and I think there's a lot
of stories and things that have happened to me that
I think will hopefully relate and help out with a
lot of people that are struggling with whatever kind of
struggles they have. I've said a much share of them.
What has he done since his NFL career ended, Well,

(03:21):
the big news five and a half years ago. He
went through rehab and got himself sober. He had issues
with alcohol and opioids pain pills, and he addressed those issues.
After that, he was a Chicago firefighter for two years yep.
The former NFL player's job description consisted of climbing upstairs

(03:42):
and carrying people out of burning buildings. When that ended,
he thought about getting into coaching. He'd worked with some
high school kids, liked it, and almost went back to
Notre Dame to start learning that trade, but he didn't. Recently,
he thought about going to law school, even took the
alsat test, but that's on hold too. His priority right

(04:03):
now is boxing, his true love among sports. He's done
it on and off for years, and he's back in
the ring, working out, hoping to launch a comeback. He
told me that's his focus, but he also told me
what he really wants to do deep down is act
I've been taking acting classes and doing prov classes and

(04:23):
stuff like that. I would still love my fighting career
to at least give me some shots and controls. That's
kind of what I always saw. Believe me, I love boxing.
It's not to become a you know what I mean,
Robert DeMuro. I'm just hoping that the character and what
people see will give me a couple of rolls or
something and some slips. As you can tell, I live

(04:45):
in so many different worlds and have so many different character.
I think I really am a unique individulum that aspect.
I don't know too many people that have the same
type of these of moving in and out of groups
and worlds. I mean, I have the whole football world,
I have a whole boxing world. I have a whole
wrestling world where I coach at Firefighter World. But twenty five, yeah,

(05:09):
it really is. And so I mean like an energy wise,
I feel like an eighteen world right now, but I
mean like the shift and a longer I feel like
I'm fifty five. For most guys in the NFL, playing
in the league fulfills a lifelong dream. This is the
sport they've loved as kids. They acted out championship games

(05:29):
in the backyard, are on the playground, envisioning themselves breaking
long touchdown runs, celebrating with teammates. But Tom's Ibikowski didn't
have those dreams as a youngster grown up outside Chicago.
He was too busy wrestling and boxing. I started wrestling
when I was six years old. I started wrestling before
I started boxing. I had probably two hundred wrestling matches

(05:52):
and one hundred of boxing matches by the time I
finishing my amateur career. Before I got to high school,
I mustard one hundred fifty wrestling sixty boxing ratches, and
I really never saw myself playing college football anything like that.
It was really unexpected. There's not an opportunities in boxing
for whole scholarships to Notre Dame or Michigan, or to

(06:13):
Stamford or to Iowa. And his mom built opportunities in boxing.
And when that presentativeself and football had to take him,
he was, for lack of a better description, an accidental
football star. Oh, he played all along, and he was
really good all along, always the best player on the
field in peewee in high school ball, always the quarterback.

(06:35):
Notre Dame recruited him for crying out loud, that's like
joining the royal family if you're a young athletic guy
in Chicago. But all along, Zibikowski saw himself as a
boxer who happened to play football. Football so much worked
for me in comparison to wrestling. In boxing boxing, I
can almost be hottest shapes come in and still have

(06:58):
the skills and kind of tricks of the trade. I've
been doing it for so long. I was spawn professionals
by Thomas twelve years old and world champion professionals. But
I mean I could not do that in football. I
didn't really come from like a high school where there
was college talent, let alone NFL talent. So it wasn't
like he really learned much of football during those years.
So it really it took my whole concentration and effort

(07:21):
and time to become with your football player. It's no
secret why he excelled in football in spite of his
focus on other sports. He was small, around five ten,
but he was fast, strong, tough, explosive. Once he was
in Baltimore, though, he ran into more experienced players and
he struggled to crack the Ravens starting lineup ahead of

(07:42):
savvy veterans like Jim Leonard, Dwan Landry, and of course
Ed Reid. Looking back now, he has regrets about his
time in football, both college and pro. He thinks he
should have played cornerback, not safety, and he thinks he
would have been a great wild Cat quarterback. We talked
about all that. I just think I was a young

(08:03):
kid that couldn't really express the feelings yet. I couldn't speak.
I didn't know how to not be so modest with
my coaches, you know, what I mean. I was always
way too modest and it didn't really get me anywhere.
I should have really expressed, you know, what I was
as an athlete or what I could do on the
football field. I just never could express it. What would

(08:24):
you have expressed in college? Should have been on offense
at some point, probably should have had some type of
package with me at quarterback. I can't be returning punts
like weird. Can't see the type of explosiveness I had
with the ball. Yeah, I'm a boxer and all that
stuff can be tough, but the ways that I have
to do with playing defense, And if I was playing defense,
why didn't you put me at corner on one's going

(08:45):
to be in better condition than I mean, No, one's
going to have the hand fighting ability that I had.
But I could never speak that. By twenty ten, his
third season with the Ravens, things were coming together. Reid
was out with an injury just start the season. Zibikowski
started the first six games and played well. There was
talk of moving him to corner when Reid returned, but

(09:08):
Zimby went out with an injury himself in Week six,
and his playing time dwindled. When he returned, and that
offseason the Ravens signed another safety, Bernard Pollard. Zubikowski sank
into a depression. He turned to alcohol and pain pills.
I knew I had a problem after the third fourth
game in the twenty eleventh season, because I started the

(09:30):
first three games and then when Oard Pollard came in
and took my spot, and after that it was pretty
much self destruction. But I was conscious while I was
doing it. I don't know if I explained it. I
knew I was never going to be able to say, hey,
I quit. It was just going to be, well, there's
only one way of going out, so let's completely destroy

(09:52):
your body till nobody wants you. Is this the opioids
and drinking both everything, Yeah, pretty much anything that can done.
Whatever it is. The pain killers that had kind of
gotten into in college towards the end, I was going
to find that anyways, So you know, a bit of
a while. I'm a bit of a wild person. When
his Baltimore contract expired, he signed with the Indianapolis Colts

(10:16):
in twenty twelve. Check Pagano had taken over as the
Colts head coach. Pagano, of course, had been the Ravens,
defensive coordinator for most of Zibikowski's time in Baltimore. Chuck
got me together those last couple of years in Baltimore.
So I didn't have him, I would have killed somebody,
had not like physically killed somebody, but I mean I
would have been off on somebody that though I didn't

(10:36):
have Check there. So in my twisted state of mind,
I thought I was doing him a favorite by signing there,
which I wasn't at all. He lasted just one year
in Indie, didn't failed to survive training camp with his
hometown Chicago Bears in twenty thirteen, and that was that.
He was done with football, but he was not done
with the drinking and the pills that had become part

(10:57):
of his life. I most gonna sound weird. Injury minor injuries,
not like broken legs, but I like that type of pain.
I like dealing with that type of pain. I'm kind
of a sickle like that. Once you start kind of
padwob dogging. It was every time you have an injury,
get the pain killers and all that stuff. Who starts
solvating every time you get a chance to the injury

(11:18):
and with the things that are going on in this world,
and especially in our country, there is a socioeconomic or
a racial group that hasn't been touched for academic and the
the access to the bills or what it does or
how it affects you. Once he was sober and straight,
he could focus on what to do next. His grandfather
had been a Chicago fireman. His grandfather's oldest son, Tom's

(11:41):
uncle was a Chicago fireman. Tom's brother was a fireman
and a paramedic, his cousin was a fireman, and Gary,
Indiana firefighting was deeply embedded in the family. DNA Zimby
decided it was time he tried. It was a great experience.
It was something I really needed personally. Doesn't really have
it in my blood to do for twenty years, but

(12:03):
I did want to experience something outside of the athletic
realm and have something common, to be able to chit
chat with my brother, with my uncle, and really know
what my grandfather went through. How long were you in
that job? Not long enough to see everything, but long
enough to know I can small dead body from two
floors away. I had that tas of experience for two years.

(12:24):
He ran into burning buildings, helped put out fires and
rescued victims. One rescue he'll never forget. He went into
a building that was deceptive from the front. It didn't
even appear to be on fire, but ablaze was roaring
in back. Zimby and his crew went in and up
to the third floor and found a teenager lying face down.

(12:44):
Turned out it was a young man. Tom's brother knew.
He went to the back of the house, and thirty
seconds later we would have had pretty much two dead victims.
Being a part of it, this is allheartedly a team effort.
I did the carrying, my partner did the finding, my
lieutenant did the search. By the time I couldn't even
get in the door, I'm already carrying the one kid down.

(13:06):
And then by the time I get down the stairs
there's the girl that they found and they were carrying
down the stairs. Boy, I mean, it's not like you
really have time to think when you go do what
you do, and then not till afterwards thinks you wanting
to My body was tingling for almost a month after.
I'd still get emotional talking about it. Book. That was
my biggest accomplishment in my life, I said, just getting

(13:29):
the guy out of there. Yeah, you've been a part
of it. To try to understand zy'd be better, I
turned to Kevin Byrne, the Ravens Executive vice president of
Public and Community Relations. You'll understand why I had an
idea to talk to you, because I felt like, you've

(13:51):
you've got a Midwestern background, and here comes a guy
that's just could not be more Midwestern. And I felt
like somewhere could relate to him or had your eye
on him or something when he got here. Yeah, I'm
from Cleveland, he's from Chicago. I think similar cities in
terms of how important football is, how important athletics is

(14:13):
to a family, to a community, to a high school,
to a neighborhood. And Zibby had all of that. And
then Zibby is like canonized in Chicago because if you
are a Notre Dame football player and you're from Chicago,
then you own the city. And Zibby did it being
a guy who I don't know what he is, five

(14:34):
ten at most, just a little tough guy, and I
know that he was absolutely beloved in the city of
Chicago as a high school player and then going to
Notre Dame and becoming a star at Notre Dame, and
kind of a cult figure too, a cult figure because
I don't know anyone that certainly at Notre Dame, and
he brought it here, played like he did, great zeal

(14:58):
in intense intense. It's a tough guy game, and he
was a tough guy. I have found through the years
that football players admire among other athletes two sets of
athletes boxers or slash mma fighters now and basketball players
because they look at the box and he's saying, boy,
we're tough running around, but we have all this equipment on.

(15:19):
But those boxers they're out there getting smashed without equipment on.
And then basketball players. I think football players look and say,
we can't do everything they can do, and they admire that.
So so Zimmy comes in here. He's not only a
tough football player that they can see right away, he
also has the legend of his boxing. He's a professional
at that point, he is a professional. He literally had

(15:41):
a professional fight, maybe a number of them at Notre Dame.
He was a light heavyweight and he was good at it.
And then they Notre Dame, they had these famous angle
bouts annually. Notre Dame has an intramural boxing championship and
they've been doing it for years. And Zimmy gets in
there as a you know, one of the start Notre
Dame football players. I'm sure the coaches were real unhappy

(16:03):
about this. And he gets in there and he smacks
somebody around him. All of a sudden, you know, two
months later, his father found somebody who gets a manager,
and he's fighting a real fight, you know, in front
of fans who paid to see him. And he's a professional,
and the nc DOUBLEA had to approve the fight. And
so this was one feisty, tough little dude. I mean,

(16:26):
the Ravens have never had a professional boxer. No, no,
as a third round draft pick. No, clearly we have not,
you know. And he would talk about it too, like,
what are you gonna do this off season? I don't know,
I have to see my boxing schedule, and you know,
the coaches that we prefer to have you around here
to do our program so you become a better safety

(16:47):
and where we think you can make a lot of
money down the line. And you know, yeah, yeah, I'll
see what my boxing is doing first. And so he
would train for as a boxer in the off season
sometimes and sometimes he'd come here and train as football player,
but it was clearly different. Weld you talk boxing with him. Yes,
I'm a big boxing fan. My great uncle was a

(17:07):
ranked world fighter for the flyweight Championship of the World,
Mickey oh Burne, And so I knew a little bit
about boxing when when when we were kids, our grandfather,
Mickey's brother, uh, taught us how to fight, you know,
golden glove style in the basement, which which we were idiots,
you oversized gloves and uh and in our skinny little

(17:30):
arms and uh. But I knew about the sport a
little bit. I followed it closely when Zibbie was here
and we would talk about it. But his teammates love
to talk to him about it, and uh, you know,
and Zimby, you know, for all his notoriety, was kind
of a quiet person. I wouldn't say he was one
of the u the shining stars in the locker room

(17:50):
in terms of outgoing personalities. He had a good personality,
but he was he kept to himself. But when you
got him talking about boxing, boy, he would light up.
It's true what Kevin said that Zimbikowski became a professional
boxer as an underclassman at Notre Dame and put boxing
on hold for a couple of years after the Ravens
drafted him, but he couldn't stay away. He started boxing

(18:13):
again in twenty ten after his third season in Baltimore,
and he linked up with Emmanuel Stewart, a legendary trainer.
Something big could have developed, but Stewart died and Zimbikowski
didn't really get serious about boxing again until his years
as a fireman. Then he put it on hold again,
but now he's back in training. Really just kind of

(18:35):
looking too close. The chapter of my life was a
fighting chapter where it's just something that I've had in
my blood that I've been doing for so long. I
feel that there's just some especially my athletic ability and
my talent that are I don't want to leave them
on the table. And one years, so the last couple
of months training exclusively and really in the best ship

(18:55):
in my life right now, this is where I'm metaphor
that's what I've been working for him. Then slowly back
and talking. Attorney did like sparring videos and all that
stuff to be able to send to the old promotional
company to hopefully let them feel comfortable enough to pull
the trigger with me. You feel pretty optimistic about, you know,
getting getting a shot at it. Yeah, I do do.

(19:16):
I fight a different style. I'm like nothing people have
seen before. How is that if the speeds and the
power and the fluidity that I can lose. I learned
to fight as a welterweight, you know what I mean,
as a youngster. That's how I always trained, and I
grew and learned from strength and conditioning and actually being
able to play in the NFL with that type of

(19:38):
strength and explosiveness with your lay, the movements in the hand,
fighting stuff like that. There's no other boxer that's lived
through four years of the NFL or four years of college,
let alone in NFL. In the past few seasons, the
Ravens have brought back some former players for US seven

(20:00):
on seven touch football game at halftime one of the
Ravens home games at HIM and T Bank Stadium. It's
a lighthearted affair. Score is barely kept. The fans get
a kick out of seeing guys that used to cheer
for running around again the former players. They don't take
it very seriously. Sibakowski came back for the touch game
in twenty eighteen, and you could never imagine how much

(20:23):
it meant to him. Getting back last year was really really,
really really satisfying, and really, yes, I remembered how much
I loved being in Baltimore, employing for the Ravens and
the teammates and such. It's just such a great place
to such a great organization. It feels kind of the
hate that I thought I had for football coming back
you mean last year. Yeah, good, Yeah, you thought that

(20:47):
somewhere in the back of your mind you hated what
it had done to you, or something along those lines. Yeah, yeah,
pretty much. I just hated being misunderstood. I don't feel
like I was ever really understood, and I don't feel
like I really could my that's you know, put forward
when I got here. Playing five seasons in the NFL
is actually quite an athletic accomplishment, but looking back, he

(21:09):
thinks he knows he could have played longer. When I
was in the fire department was really grugal, dismissing the
game still being physically fit, so you know, I mean,
moving probably into what would have been the prime of
my career. Sitting in the firehouse during gang days was
really really really brutal. I mean, maybe days where once

(21:32):
I get home from shift, I would just see crying
in my garage. I had my garage set up as
my own boxing game, So I just training myself in
the in the garage and just trying to get back
build moves and get backfield muscles. All these guys that
I've talked to bowl or you know, I've always talked
to them. Did you ever think about life after football,
because that's really what this podcast is about. Did you

(21:53):
plan for it or contemplated or anything. Uh, you didn't
think it would be over so soon? No, I definitely
didn't think it be over so listening, but I guess
I had in line that whole fire department thing, But
I wouldn't say that was more coming from good parents
and having a good brother to take me along with it.
So but really I never planned for football, So I mean,

(22:17):
I didn't never think i'd be playing professionally or anything
like that. So I mean I really always kind to
adaptive and going with the flow. Well, it's good to
hear that you're in a better place with it now
and that coming back can be so meaningful. That's something. Yeah,
I mean just a little seven on seven game, but
it is remindful of a lot of things, right, Yeah,
it is for even the way it turned out, how

(22:39):
many people get to play one professional football game, but
as well box season, I want to thank Tom for
being so open and Frank I'll be rooting for him
to make that boxing come back. You can find out
more about him and his football career and his boxing
career at Baltimore Ravens Slash What Happened to That Guy?

(23:04):
This episode brings season one to a close, and yes,
by calling it season one, I'm saying there'll be a
season two. I've compiled a long list of former Ravens
whose stories deserve attention. I'll be cutting that list down
in the coming months, selecting who gets the nod, and
then I'll get started. I'm putting the episodes together right now.
The plan is to roll out season two of What

(23:26):
Happened to That Guy basically the same time next year,
during the twenty twenty NFL regular season. I've had a
ball with season one. I've been writing for a living
for a long time, and it's a solitary craft. It's
just me and the laptop cranking out articles and columns
and whatever. A podcast is a different creature. It's a collaboration.

(23:47):
I needed a ton of help to get this done,
and I thoroughly enjoyed that part of it being part
of a creative team. Matt Little, the expert on former
players in the Ravens marketing department, was in despaile in
suggesting interesting subjects and then helping me get in touch
with them. Ryanmink, my digital media colleague, and Michelle Andre,

(24:08):
senior vice president of Raven's Media, provided invaluable editorial assistance
and constant feedback. We picked out the music together. Matt
Brevett of Raven's Media basically saw to it that I
didn't screw up when I interviewed people and recorded my
speaking parts. I want to give special thanks to Britt Bischoff,
who was the engineer, slash producer slash editor for the

(24:32):
whole season. Every episode, she took what I said, what
my interview subject said, everything turned it into a polished,
listenable product. The sound levels, just write the music, just write.
I don't have that skill. If someone said to me,
I'll give you a million dollars to turn these recordings
into a podcast episode, I couldn't do it. Britt did

(24:54):
a terrific job. Lastly, i've heard from a lot of listeners,
which I appreciate, and I want to encourage you to
get in touch. Two. If you've got an opinion or
a suggestion about anything, don't hesitate to send me an
email at John dot Eisenberg at Ravens dot NFL dot net.

(25:14):
I hope you enjoyed Season one. Until next time, This
is John Eisenberg.