Inside an NFL game day with the Giants' Van Roten family

CHATHAM TOWNSHIP, N.J. — It is four hours before kickoff at MetLife Stadium, and the pregame routine at Greg Van Roten’s house has reached a critical juncture.

Van Roten, the Giants’ starting right guard, grew up on Long Island. So did his wife, Trish. What this means is that they regularly have 30 of their family and friends — two rows in a section of the stadium — on hand to cheer for the Giants and attend their pregame tailgate.

Trish is the family’s game-day quarterback, which was a lot easier a few years ago before she had two daughters in diapers. Now, as the minutes tick down before they depart for their 45-minute drive to MetLife Stadium, what can only be described as very organized chaos reigns at the house.

Three-month-old Anna is asleep in a car seat on the dining room table. Next to her are two clear backpacks — easier to get through security — stuffed with clothes, diapers, pacifiers and snacks.

In the driveway, Trish’s sister, Katie Brennan, and her fiance, T.J. Strong, are loading a cooler, a double stroller and a bag filled with formula and bottles into the back of two SUVs. Moose, the family’s chocolate Labrador retriever, is running from room to room checking out the action.

And Trish, balancing 22-month-old Nora on her hip, somehow is calmly directing it all with the precision of a military logistics officer.

“I’m leading the life of a showgirl,” Trish, 35, jokes, referring to the popular Taylor Swift song about how life in the public eye isn’t all that glamorous. “It’s very riveting.”

The life of a professional athlete’s partner often is viewed through a reality TV-like lens in popular culture, putting an emphasis on designer clothes, bikini shots and spa treatments. Many websites devote countless stories to WAGs, a common but somewhat derogatory acronym for “Wives and Girlfriends” of professional athletes.

Game day often is featured as the prime time to flaunt their fashion acumen, whether it be from a private box, like Swift in Kansas City, or an NBA courtside seat, like a rotating cast of Kardashians.

In reality, game day for a young NFL family is decidedly less exotic. And a lot more work.

Time to start getting ready

It is 6 p.m. Saturday and Greg kisses his family goodbye and leaves to join his teammates at a hotel near the stadium. This is when the serious prep begins back home.

After getting both daughters to sleep around 9, Trish packs everything for the next morning. Nora, who will spend the game in the team’s daycare facility, will have one backpack filled with her things. Anna, who will spend the game in the stands with Trish, needs another, including noise-cancelling headphones and at least three bottles.

Until she went on maternity leave before Nora was born, Trish was a fifth-grade teacher and is a big fan of post-it notes and charts. This comes in handy with her toughest job of the evening, assigning and emailing ticket links out to the 30 people who are going to the game.

“It’s crazy,” Trish says. “Greg gets the tickets and gives them to me. A big part of my night is figuring out where everyone should sit. My family. His family. My friends from home. Trust me. I literally make a seating chart like a wedding.”

She falls into bed around midnight and is up by 5:30 to get things ready for a 9:45 departure.

Trish’s parents, John and Eileen Brennan, live in Merrick and meet her at the players’ parking lot. Since Trish’s daughters were born, they’ve taken over a large portion of the tailgate and arrive with a van loaded with tables, drinks and sandwiches.

The family’s Long Island ties run deep. Trish grew up in Merrick and attended Kellenberg High School. Greg was a football star at nearby Chaminade. The two met in high school but didn’t start dating until college, when he was studying at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and earning All-Ivy League football honors and she was majoring in psychology and special education at Marist College.

The couple married in 2020 and own a home in Long Beach where they live in the offseason.

Greg’s journey to the Giants has been far from conventional. Undrafted out of college and with no agent, he used his marketing skills to build a website and then sent YouTube videos out to anyone he knew who had an NFL connection. The Packers brought him in for a workout and training camp and he ended up sticking around in Green Bay for two seasons.

The average length of an NFL career is 3.3 years, according to the NFL Players Association. Greg has lasted 11 years in the league, playing for eight different teams, including two seasons with the Jets in 2020 and 2021. He also had a two-year stint in the CFL in 2015 and 2016.

“I’ve never been a marquee name, and that’s fine,” said Greg, 35. “I’m a normal guy for the most part. It’s been really, really cool.”

Greg has started every game for the Giants since signing before the 2024 season. And one thing that’s been really cool is having his family there to support him.

The Giants are known as a family-friendly team. Not only do they have a daycare staffed with teachers for children too young to sit in the stands, but they have a family room and tent and a pregame period in which the family can meet with a player on the field and take a photo about 30 minutes or so before kickoff.

Trish, her daughters and her parents leave the tailgate early to meet Greg on the field. After she drops Nora off at daycare, she heads into the stands to catch kickoff, but she leaves soon after to go feed Anna in the family tent.

  

‘Hey, is that Greg?’

It is early in the third quarter. Nora is napping in the daycare. Anna has been fed and is sleeping in a carrier on her mother’s lap. And the Giants, trailing by 13, have the ball at San Francisco’s 48-yard line.

Giants fans go wild as Jaxson Dart scrambles to the left for an 18-yard gain. But something is clearly amiss. A player, an offensive lineman, is down on the field. “Hey, is that Greg?” asks someone in a seat behind Anna.

When your husband plays professional football, you don’t watch the game like everyone else. Or at least you don’t watch looking for the same things. Trish, while cradling her daughter, constantly scans the field for her husband’s number, 74. Especially after a play in which someone is slow to get up.

“To everyone else, they are athletes. They are on their fantasy team,” Trish says. “They want them to do well. They want the team to do well.

“From a perspective of a family member, you care about the team and it’s their livelihood and it’s fun. But ultimately, his health is the most important thing. So it’s very nerve-wracking.”

The player who’s down turns out to be John Michael Schmitz, the center, who leaves the field with what later is announced as a shin injury. Trish feels for his family. She has been there. Almost everyone whose relative plays in the NFL has been there and knows that helpless feeling of watching a loved one being escorted off the field when you have no idea what is going on.

Greg, who is 6-4, 295 pounds, has been fairly fortunate for a player who has been in the league for more than a decade. His most serious injury was a turf toe so severely injured that he had to have surgery and miss the final five games of the 2019 season with the Carolina Panthers

“He’s a big guy, but you can wind up at the bottom of a pile,” Trish says. “And there’s other big guys out there.”

The constant threat of injuries isn’t the only aspect of the game that can take a toll on families. Unlike the NBA or MLB, most contracts in the NFL are not fully guaranteed. For a significant chunk of his career, including currently, Greg has played on a one-year contract.

Because of that and the constant changing of teams, Trish did not move with her husband during the regular season until they decided to have children.

“I had a career and a job, and it was easier to fly to his games,” she said. “The first time I moved was to Vegas right before I gave birth to Nora. I didn’t want to be a single mom and not have him see his kids. So we moved and we had our Vegas baby.”

A long day for all

It is 40 minutes after game time, and 49ers fans are still celebrating their 34-24 win outside the stadium.

This has been another rough season for the Giants, and the mood is somewhat subdued at the Van Roten postgame tailgate. Still, everyone perks up when Greg joins the group about 40 minutes after the game. It’s been a long day and both he and Trish are exhausted, though for decidedly different reasons.

Trish, who is the second of three sisters, didn’t follow football before meeting her husband. Greg is the middle of three boys from Rockville Centre, two of whom played college football. All of the siblings live in the New York area and were at Sunday’s game.

No one plays the game forever, and the Van Rotens know how lucky they are to have this kind of family support, especially at this point in their lives.

“I have never doubted myself. I always believed, and I had a few things break my way,” Greg said. “But like you’ve seen, I have an incredible support group here that have always believed in me. When maybe I was kind of wavering, they never wavered.”

The family hangs out for another 45 minutes or so, waiting for traffic to die down. When they get home, they likely will watch Sunday night football and Greg will take a bath in Epsom salts. As the sun fades outside the stadium, however, this is their time to celebrate the life they have with their extended family.

“I don’t know if our girls will remember it, but we will,” Trish said. “It’s a different way of life, but we make it work.

“And it’s fun.”