Quinton Jefferson hurried home from practice one night in September to build a bed and ready a hot meal for his travel-weary wife and kids before their arrival at his apartment in downtown Buffalo.
The Bills’ new defensive tackle last hugged his family in July, when he left his house in the Pacific Northwest for training camp in Orchard Park. He planned that they’d spend football season in Seattle, where in his four years with the Seahawks, they’d been embraced by the community.
But the time apart had been a challenge.
“It was difficult being away from my wife,” Jefferson said. “You’re just so used to being around each other, and especially since the pandemic happened, you’re with this person all day every day, and then all of a sudden – bam – I’m not with you for months. You don’t realize how much you lean on your partner for certain things.”
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Before the season opener, Nadia Jefferson and the couple’s four children, ages 9 to 2 years old, moved to reunite their family. A former pre-K teacher, she is homeschooling the kids in their two-bedroom apartment, in part because of the challenges of remote learning, in part to maintain a clean “home bubble,” a commitment each player has made to his teammates, who are screened for coronavirus each day.
The Bills host the Seahawks on Sunday, and with no fans allowed to attend because of New York’s restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19, Nadia and the kids will remain cooped up, watching Quinton play against his former teammates on TV.
Relocating their young family across the country and acclimating to a new city would have been trying in any circumstance, and the pandemic has added another layer of difficulty. But they’re happier together, even though it means largely living in isolation.
“Since we’ve been here, we’ve really just been a tight bubble,” Quinton said. “They do home school so we don’t have to worry about them going to school, and then we really just try to keep them busy. The other day they went to the pumpkin patch. Last week, they went to the zoo. Just to do something. Because it can drive you insane just sitting in the house all the time.”
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Jefferson, 27, never considered opting out of playing this season because of the pandemic, but worried about his family getting sick, a major reason they originally planned to stay in Seattle.
“Q’s biggest thing was he didn’t want to give it to us,” Nadia said. “He was like, ‘I’m probably going to end up getting it. I don’t want you guys to get it.’ But I think the Bills have done a good job of keeping the players there so long so they don’t have anywhere to go. I think they’ve done a good job and I think it’s helped protect us, because it’s not like I can go too many places with the kids or hang out with a whole bunch of different people.”
Zoey, the oldest of three daughters and “little second mom,” is in fourth grade and a whiz with Legos. She turned 9 in March and celebrated her birthday riding go-karts and eating dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, a day before Washington state locked down.
“I told her, ‘You might be one of the luckiest kids in America,’ ” Quinton said.
Their middle daughters, identical twins Charleigh and Quinn, turned 6 in July and started kindergarten this year. They’re always singing, dancing, playing pretend and at each other’s throats.
“Originally, I thought having twins, they’ll have partners for life. They’ll take care of each other,” Quinton said. “But it’s like the complete opposite. They literally try to kill each other every day. … They’re very possessive about things and even me. If one of them is sitting next to me, the other one will try to sit in between. They’ll literally fight to sit next to me.”
Their son, Yasin, turns 3 in December and loves Transformers.
“I feel like every guy wants his boy to pass on his legacy, his name,” Quinton said. “But he don’t want nothing to do with me. He’s a mama’s boy.”
Nadia, 30, chose to stay home to raise the kids years ago, once paying for childcare became too expensive. She was a 22-year-old single mom when she met Quinton, who was 19, and the twins were born while he was still in college at Maryland, where he played for the Terrapins and earned a degree in family science.
“He’s just really sweet and he would do things without me asking,” Nadia said. “When we had the twins, I had a C-section and I couldn’t move. He was the one who’d change all the diapers. He helped me shower. He did all those things, and he just did it.
“Even when Yasin was born, he’s in the NFL and a lot of guys, they expected him to come in (to work) and he was like, ‘My child is being born. No, I’m not missing that.’ And I just love everything about him.”
'You've got to adjust'
Jefferson is the highest-graded defensive tackle on the Bills this season, among those with regular playing time, according to Pro Football Focus. He’s been the best pass rusher of the group and second-best against the run, behind only Harrison Phillips, while playing 54% of the defensive snaps through eight games.
His play has translated into 16 tackles, four quarterback hits, two sacks and two turnovers, including a strip sack fumble he caused and recovered in a victory against the Las Vegas Raiders. Jefferson also tipped a pass that Jerry Hughes intercepted to seal a season sweep of the New York Jets.
“His play has been relentless,” Hughes said. “A lot of the young guys see it and before practice, they’re always picking his brain, working with him on pass rush moves, working on how they can be successful with their hands. But that’s Q. He’s going to be relentless. He’s going to come after the quarterback every play, every time he’s out there. I like it when he’s out there on my side, because I like that dog, and that’s what we need to have more of on our team.”
Bills coach Sean McDermott has been pleased with the pickup.
“He’s tough,” McDermott said. “He works extremely hard. He plays hard in the games, and I think he’s on an (ascending) path just because of him understanding, now, what we’re looking for both on and off the field.”
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Quinton and Nadia moved cross country with young children once before, when the Seahawks traded up to draft him in the fifth round in 2016.
Jefferson spent most of his first four NFL seasons with Seattle, a stretch briefly interrupted by a stint on the Los Angeles Rams’ practice squad. He started 24 of 30 games the last two years, playing both defensive tackle and end, and finished last season with a career-high 26 tackles, 3.5 sacks and three pass breakups while playing 55% of defensive snaps.
Nadia, in time, became ingrained in the community, making friends with some of the wives and girlfriends of her husband’s teammates, as well as the mothers of some of her daughters’ school friends, and had gotten so comfortable opening up about her experiences that she sporadically shared aspects of the family’s life on a blog titled “Jefferson Party of 6” at jeffersonfamilygang.com.
The most recent post, in May, recaps a family trip to Disneyland in February, the first couple of months of the pandemic and Quinton signing with the Bills in free agency.
“We miss the heck out of Big Q,” Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said this week. “He was a real favorite of ours and a guy we drafted. It just came time in his contract, he had a chance to be a free agent, and as it happens guys sometimes get an opportunity that they can’t turn down. …
“I wish we could have kept him, but we couldn’t at the time. And that is the way the league is. The opportunities sometimes are better on other teams for guys (because) they can pay them more, and I’m for all the guys. They don’t get to play this game for very long. They’ve got to cash in on it.”
The Bills were drawn to Jefferson’s versatility and offered a two-year, $13.5 million contract with $6.25 million guaranteed.
The $3 million signing bonus was more than he’d made in his first four years in the league combined.
Farwell will always view his time with Seattle as the most formative for him as a man, a player and, ultimately, as a coach.
Bills special teams coordinator Heath Farwell, an assistant with the Seahawks during Jefferson’s first two years in the league, championed the signing.
“When (the Bills) were talking about potentially bringing him in in free agency,” Farwell said, “I'm going, ‘Go get that guy. He’s a talented player. You want him in our building just to bring that competitive side.’ ”
Jefferson signed just days after his family went into lockdown in Washington state.
He began attending the Bills’ virtual offseason meetings as Nadia juggled the kids, with Zoey similarly finishing the school year on video conferences.
At night, they’d gather around a board game or the TV.
“At the start of the pandemic we’d have movie night,” Quinton said. “Every week, we’d find a movie to rent and have popcorn, something fun just to keep the kids sane, to keep ourselves sane. You’ve got to get creative.”
His departure for training camp was abrupt.
And the change of scenery was jarring.
“It’s definitely been different, especially coming to a new team,” Quinton said. “You usually have OTAs and minicamp to really come in, start to form some chemistry with guys, form a rapport with guys, and now it’s kind of weird because everything’s via Zoom, so you really don’t have any relationship with guys, literally until we came into camp. And now you’re literally just starting to get to know guys, starting to mesh, trying to form some chemistry in this little bit of time.
“We had like two weeks of camp and then we started to play games. It was like, ‘I’m out there with you, but I still really don’t even know you.’ It was weird. It’s still super weird because we can’t even do anything outside of here. But with anything, you’ve got to adjust.”
'As long as we're together'
Back home in Seattle, the full weight of the household fell on Nadia’s shoulders, while in Buffalo, Quinton returned each night to an empty apartment.
FaceTime was no substitute for family time.
“It just got tough,” Quinton said. “My kids were missing me and were upset because I’m not there. And I was comfortable for the most part with how things were going in camp. By the end of camp we had no (Covid-19) cases, so they came.”
Nadia’s mother flew from Baltimore to Seattle to help her daughter pack and accompanied the group on the flight to Buffalo.
They felt safe, Nadia said, because Delta Airlines provided ample personal space and the family usually takes up a full row when they fly.
“The kids do real well wearing masks,” Nadia said. “They’ve gotten used to it enough, which is sort of sad.”
Nadia packed apple slices, crackers, “every snack possible” for the kids, she said, but had no time for a meal during the more than six hours in the air and brief layover.
The night they arrived at Quinton’s apartment, he’d finished making the beds and had a hot meal waiting. He ordered from The Cheesecake Factory, like on Zoey’s birthday.
The last couple of months, they’ve largely lived in isolation.
“It’s not like I know so many people here that we can all just go hang out,” Nadia said. “So that’s a part of it. I can’t go do much because it’s not like a whole bunch of things are open. But I still do stuff with the kids. We go to the park, because to me, it’s outdoors. I tell them we can’t really play with other kids. And that part is hard because they miss that element. But it’s nice having family close, because we can visit, like cousins and grandma and grandpa, which still gets us other contact that’s not just mom and dad.”
Quinton said his parents, who live in Pittsburgh and sometimes visit, are tested by their employers.
“So I was comfortable with them coming back and forth,” Quinton said. “They’re in good health. I know they’re negative and the kids are negative.”
Other excursions are less exciting.
“Our biggest outing sometimes is, ‘Let’s get in the car to go pick up groceries at the store,’” Nadia said. “I order them online and just go to Wegman’s and they put them in the trunk, and that’s our day. And we go through the Starbucks drive-through. Those are the highlights.”
Until Quinton comes home from practice, and transforms from defensive lineman to what he calls the “Human Jungle Gym … because they all jump on me.”
“It’s a long day, I’m tired, exhausted,” he said, “but at the end of the day my kids don’t care. They just want their daddy time. And they appreciate it. Sometimes it’s just the little things, like watching a movie or just reading them a book or something.
“At some point, whether it’s five minutes, whether it’s 10 minutes or an hour, just devote some time to them and acknowledge them, because I have to realize I’ve been gone literally all day and all they want is me. So I just try to give them that time.”
Quinton spent Halloween with his family last Saturday, because he didn’t have to travel with the Bills playing at home the next day.
The kids dressed up, painted pumpkins and made little paper monsters that Nadia taped on the windows. They went to the park. And when they came home, Nadia scattered candy all over the apartment and turned the kids loose in a sort of trick-or-treating meets Easter egg hunt.
“We don’t need some grand house,” Nadia said. “We have a nice house in Seattle and we love it and that’s our home, but we can make it work anywhere we go, as long as we’re all together.”
Then they rented “The Witches,” settling in for movie night.
Quinton caught a piece of it before he had to leave for the team hotel. Daddy had to go to work. But he’d be back the next day.