Former NFL linebacker Marshall McFadden is all about life in the fast lane.
While he might not be a household name to many football fans, the South Carolina native will forever be able to boast that he played in the pros.
But he didn’t do so for too long.
After going undrafted out of South Carolina State in 2011, McFadden was handed a lifeline by the Pittsburgh Steelers the following year and saw the field once in the famous black and gold.
He then joined the Oakland Raiders in 2013, where he played four games, before moving on to the then-St. Louis Rams in 2014.
All in all, the linebacker recorded seven total tackles in 10 NFL games, but didn’t do quite enough to establish himself as a regular on any roster before calling it a day.
He retired from football in 2017, and has since turned to another classic American pastime: Stock car racing.
Growing up in the small town of Lamar, SC, McFadden was less than 15 miles from NASCAR‘s historic Darlington Raceway, which has hosted the Southern 500 for 75 years.
Despite that, the former linebacker never had any interest in racing.
“I’m from Lamar and I lived less than five minutes away from the track,” McFadden said.
“But I had never been to a race. That shows how much interest I had in the sport.”
Even after retiring from football, and living close to another storied track — Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina — McFadden still showed little interest in racing as he made the transition from NFL athlete to day-to-day life.
But that all changed when he received a call from Curtis Walls, a longtime friend and NASCAR pit crew member.
“He asked if I had ever considered the sport, working as a member of the pit crew, and then he invited me to come to a practice for the Chip Ganassi Racing team,” McFadden told South Carolina’s Times and Democrat newspaper in 2018.
“I was just moved by how it all worked. I was impressed by their ability to work together (in practice), their attitudes and their inviting personalities.”
After spending a month visiting practices as a volunteer, McFadden got his chance to train with the team when Shaun Peet, one of the pit crew coaches, asked him to put gas in the car.
“Coach (Peet) gave me that first opportunity because he liked my work ethic,” McFadden recalled.
And following almost five more months of volunteering at practices, in February 2018, he signed a contract with the team to work as a fuelman.
That responsibility involved emptying two near-100-pound over-the-shoulder gas cans into the car’s fuel cell in less than 15 seconds during a pit stop.
As a former footballer, that kind of weight was unlikely to faze McFadden, and he soon moved on to join the pit crews for former NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Cody Coughlin and ex-Monster Energy Series driver Jeffrey Earnhardt.
With the latter, McFadden experienced one of the sport’s biggest events, the Daytona 500.
He is not the only person to make that kind of switch, with one Hollywood actor turned driver claiming a top-10 finish at the race.
“The Daytona 500 was so big,” he said.
“It was like the Super Bowl of NASCAR. It was so big and exciting. It was a humbling experience.”
In more recent years, McFadden has taken on another role.
By 2021, he was working as a Jackman, making him the first person to touch the car on stops. His Instagram bio now reads that he is on the TrackHouse Racing pit crew.
It’s his job to set the tone for his teammates in the pit, and the role involves positioning a jack underneath the car to raise it up enough so the tires can be changed.
Once completed, he lowers the car’s body, moves to the opposite side and repeats the process.
The average pit stop takes between 12 to 16 seconds, meaning time is of the essence.
Earlier this month, footage from one of McFadden’s stops went viral, and has racked up more than 10 million views.
He appears to be working on Ross Chastain’s Busch No. 1 car, which is in and out of the stop in just 12 seconds.
“It’s the kind of adrenaline that you’d have in any sport,” he said of the job back in 2021.
“When the cars are revved up and they’re coming for pit row, you know you’ve got to perform an impossible task.
“It gets your nerves up, and you get a little jittery because you know you can’t mess up.”
But having come through college football, and played in the pros, pressure is something McFadden thrives on.
“I love competing. I’m a competitor,” he said.
“It’s in my genetic makeup. Being able to compete at this stage of my life is a blessing.”
