The magnitude of what he had just experienced was not lost on Leighton Vander Esch.
Speaking in the locker room minutes after the rookie linebacker’s Dallas Cowboys won their regular-season home opener over the New York Giants, Vander Esch was beaming.
Five years before, he had been playing 8-man football in front of maybe a few hundred fans. Last Sunday at AT&T Stadium, he put up a strong home debut in front of a crowd of 90,000.
“It’s been pretty incredible, to be honest,” Vander Esch said. “There has been nothing less than what I had dreamed of it to be like.