As the day Marshal Yanda was drafted turned into the night Marshal Yanda was drafted, the watch party in Iowa City continued. Over two dozen friends and family members had come to Ruth Yanda's house to toast her son's new beginnings. There were games of cornhole and plates of food. Memories filled the air and passed the time as the NFL draft's opening three rounds unfolded, slowly, from a TV.
"It was a fun day," Yanda recalled Friday. He paused, as if accessing a memory from April 2007. "It was a long day."
When the Ravens took the Iowa offensive lineman in the third round with the No. 86 overall pick, it was getting late, around 9:30 p.m., Yanda said. A part of him now, all these years later, feels bad that it took so long for the party to have something to celebrate. The first round alone had taken over six hours.
But in the moment he heard his name called and his life changed forever, there was joy, gratification, pride, a cocktail of emotions so strong it made a farm boy from Anamosa cry over all he had accomplished and all that lay ahead.
"You see the phone call and the tears of joy and the tears of just, like, 'I did it,' " said Ryan Miller, a former teammate. "Everything he worked at for that phone call was expressed in his face at that moment of time."
That moment is seared into Miller's memory. He calls it "probably one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of." He still talks about it with his two young sons. They know Yanda as the right guard who's played in Baltimore as long as they've been alive, just as defenses know him as the humble heartbeat of the Ravens' near-unstoppable smashmouth attack, just as teammates and coaches know him as the franchise's next Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee.
Now a career of grinding and refining is set for a momentous night under the bright lights of prime time. With Monday's game against the Los Angeles Rams, his 186th in Ravens colors, Yanda will pass legendary former teammate Jonathan Ogden for the most appearances (postseason included) by an offensive lineman in franchise history.
How'd he get here? Miller knows. The early-college friends who reunited at that draft party, the old teammates and coaches who could only watch from afar, they know, too.
It started where it ends for most players.
