The vibrating buzz on an agent’s cell phone is like a heartbeat — it’s how they know they are alive. Agents are constantly on their phones during the four months leading up to the NFL Draft — gauging teams’ interest in their clients, selling their clients to said teams, keeping the player and his parents in the loop and then breaking off a crumb or two of information for the starving media to create some buzz. 

And then it happens. The draft.

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A player’s lifelong dream comes true and it’s a beautiful feeling. 

That euphoria lasts for the agents for, oh, 90 seconds. Then they start fretting about potential pitfalls, such as family members looking to cash in.

“The great thing on draft day is to watch the parents celebrate and cry,” player agent Doug Hendrickson said in a recent interview. “It’s also the worst thing. Because they can be the biggest culprits in these guys’ careers. Some have their hands out and they never go back in. We have to be the ‘no’ people and advise these guys right away.”

Want to buy your mom a house? Or your uncle a car? That’s beautiful. You know what else is beautiful? Waiting a bit. 

One year ago, Hendrickson, 49, and CJ LaBoy, 35, joined the sports marketing and talent management company Wasserman, and today they are staring out the windows of their new office in Larkspur. The two Bay Area natives and current Marin residents, who represent stars such as Marshawn Lynch, Cam Jordan, Michael Bennett and Marcus Peters among the agency’s 77 NFL clients, use the Bay Area and all of its possibilities when recruiting players.

This year, 14 Wasserman clients were drafted — the fourth-most of any agency in the country — including eight in the first three rounds. Defensive tackle Jerry Tillery went in the first round to the Chargers after — get this — Hendrickson and LaBoy had to convince teams that he really loved football despite … traveling abroad so much in college.

“The whole positioning of these guys for four months is a lot, and then once they’re drafted it’s the intros to the city, getting them set up, getting them acclimated with the team, contracts,” said Hendrickson, who now has represented 22 first-round picks. “It’s a lot. There is a lot of legwork to get these guys situated. Educating the parents, too.”

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Over the course of a two-hour interview, Hendrickson and LaBoy shared some stories from behind the scenes of life as an influential NFL player agent.

Like the time Hendrickson was at a client’s house one day, along with the player’s family members, when he realized that the player didn’t have direct deposit because the team didn’t do it.

“He had eight checks on his dresser, $450,000 a check,” Hendrickson said. “He was getting so much pressure from his family that he was like, ‘I’m just going to give one to my mom, one to my sister …’ I was like, ‘Dude, that’s $900,000.’ He said it was OK because it was coming every week.”

(Side note: It’s not, but more on that later.)

The two agents’ jobs have definitely changed since the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement not only reduced compensation for drafted rookies, but slotted their salaries and signing bonuses based on when they were picked. All contracts are four years in length, with teams having a pricier fifth-year option on first-round picks.

“You can’t really get around the slotting,” LaBoy said. “There are pockets in the draft where you can get around it in terms of guaranteed money. The third round is the battleground now between teams and agents. Agents are trying to maximize the contract value and teams don’t want to pay whatever they can pay.

“But, for the most part, if you’re supposed to get a million dollars, you’re going to get a million dollars. What you work hard on is the structure, the language, the payout, the guarantee. That’s where it gets tricky because some teams have (salary)-cap problems or cash problems. That’s when it could get a little sticky.”

A good agent not only knows each team’s cap, but also the owner’s available cash and tendencies. 

“A couple years ago, the agent for Joey Bosa had him hold out because he didn’t want deferrals,” Hendrickson said of the Chargers’ Pro Bowl defensive end and No. 3 overall pick in 2016.

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Teams like to defer bonus payments for both interest reasons and because some owners are stingy with cash and want to use the revenue from season-ticket sales.

“The Chargers have always done deferrals and are not going to change for him, so you go through a dog fight of an 87-day holdout to get non-deferrals,” Hendrickson said. “That’s great … deferrals aren’t good to have. But certain teams are going to do them. Like the Vikings — they do three-year deferrals for all of their players. We have to know what the team’s tendencies are, because we’re trying to advise our clients on deals and if we’re not tuned in to how teams do things, we’re not doing our job.”

Some teams have really dug in, like the 49ers.

Even when they gave quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo a five-year deal worth $137.5 million with $48.7 million fully guaranteed, the contract allows the team to easily get out of the deal in 2020 if he doesn’t play like a top-10 quarterback. He was paid huge upfront with a $28 million roster bonus and nearly $42 million overall in the first season of the extension he signed in 2018, but after this season, the 49ers could theoretically cut him and deal with minimal dead-cap hits equal to the prorated portion of his $7 million signing bonus.

The biggest point of contention for Hendrickson is when during the calendar year the 49ers typically have the triggers in their contracts. Garoppolo’s 2020 contract won’t become guaranteed until April 1, 2020, when $15.7 million of his $23.8 million base salary locks in. By contrast, the Raiders’ Derek Carr saw his $19.9 million salary for 2019 guaranteed on Feb. 6.

“The Niners’ contracts are bullshit,” Hendrickson said. “They are team-friendly deals, they do the triggers in April versus normally in March and no one has really had the leverage to change it.”

“The one person that did,” LaBoy said, “was (Colin) Kaepernick and he took the shittiest deal in terms of structure — and that perpetuated the problem.”

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Kaepernick, who opted out of his contract in March 2017 when it was clear the 49ers were going to release him, wound up receiving less than one-third of his then-“record” $126-million contract in 2014. He hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2016 season. The extension that then-agents Scott Smith and Jason Bernstein got him, despite that inflated total value, included less than $13 million in full guarantees and essentially became a year-to-year contract guaranteed only for injury.

“Yeah, Kap never figured things were going to go sideways as fast as they did,” said Hendrickson, who doesn’t represent any 49ers. “He figured he was going to be on the team for a while.”

Hendrickson has been doing this for 25 years, and it’s gone by quickly. He got hooked when he was playing basketball for Monta Vista High School in Cupertino and met top basketball agent Bill Duffy, who helped out with the team. Hendrickson started working for Duffy in college and knew this was what he wanted to do, then became certified and went the football route.

Early on, Hendrickson knew how he wanted to approach young athletes looking for representation.

“We try and recruit through the front door by going to the parents first,” Hendrickson said. 

Fifteen years ago, that front door was in Kellyton, Ala., population 217. Future New York Giants star Justin Tuck, then playing at Notre Dame, told his family that Hendrickson was coming to try and sign him.

“I am from rural Alabama, with a capital R,” Tuck said in a phone interview. “Imagine Doug with his California ‘hey bro’ attitude walking into a room with my dad, my grandfather, my three uncles, my brother, my mom and six of my cousins. All those guys go at least 6-5, 250, all hard-working, Southern Black gentlemen, so that was an intimidating room to be in.

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“And when he left that day, my dad said, ‘I like that guy. You’re going with that guy.’ It didn’t matter what I thought.” 

Tuck laughs. 

“I would call Doug a chameleon,” Tuck said. “A lot of times that comes off fake, but he fits in everywhere. He expressed an interest in where me and my family was from, and he fits in well.  A lot of coaches and other people who had visited, you could feel the phony around it. Not with Doug. He made it known that he appreciated hard work and how I was raised, and he won my parents over.”

Hendrickson had seen the benefits of hard work in the NFL first hand.

“My cousins were (former 49ers) Jim and Keith Fahnhorst and I saw all the players back in those days who got bad representation,” Hendrickson said. “We realized that this has to be a lifetime commitment, not a seven- to 10-year commitment. Unlike basketball and baseball, the average career is three and a half years. So we have to figure out what we can do while they’re playing football to maximize when they’re done playing football.”

Former Bills receiver Stevie Johnson once thanked LaBoy, his agent, for “being the big brother that I don’t have but always wanted.”

LaBoy actually got his start in the business by helping out his brother, Travis, when the Hawaii All-American linebacker was getting ready for the draft in 2004. CJ was working for his dad’s law firm when his little brother asked for some guidance and help vetting agents. 

“I knew right away that’s what I was supposed to do with my life,” LaBoy said.

LaBoy met Hendrickson while he was vetting agents for his brother, and was impressed when he heard about all of the agent’s connections off the field. (Hendrickson, for example, is good friends with California governor Gavin Newsom and used to bring him to Raiders training camp in Napa to watch Lynch.)

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LaBoy majored in business administration at Saint Mary’s and earned a masters in sport management from USF. He became a certified agent in 2005 and tried to get a meeting with Hendrickson. 

“He stalked me for like four months, and then we finally sat down and I gave him an internship,” Hendrickson said. “It was obviously a great move.”

The pair made what they felt was another great move when they joined Wasserman. The agency’s football division is headed by agent Will Wilson, who represents Colts quarterback Andrew Luck. Hendrickson and LaBoy, originally together at the Octagon agency, left ISE last year to join Wasserman as executive vice president of football and vice president of football, respectively.

“Wasserman has a really cool platform, from a player’s standpoint,” Hendrickson said. “It’s so much bigger than between the lines.”

Eighty percent of the duo’s clients come from cold calls, which their late mentor Eugene Parker would have thought was funny.

“He never ever cold-called someone,” Hendrickson said. “Every player he had was a warm referral.”

Hendrickson and LaBoy talk to parents right away about life after the player’s career, and they sell the Bay Area.

“We sell the fact that we live in the mecca of the richest and smartest people in the world,” Hendrickson said. “Us knowing people at the forefront of the tech, software, venture capital and private equity industries is big, not only for the recruiting process but also when guys get in. Those relationships really help when their career is over, like we did for Marshawn.”

The former Bills, Seahawks and Raiders running back has created a business empire, from Beast Mode Apparel to esports investments to being a spokesman for Skittles. Lynch has used his brand to create many opportunities for kids from the East Bay, from camps to clinics to internships. 

Lynch and fellow Oakland native Peters recently put on a carnival for kids in Oakland. The pair’s Fam 1st Family Foundation brought in rock climbing walls, slides and Zorb balls in swimming pools, served burgers and cotton candy and it was all free for the kids, many of whom had never been to a carnival.

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It’s that kind of stuff — and the desire to make a difference — that Hendrickson and LaBoy are looking for when they start putting a small list together of 30 or so college players to cold call every August. 

“We’re not just looking for any player,” LaBoy said. “We are looking for players who want to be great on the field and appreciate the big-picture look, and that can be hard — many of these guys are programmed from an early age to focus on practice and the game. We want guys who are big on family and community and want to take advantage of the opportunities that Silicon Valley provides.”

And it’s a great bonus to be able to pick which players you would like to represent. 

“Twenty-five years ago, when we were just starting out, God, if you had a pulse, we would take ya,” Hendrickson said, laughing. “We want the right guys now. We are interviewing them as much as they are us. We don’t need them. If we don’t get them, the lights don’t go off. …

“(LaBoy) has three kids, I have three kids, we want to work for the guys that we really want to work for. We have cut bait on a bunch of guys, and usually we look back and are thankful we did.”

In much the same way they are thankful they signed Tuck. 

The defensive lineman played 10 years with the Giants and networked off the field as hard as he worked at getting past offensive linemen on it. Hendrickson and LaBoy helped him get a lot of business cards. Then Tuck and his wife, Lauran, founded a nationwide literacy program. Tuck eventually went on to play for the Raiders, attend Wharton Business School and now he is working at Goldman Sachs. 

“That’s an example of success, a perfect case study,” Hendrickson said. “He wants to pay it back.”

Some of their clients needed a lot more guidance than Tuck did.

“Eighty percent of our job during the week is taking care of these guys and making sure that things are done the right way,” Hendrickson said. “That they’re not getting taken advantage of by bad financial advisors … that happens all the time. We have 15 calls a week because something sketchy is going on.”

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A lot of times it stems from the player’s family members, and Hendrickson and LaBoy blame the NFL for a lot of that.

“In football, you get paid over 17 weeks,” Hendrickson said. “It’s criminal what happens, and we think the NFL does a really terrible job in that they almost want these players to spend money. Because they should be paid over 52 weeks. That would cut down and alleviate pressure from family members.”

Like the one player who almost handed out $450,000 checks. Hendrickson reminded him that the checks would not be coming from January to September. 

“If he was getting paid over 52 weeks, those checks would be like $140,000,” Hendrikson said. “The league should do a better job and all those guys should be paid over the year, not the season.”

Why won’t the league do that?

“What they’ll say is that it’s an accounting issue,” Hendrickson said. “Players aren’t guaranteed so what happens if they get cut? But that’s a bunch of BS, because there are easy ways to figure it out. We have asked and pushed for teams to pay our guys year-round.”

Hendrickson and LaBoy took a poll of all their veteran players, and every one of the retired guys said they would have rather gotten paid over the year. It makes their lives easier.

The pair also reminds their clients of the short lifespans of NFL careers and likes to discourage the flashy purchases of homes and cars for family members. 

Let’s say a player pays cash for a new house. Their financial obligations on the home aren’t done just because there’s no mortgage. There is still the property taxes and the upkeep. That’s why Hendrickson and LaBoy say players should wait until the second contract to purchase a home for cash. 

“It’s constant educational process because we want our guys to be financially sound when they are done playing,” LaBoy said. 

Some players need more help than others. Former 49ers running back Kevan Barlow went into a Bentley dealership right after he was drafted with no money. They knew who he was, though, and sold him the car. 

“I called the dealer the next day and told the salesman he is taking the car back or he is getting fired,” Hendrickson said. “You can’t sell a guy with no money a car. … Sometimes guys think it’s funny money. It can go quickly, too.”

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There is always something happening with one of their clients, and Hendrickson and LaBoy don’t always have the answers.

Former 49ers and Raiders star pass rusher Aldon Smith, still only 29, has been out of the league for the last three seasons because of an addiction to alcohol and several arrests. He was arrested again last month in Mission, Kan., on suspicion of drunk driving. 

“We’re sick every day about Aldon,” Hendrickson said. “He never could get it together. Eight, nine times in rehab. … Those are the things that keep you up at night. What could have been? And you think about the great player that he was, and you want him to just turn it around for his own happiness. But some guys just can’t take that path.”

Hendrickson and LaBoy will watch as many college interviews as they watch game tapes to get a sense of which college players will be a good fit. Tillery, the Notre Dame defensive tackle who wound up going 28th in the first round to the Chargers this year, was one such fit. 

“Jerry stood out because he is so eccentric and he has this thirst for culture and has a lot of great ideas,” LaBoy said. “It’s great for us because we have a guy that wants to get out there and do stuff.”

Tillery said his parents both loved Hendrickson and LaBoy and that their roster of clients got his attention. 

“If they’re cool enough for Beast Mode, they’re cool enough for me,” Tillery said in a phone interview. “No, they both seemed very genuine when I first talked to them. They seemed to know what I wanted to accomplish right away and they earned my parents’ and my trust very quickly.”

Sometimes, Hendrickson and LaBoy just have to find the right comparison to get the prospective client and then teams excited.

They did a lot of selling of largely unknown Eastern Michigan defensive end Maxx Crosby to teams. 

“We told teams he was a young Jared Allen,” Hendrickson said. “Gangly, raw, motor, the whole deal. And he went in the fourth round to the Raiders.”

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Their positioning of players starts at the NFL scouting combine in February, but the advocating kicks into high gear in March and April. The six weeks before the draft is when general managers are really putting the puzzle together, with Hendrickson and LaBoy having a box of pieces handy.

Try this one. It will fit. 

Take Tillery. He tore his shoulder in the game against Stanford and decided to postpone surgery until after the combine.

“We had to keep teams informed of how he was doing after surgery, and some teams are putting out there that he is not doing well, hoping he drops,” Hendrickson said. “There are a lot of cat-and-mouse games going on.

“But we have built up some credibility and we tell teams that if they don’t get him at a certain spot, they won’t get him. And we have been pretty accurate most of the time.”

It’s important for players to know the range that they will be drafted in, as well. 

“If you have a guy that thinks he is going in the first round and he gets drafted in the third round, that’s malpractice,” Hendrickson said. “Our job is to get information and get that range down to 10-15 picks.”

Setting expectations can be hard with some players.

“Every player thinks they run a 4.4 and are going in the first round,” Hendrickson said, laughing.

Usually, the agents and the player’s school are on the same side, but that is not always the case. Take Peters, who was kicked off the University of Washington team in 2014 after numerous arguments with the coaching staff at games and practices. 

“The staff up there was killing the kid, telling NFL teams not to take him,” Hendrickson said. “Our job was to make sure people got to know who Marcus was. Normally a player that good can stay away from meeting every team and doing every workout, but we told Marcus there wasn’t a team he wouldn’t meet or work out with.”

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Peters visited 17 teams in a span of 36 days. 

Chris Ballard and John Dorsey, the Chiefs brass Peters’ draft year, actually came out to Oakland and spent a weekend with Peters’ parents. And later took him 18th overall.

Tillery, years later, had NFL teams questioning him for a much stupider reason — all the stamps on his passport. Tillery’s roommate in college was Nicco Fertitta, the son of casino developer and former UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta. 

“He lived with a billionaire’s son, and part of that was taking some trips with the family,” Hendrickson said. “Saint-Tropez? ‘I’m going.’ Rome? ‘I’m going.’ Barcelona? ‘I’m going.’ … So the knock on him becomes that he is too worldly and does he really love football? Is he really passionate about football? It’s so idiotic.”

Tillery said he was “very surprised” when he heard what the initial buzz was before the draft. 

“I couldn’t believe that traveling could be seen as a negative, but Doug and CJ took care of it,” Tillery said. “I was very confident about the range of where I was going to go in the draft.”

Tillery and his parents celebrated in Maui — after clearing it with Hendrickson and LaBoy — but that wasn’t even their favorite celebration of the spring.

Wasserman client and Raiders running back Jalen Richard graduated from Southern Miss in May, and became the first member of his family to ever graduate from college.

“It was really cool to see,” Hendrickson said. “We kind of live the American dream as far as what we do, to see what these players use football to do off the field.”

Especially when Hendrickson thinks that the league doesn’t care enough.

“The teams certainly don’t care about the players,” he said. “If you’re playing well, all good. But when your time is up, you’re gone. Our job is to be the ones that care for them and run through walls for them and protect them.”

(Top photo, from left to right, of B.J. Daniels, Hendrickson, Lynch, Bennett:
Mat Hayward/Getty Images for Fam 1st Family Foundation)