More than 17 years past the day Roman Phifer’s post-football reckoning arrived, he can still feel the weight of the uncertainty that stared back at him in a New Jersey hotel room.

After 14 years with the Rams, New York Jets and New England, Phifer spent the 2005 season mostly watching before hitching on with the New York Giants as a late season free-agent signing. When the Giants’ season ended with a wild-card round loss at home against Carolina, the future arrived with striking force.

“I had a relationship with football since I was 8 years old,” Phifer told The Post. “I knew I was done playing football. I cried like a baby. I was in my hotel room and it was just like, ‘Man, this is over.’”

Phifer didn’t know what came next. He wanted family time and beyond that, “I really had no idea. I didn’t really have a plan — that’s not a great thing — but I really took some time off to figure it out.”

What eventually followed: A long-and-winding journey that never strayed too far from a love of football and eventually led him through Denver once, on to other stops and now back again, this time as a senior personnel executive for his old UCLA scout team buddy, Broncos general manager George Paton. For whom he’s helped prep for the NFL draft, which starts Thursday.

Along the way he’s done a little bit of everything, including coaching linebackers in Denver as part of Josh McDaniels’ staff in 2009-10. Time and again he gravitated back toward football as he looked for his new calling. In 2016, he returned to UCLA as director of player development and found fulfillment in working with college kids who had NFL aspirations. He also found himself regularly talking with scouts, many of them familiar faces.

“Kyle O’Brien, who was with Detroit at the time, was a scout for New England when I was playing there,” Phifer said. “He’s actually the first one who really opened the door and said, ‘Hey, have you thought about scouting?’ I did my research and talked to some guys I knew who scouted and they stamped it and said it’s a pretty good deal. It’s a good way to be involved in football. There’s some elements of grind to it, which, I don’t mind the grind, but in some ways it’s more family friendly.”

So, in 2018, he landed a job scouting on Matt Patricia’s staff in Detroit. Perhaps it’s no surprise that his first two NFL jobs came for McDaniels and Patricia, a pair of former New England coaches. After all, Phifer spent four seasons playing there for Bill Belichick.

“In this game, you worry about yourself a lot,” Phifer, now 55, said. “Everybody says they want to win but you really don’t know what it takes not having been part of a winning team. But once I got to New England, Bill kind of expressed a wider view and team approach. …  I learned a lot about that aspect of football — seeing it big picture-wise instead of narrow and getting the focus off yourself. Know what everyone else is doing and you can do your job better and know where you fit in.

“It sounds elementary, but having gone through that and learning it then seeing the success from it, you’re like, ‘wow, I was really missing out.’ ”

As it happens, Belichick may have in a roundabout way laid the foundation for Phifer’s future in personnel. At the least, his acquisition of Phifer set an early example for the way most teams evaluate today.

“A lot of guys used to put the film on and they’d say this guy’s pretty good, that guy’s pretty good, this one’s not bad. But they’re not fitting them in a system,” said longtime assistant coach Dick Selser, whom Phifer credits with the lion’s share of his development early in his playing career. “Bill always fit them in a system. … He wanted a guy for a nickel position, and when he watched ‘Phif,’ he knew he had the mental comprehension to be able to play that position and play it well.”

A specific player for a specific role, which is common now. Paton and head coach Sean Payton last week spoke repeatedly about finding draft picks who fit their “vision.”

“Grading for the league sounds great in theory and that’s what a lot of people used to talk about when I was first in scouting,” ESPN analyst and former scout Louis Riddick told The Post. “But as New England and many other teams have since popularized, we’re not trying to find players for every team. We’re trying to find players for our team.”

Now Phifer tries to find players for the Broncos. Patricia was fired from Detroit two months before Paton was hired as Denver’s general manager. Not long after the 2021 draft, Paton made Phifer one of his first hires.

For the first year, Phifer scouted both college and pro players. Now he works mostly in pro scouting, but come draft season, it’s all hands on deck.

“Let’s say there are three guys (Paton) wants to look at in a cluster: It might be my first exposure to a guy, so I’ve got fresh eyes,” said Phifer, the No. 31 overall pick in the 1991 draft. “Another guy might have the player in his area, did (the report), knows him really well. Then there’s another scout that may be familiar with him and has watched him a little but not as much as the area scout. So it’s good to get different opinions. I might like a guy, it’s my first exposure, I don’t know everything, don’t know his character, but on film, ‘Hey I think this guy is pretty good.’ You include that in your evaluation and then at the end of the day George and Coach Payton come up with, ‘OK, we like this guy and see it this way and we’ll put him here on the board.’ ”

Phifer has known Paton since they started playing together at UCLA in 1988 and said he sees similar attributes now that he did back when they played on the Bruins’ scout team together.

“He’s a loyal guy, tough — small but tough — you just liked his grit,” Phifer said with a smile. “You can see it in the way he operates. He’s not a yeller or screamer, but he’s a loyal guy and he trusts his scouts.”

As Phifer has settled in, he raves about the Broncos personnel staff, running through names unprompted and adding, “I really feel like our personnel staff mirrors what you would like in your team in the locker room. Everyone’s really unselfish and it’s not about who gets the credit.

“There’s no bad blood about it, no pride of authorship.”

At the core, he’s happy to focus on finding any way he can to help Denver win.

“I’m not trying to climb a ladder. I just want to be the best where I’m at, affect people positively where I’m at,” Phifer said. “Wherever it takes me, if it takes me higher, great. If it doesn’t, I’m OK with that because I’m doing what I love. It took me a while to figure that out when I retired. You kind of want to get away from football — it’s like breaking up with a long love. You’re hurt and you’re like, ‘man.’ But one day you wake up and realize that you miss that. So now I’m back where I really want to be.”

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