Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
“It took you fifteen years to figure this shit out,” Donnie Jones said, laughing. We were on the field during training camp, and I’d just been snapping to him, each missile just as precise as the one before, each a tight, crisp spiral arriving to him—a left-footed punter—aligned with his left hip, his ideal kicking location. “You’re like a friggin’ machine!”
“I’m telling you, it’s the wrist,” I said. “It’s all the surgeries.” We laughed, shaking our heads in wonder. Life sure is weird sometimes. I’d been snapping for just about my whole adult life, and this was first time I actually felt like I’d totally mastered it, particularly on punts. In the past, when I’d struggled, it was because my punt snaps might have “ears” on them—a slight flutter. But now, no matter what else might happen on the field, I could repeat the same snap over and over, all external pressures be damned.
I was splitting the number of snaps with Rick Lovato, the twenty-four-year-old who had replaced me for the three games after my wrist blew up at the end of the previous season. Rick’s a helluva good kid with some real talent. He reminds me of someone: he busts his ass. Youth being what it is, I could tell he hadn’t yet figured out all the mental parts of the game. He was still checking out what was being said about him on Twitter and listening to sports-talk radio in the morning; I’d seen teammates—grown-ass men—who’d let sports yakkers’ on-air whining about them totally destroy their confidence.
Are you kidding me right now? I wanted to say to them. Those radio guys are about sixty years old and haven’t ever thrown a ball on any kind of field. And you’re letting them inside your head? They’re entertainers. Your job—and I said this to Rick—is to freeze that stuff out. But some things take time, and he’d come to that realization on his own—just like I did.
Despite splitting the snaps with Rick, I was feeling very much like a thirty-seven-year-old. After each play, I’d return to the sideline, out of breath and just beat. “Man, I’m even more of an unathletic white dude now,” I told Anni.
The fatigue felt new. Maybe all the off-season surgeries depleted some of my energy reserves. My body had been through some trauma—it was unrealistic to expect it to perform like it had before the injury, right? So each day, I took my snaps and threw myself into punt coverage, just waiting for the old feeling to return.
I had less time than I knew. The day after we’d beaten the Miami Dolphins 38–31 in our third preseason game, I was sitting at my locker when special-teams coach Dave Fipp came in and sat down next to me. He leaned forward. “Jon,” he said, “I’m going to go with the younger guy.”
Now, in most industries, you can’t say that to an employee; football, however, ain’t one of them. There’s no such thing as age discrimination. Old athletes fade away—it’s the natural order of things. Still, I was stunned.
“I appreciate your honesty,” I said.
Fipp shifted uncomfortably. “What would you do if you weren’t here?” he asked.
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, there are only two options. I’ll go play somewhere else or retire, I guess.”
This, I knew, was key information for the Eagles. If I wanted to keep playing, they’d try to trade me. But first they’d need to know that I’d report to wherever they sent me. Of course, the notion of trading me sounded crazy: I was a long snapper, for crying out loud. We don’t get traded. We get cut, and then, if we’re lucky, we get signed.
Wow. Just like that, eleven years in Philly—done. It was hard to wrap my head around the idea. At first, all the predictable thoughts came. I’d gone through all those surgeries in the off-season, all that pain. For this? Intellectually, I knew what I was doing: I was spinning my own victim narrative. Nevertheless, I started to wonder: What was this really about? Did my coaches resent that my whole life didn’t revolve around football, and that I’d been outspoken about how unhealthy it is when football blots out all else in life? That, when asked, I’d been vocal about how many men in the game desperately needed to find balance in their lives? Could that be a part of it?
I flashed back on a team event in which my teammate Donnie Jones and I found ourselves chatting with the spouse of one of our coaches. The coach wasn’t there—he was back in the team facility, where he’d been around-the-clock, going so far as to sleep on an air mattress in his office. Donnie texted him: “Hey, with your wife here—come over!” The coach texted right back: “Can’t—working on game plan. Have fun.” What stuck with me in this moment was his wife’s reaction to the text: “He didn’t return my texts,” she said.
I was saddened by that, and a little outraged. Dude, I wanted to say, you’d actually be a better coach if you spent more time with your wife and kids. Players want to play for guys who are loving, and not fearful or insecure. Now here I was, literally told I was no longer part of the team. Was it because my values differed so much from those calling the shots inside our building? Did they actually resent my magic? My local TV show? The fact that I was stalking Kevin James on the sideline, or that I was out and about, mingling with fans every chance I got, rather than holed up watching videotape of our opponents all night long?
The truth is, I was overthinking it—which is what happens when you get a blow to the ego. It probably wasn’t near as complicated as I was making it: I was thirty-seven years old, and the Eagles could save $825,000 on the salary cap by getting rid of my tired ass. But getting cut or traded plays with your mind.
I’d seen it. A lot of athletes have been told they’re the shit since their early teens. They’ve risen to the top of their profession. And when a team cuts or trades them, it’s like they’re suddenly in junior high and a girl has dumped them for the first time. It’s the first time you’ve been told you’re not wanted. It unleashes a tsunami of emotional stuff.
Fans think of players as supermen or stats for their fantasy lineups, but we’re flesh and blood, with the same hang-ups and frailties as everybody else. We’re just in a very public, very cutthroat business. But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel.
A few summers ago, a video went viral on social media when it was reported during a game that New York Met Wilmer Flores had been traded. Well, there he was—on the field, in his Mets uniform, when the news broke, and, in front of thousands of fans and many more watching on TV, my man just started bawling his eyes out. The trade ultimately didn’t go through, but Flores had to sweat it out for a few hours while fans gave him a total of four standing ovations. Once the team announced the deal wouldn’t happen, two days later Flores belted an extra-innings walk-off home run.
You gotta love that story, but what stayed with me was just how emotional Flores got. “I was sad,” he later said. “Being a Met forever, I have all my teammates here, that’s why I got emotional.” Hear, hear, Wilmer. My team was my family. How could I not be sad at the thought of being separated from them?
Look, I’m not complaining. I’m the first to admit how lucky I’ve been, and to acknowledge that athletes tend to be a pretty transient bunch. My friends in the NBA call it a “renter’s league,” because most teams are built to feature two or three star players who will be there a long time, and most of their teammates will change from year to year.
But let’s not pretend that it’s “just business” and doesn’t leave emotional scars. Or that it’s not stressful. Think about how much it sucks to move just a couple of towns over. You’ve got to pack, hire movers, and then wait around for a day or two for the damned cable guy. Research has found that moving can be as stressful as going through a divorce. Well, now imagine you’ve got to move in a matter of hours—throw some stuff in a bag, hop a flight, and meet your new team within hours, maybe clear across the country. I’ve seen guys get traded and bolt for the locker room door like they’re a fugitive on the run.
That I was with one team for eleven seasons made me one lucky dude. How’d you like to have been Bobo Newsom, the most traded man in baseball history? He was sold or traded fourteen times before he retired in 1953. “I played for Washington five different times,” Newsom famously once said. “That beat Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s record. He was only elected four times.”
Then there was Mike Sillinger, the most traded man in hockey history. He played for twelve different teams and was traded nine times in his career. Of the twelve clubs he played for, he spent a whole season with only four of them. It was a nomadic life; his wife used to visit just to do his laundry.
People just don’t like change. But by now, I knew that change could be my friend. Within a day, I was starting to come to terms with the end of my time as an Eagle. After Fipp broke the news to me, general manager Howie Roseman asked if I’d be interested in playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Eh, not so much. Chicago? Too cold. But then he was back: the New Orleans Saints were offering a seventh-round pick next season for me.
Now we were talking. “Hell, yes,” I said. I kid you not—my first thought was: The Saints are Ellen’s favorite team. How cool is that? She grew up in Louisiana, and was a huge fan of Saints quarterback Drew Brees. I started thinking about the three of us hanging out together, especially when she tweeted, tagging the Saints when the news broke: “Your team just added a whole lotta magic.”
There was also this: I’d get to play more than half my games in a dome. No more crappy weather. Instead of fearing change, suddenly I was starting to get excited. New Orleans was a cool town, with great music and food, and it was a whole new fan base for me to tap into. I asked Roseman if any long snapper had ever been traded for a draft pick. “I don’t think so,” he said. How about that? Maybe I was making history. Now, not only was I getting into it, but the whole deal really made sense from the Eagles’ point of view: They were getting a draft pick for a thirty-seven-year-old who was coming off an injury. Kind of a no-brainer, huh?
For me, it was off to N’awlins, but not before feeling a whole lotta love from the Philly fans and my teammates. Sports-radio phone lines lit up with fans complaining that I’d been traded. A part of me was tempted to call in and say, Yo, this makes total sense for the Eagles. Rick is more than ready to step up, and I’m off to create new memories somewhere else.
That’s also what I told my teammates, many of whom were concerned about what my absence would mean for locker room chemistry. Publicly, Jeffrey Lurie released a beautiful statement to the press once the news broke.
“Jon is one of the most inspiring people I have ever known,” he said. “He gave everything that he had to this organization for more than a decade, but his legacy in Philadelphia goes far beyond his performance on the field, his Pro Bowl selections or the consecutive-games streak. His true impact is measured by the number of people in this city that he connected with, the lives he has been able to change and the courage he displays every day after battling such tremendous adversity as a child.”
He was just as gracious when, before releasing his public statement, he called me on my cell. “This is the hardest part of this game,” Jeff said. “You know, Jon, if you want to stay, play one more year, and then retire as an Eagle, I’ll make that happen.”
Wow. Instinctively, I knew that if I took him up on such a kind offer, it would be because the competitor in me wanted to prove Coach Fipp wrong. It would be my ego talking. “I love you, man,” I said. “You know what? It’s all good. If it’s my time, let it be. If Coach Fipp doesn’t want me around, I don’t want to be here. Let’s shake hands and go on our way.”
“Coach Fipp was adamant about making a change, and I’ve got to trust him,” Jeff said. “But you’ll always be an Eagle. You’ll always be family.”
“It’s all good, Jeff,” I said. “I never thought I’d take a snap in the NFL. You’ve given me a home for eleven years. Man, I’d die for you.”
And with that, it was time to move on. I didn’t do any media, and I said good-bye to only a few special people: Donnie Jones, Big Dom, equipment operations manager Greg Delimitros, team president Don Smolenski, and CFO Frank Gumienny. I’d spent eleven years with the Eagles and had made countless friends for life on the team. But I didn’t want to make this all about me and I didn’t want to focus on the past. The Saints wanted me, so I bolted to get to New Orleans.
While I was en route—Anni would meet me there—my teammates showed me some love in the media. “His positive attitude is something that’s hard to find in a football locker room all year round,” safety Malcolm Jenkins was quoted as saying. “Jon’s the guy who is constantly in a good mood, constantly joking around. He’s just a good friend and obviously a guy who is going to be missed.”
Rick Lovato handled it beautifully—I was proud of him: “I’m not trying to fill his shoes,” he said. “There’s no taking anything away from him. I just want to do my job, keep my head down, not try to be noticeable.”
Once I touched down in New Orleans, I started hearing from my Eagle teammates. Apparently, some of them were upset enough by the trade that Coach Fipp felt compelled to make a presentation to the team explaining his thinking as to why it was time to move on from me; one angry teammate told me it felt like I’d been kicked in the ass on my way out.
I just repeated what I’d said to Jeff. “It’s all good, man,” I said.
Sensitivities were high; a couple of weeks before, the team had traded veteran wide receiver Jordan Matthews to Buffalo. Jordan was a cool dude and had become great friends with Carson Wentz. When two loud voices are removed from a locker room—even when change makes sense from a football perspective—it can wreak havoc with team chemistry. Doug Pederson was an emotionally intelligent coach, though. “It can definitely affect the team,” he said, when asked about me and Jordan leaving. “Guys really respected these guys and liked them. And now they can influence another locker room, and they can take what they’ve learned here to another organization, another franchise. I wish both of those guys well. But it can affect guys, but it only affects you if you let it. That’s my job, not to let that happen.”
Dougie would figure that out. Me? I was already living it up in the Big Easy.
There must have been thirty of them when I walked into the locker room—my new teammates, waiting at my locker. What a greeting. Brees, running back Mark Ingram, and defensive back Obum Gwacham were among them. “Magic man!” someone called out.
“Let’s see a trick!” someone else yelled.
And we were off. I wowed them with some sleight of hand then and there, while guys started streaming in to see the show. Phones were whipped out and posts found their way to YouTube. At one point, I opened my mouth wide and, while guys screamed and high-fived one another, a deck of cards came flowing out from it.
Man, what a welcome. You couldn’t have scripted anything better. The reality is, change is good. I felt a surge of energy running through my body. I was the new kid at school; I was gonna bring it. I was gonna prove to the Saints that they’d done the right thing betting on me.
Within seconds of entering the Saints training facility, I felt not only welcomed but also needed; the Saints had a hole at long snapper. In the last few weeks, they’d released two snappers, which meant the job belonged to Justin Drescher. But after the team’s most recent preseason game, Justin was on the sideline in a boot with a foot injury. They decided they had to move on from him when I became available. “You’re gonna love this city and this organization,” Justin, who would catch on with the Arizona Cardinals, told me when I reached out just before rolling into town.
As if I needed a sign that this was where I was meant to be, it turned out that I had a history with special-teams coach Brad Banta. He was a tight end and long snapper who’d had ten seasons in the league and had been hoping for an eleventh in 2004—when I tore my ACL as a Bill in Week 13. Brad was at home, painting his house, and had just told his wife that it looked like his career was over… when the Bills called, looking to pick him up as my replacement for the last three games of the season. Turns out, you need to play in at least three games to be credited for a year of service. Now, seeing me in the New Orleans locker room after all this time, Brad threw his arms around me. “You gave me eleven,” he said. “Now I’m gonna give you fifteen.”
At practice, a group of reporters wanted to know what I was feeling. I talked about how cool it was to be wanted, and that I’d always wanted to play in New Orleans. My Eagle teammates Malcolm Jenkins and Darren Sproles, who’d both starred for the Saints, had told me I’d love the city. Plus, I’d been friends with Saints punter Thomas Morstead for years, so I was stoked to work with him. One of the reporters asked why I’d always wanted to play here.
“One, the city,” I said. “Two, who’s not a Drew Brees fan? So, to play with him, and the tradition. In the off-season, you would talk to guys who have come through here, and it was, like, ‘Dude, Coach [Sean] Payton is awesome, the organization is awesome.’ And just the camaraderie, it leaks throughout the league.”
Meantime, Coach Payton was telling the press I’d play in this week’s preseason game against Baltimore, and that I had solved their snapping woes. When asked what he liked about me, the coach replied: “His consistency. He’s a veteran player. There’s a presence about him. He’s done it over a long time.”
At practice, I felt myself falling in love with football all over again. The vibe was positive and Brees was the type of leader you’d want to follow to the ends of the earth. He’s not the loudest guy in the room and he doesn’t get up in your grill. Instead, he gives off a quiet selflessness.
You ever see that Jerry Seinfeld routine about how crazy our sports addiction is? “Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify,” he says. “Because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You’re actually rooting for the clothes when you get right down to it. You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt, they hate him now. Boo!, different shirt! Boo!”
That always cracked me up. But Drew was the exception to Seinfeld’s rule, just like I’d been in Philly. You couldn’t say I wasn’t from Philly during my time there, just like you can’t say Drew isn’t a vital part of New Orleans. He first came to the city in 2006, after being cut by the San Diego Chargers. He had a bum shoulder and wasn’t sure he’d have any takers on the open market. But the Saints took him in, just after Katrina.
“I had no place to go, no place to call home, and wasn’t sure if I was going to play football again,” Brees recalled. “Here came New Orleans, six months post-Katrina, with a new head coach, and really in the same situation I was. Trying to resurrect a career, and the city. I felt like it was a true calling for my wife and [me] to come to New Orleans and be a part of the resurgence of a team, but more importantly, of a city and a community. And the passion and resiliency of the people of New Orleans is something that continues to keep us going every day.”
How can you not love this guy? He not only brought New Orleans the Super Bowl in 2010, but also, off the field, his foundation raised more than $25 million for Katrina relief. The best leaders, I’ve learned, lead by doing, and their example makes you want to do better. I couldn’t wait to get to practice because of the passion and commitment that Drew Brees gave off.
Then again, the whole city was inspiring. After our final preseason game—man, it felt good to be out there—the city opened itself to us. Out at dinner, strangers would approach. “We’re so glad you’re here,” they’d say. In Philly, strangers would high-five or burst into a vein-popping rendition of the Eagles fight song, “Fly, Eagles, Fly.” Here, it was less testosterone-fueled, usually a quick welcome or a pat on the back.
Anni and I played house at the Hilton while we looked for rentals. We found a kick-ass spot downtown in a high-rise with an amazing view from our twenty-by-forty-foot deck. I’d spent all this time in the Northeast; now I’d be able to sit out on our patio well into November, grilling up some steaks and watching the love of my life sip a glass of wine. Until now, we’d lived in my South Philly condo—the one I’d shared with my ex-wife. This spot would be ours.
I felt ten years younger. How silly it was for me to have been bummed about moving on from the Eagles, whose GM, Howie Roseman, sent me a note, wishing me well and asking if I was “sure I was done being an Eagle.” Uh, I appreciate the love, but you traded me, bro.
But it was all good. I was all in as a Saint. One night, as my fifteenth regular season was about to begin, Anni and I sat out on our deck and shared a bottle of vino. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” I said, clinking our glasses.
In the morning, she’d be heading back to Philly, where she’d meet with the movers and get all our stuff shipped to New Orleans. Before practice, I’d be completing the second half of my physical, which is mandated by the NFL upon any trade. But I’d already played one game as a Saint, so this would just be a formality.
Afterward, I wanted to think some more about how to take this town by storm. “Hey,” I said to Anni now, “do you know if Mardi Gras has a commissioner? I want to be the commissioner of Mardi Gras.” She laughed, seeing the wheels starting to turn. Hey, why not? In Philly, I had been the commissioner of the legendary Wing Bowl, which each year drew more than twenty thousand rabid fans at dawn to cheer on their favorite professional eaters. Anni and I clinked our glasses, toasting again to our good fortune.