A champion is someone who gets up, even when he can’t.
—Jack Dempsey
Recovery is a funny thing. There isn’t any one moment when you realize you’re back to being you. Instead—like life itself—it’s a process of fits and starts, of trial and error, of successes and failures. I worked to recapture my patience. I’d always lived my life looking at what’s right in front of me with a sense of wide-eyed, childlike wonder. Now I had to consciously retrain myself to think that way.
When you do that, when you can’t find your car keys and you say to yourself, Isn’t this interesting? instead of cursing your bad luck through gritted teeth… suddenly the world becomes a kinder, gentler, more amusing place. But it’s easier said than done. Getting to that state of wonder required some intensive self-coaching in the moment. Calm down, Jon, I’d say. Or: You know this doesn’t mean shit, right, Jon?
Anni knew I was returning to me when she heard that old telltale sound coming from my hands, for hours on end. Just me and my fifty-two buddies. Ahhh, the echo of shuffling. The most soothing sound in the world. Saint would sack out, snoring, nearby; soon I moved beyond just shuffling. I started busting out some moves. Then I started writing them down.
Before I knew it, I was creating an entirely new show. One that had all the magic and comedy fun, but that also incorporated my life story. Mom would be a character in it, as would Dr. Bavaria; I’d make Anni and Saint magically appear, so they would literally be in the show. It would be a magic show that inspires and entertains. It would bring rock-star energy and it would feature the magic I learned throughout my journey in search of true happiness. In a way, the new show would be me, talking to my twelve-year-old self. And it would have three odd influences.
One was my man Scott Thompson, more commonly known as Carrot Top. His use of music and video clips make his shows stand out from all others. His isn’t just a comedy show; it’s a party.
Garth Brooks is also a buddy of mine; in fact, in Ellen’s green- room on that first appearance after my heart surgery, he toasted the fact that getting traded saved my life by saying, “Here’s to unanswered prayers”—referencing his own song. How cool is that, Garth Brooks quoting himself to me?
Watching Garth Brooks in concert is an out-of-body experience. You see how much fun he is having, and how real he is. How passionate he is about his songs. That passion is contagious—it flows out into the crowd. He’s only lightly scripted. He has his set list, but he tells stories and interacts with his fans off the cuff throughout. The audience member feels like he or she is just hanging out with a good friend. That’s how I want my audience to feel.
Finally, there’s Mike Tyson. His one-man show, directed by Spike Lee, gives us a guy who was once the most feared badass in the world being self-deprecating and vulnerable. He admits to things in his past that might make you think, What a scumbag, but then you’re sitting there and you’re rooting for him and liking him. When someone is that open and vulnerable, they become someone you want to get behind. The reality is that none of us are perfect; we’ve all made mistakes in life. Tyson’s story proves that owning up to them, and coming back from them, are what people can relate to.
Once I’d fleshed out a new show with the music and energy of Carrot Top, the passion and connection to the audience of Garth Brooks, and the vulnerability and self-deprecation of Mike Tyson, Mooney dug it and got on the horn, booking gigs in Philly, Vegas, and points in between.
I still wasn’t totally recovered. But I was itching to get out there in front of people and feed off their energy, even though my meds were still making me groggy. I hadn’t even been watching football, though I was vaguely aware that the Eagles were winning.
Early in the season, just after I’d been released from the hospital, Jeffrey Lurie and his wife, Tina, had Anni and me over to dinner at their sick home on Philly’s Main Line. The house sits on its own three-hole golf course; I had a perfectly cooked filet prepared by Jeff’s private chef, and Anni had salmon.
We sat with the Luries for hours—I only had limited reserves of energy, and a multihour dinner was a challenge. My fatigue notwithstanding, I always felt better for having been in Jeffrey’s company. I can be loud and a little rough around the edges, and he is always just the perfect gentleman. In all my years of working for the man, I’d never known him to raise his voice or be on a power trip.
I first got to know Jeff early on in my Eagles career during training camp at Lehigh University. It was August, and it was often a hundred degrees with excessive humidity. It was just plain miserable. Since I was a specialist, most of my time was spent just standing around, boiling. Offensive line coach Juan Castillo saw that I was doing precisely nothing and he told our starting right guard Todd Herremans, “Hey, Todd, that new snapper over there, he don’t do much, does he? I’ll get him to help with our drills.” Soon I was being thrown around like a rag doll by the offensive line.
So I started to find any excuse I could to retreat into the equipment room. Not only to avoid drills that had nothing to do with my actual job, but also because the equipment room was… air-conditioned. Nirvana.
One day, while I was in there, hiding out, Jeff walked in. Shit. Busted. But Jeff wasn’t there to rat me out. He told me how much he liked my magic, how happy he was that I was on the team. He’d lost his dad when he was nine years old, he said, and he could relate to the ways that magic and football had saved me. Sports had been a place of refuge and comfort for him, too. We bonded. From that moment on, Jeff was my guy. I think we sensed in each other a kindred spirit: two hurt kids who had to grow up too fast and too soon.
By the time we sat down to dinner at his Main Line home early in the 2017 season, we were just a couple of bros, hanging. At one point, Jeff’s face took on a sheepish look. “You know, we’re pretty good this year,” he said.
“Of course you are,” I replied, laughing. “You got rid of me. Of course you’re killing it now.”
We shared a laugh over this. It soon became apparent that Jeff was right: the Eagles were looking like one of those teams of destiny. You’ve seen them, teams whose sums add up to more than their parts. As I suspected, Carson Wentz was showing the world he was a first-class stud. The Eagles were coming up with big plays when they needed them, like kicker Jake Elliott’s last-second sixty-one-yard field goal to beat the Giants, a win that made you wonder if the Birds’ twelfth man was a certain deity who cared about football.
In Week 13, against the Los Angeles Rams, Carson went down with a torn ACL. Uh-oh. Just our luck, right, Philly? At the time of the injury, Carson had thrown thirty-three touchdown passes against just seven interceptions. The guy was putting up Tom Brady–like numbers, and carrying himself with Brady’s kind of swagger, too.
By then, I was clear across the country in California, but even I could almost hear the Philly pain. Not again. Just our luck. There was no way the Eagles could win without their franchise player, right?
Wrong. The doubters hadn’t stopped to consider ol’ St. Nick. That would be backup quarterback Nick Foles, who has always had some measure of magic in him. I played with Nicky in 2013, when he put up one of the best quarterback years in recent memory: twenty-seven touchdown passes, just two interceptions.
I’d been a Nick Foles fan ever since. He looks the part of quarterback: Tall. Strong. Quick release. Plus, he and Carson were very similar; they could both run the same kind of offense. From the very first day Nick walked into the Eagles facility, players respected him. He studied. He always knew his assignments and responsibilities. He was kind and treated everyone with respect. And he balled out on game day.
Foles carried himself with a humility and a type of sensitivity I’d never felt from a quarterback before. A football team is a pack of alpha dogs, and the quarterback tends to be chief canine. Drew Bledsoe and Brett Favre come to mind. Off the field, they were down-to-earth good ol’ boys, but on it they were throwback kind of leaders. They’d get in guys’ faces and ferociously will their boys to victory.
But there’s another type of leader. In his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader,” Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership,” and when you read up on the trend, you’re likely to expect it to reference Foles. Not only isn’t Nick standoffish; he carries himself like just one of the guys, and his every postgame comment seems to start with the pronoun “we” rather than “me.” He talks about “staying in the moment” and is open about the self-doubt he experienced in 2015 when he went through a rough patch on the field and contemplated quitting the game. By being vulnerable in public, Foles actually leads, showing his guys that good things emerge only from struggle.
“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong,” Greenleaf wrote nearly fifty years ago. “While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the ‘top of the pyramid,’ servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.”
In identifying the traits of a servant-leader, Greenleaf included listening, empathy, awareness, and persuasion. On the Eagles late-season run to the Super Bowl, Foles exhibited all of these traits at various times.
Anni and I went over to a neighbor’s house to watch Foles and the Eagles take on the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game. After Nick threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Alshon Jeffery early in the fourth quarter to put the Eagles up 38–7, I had to leave.
I don’t mind saying, on the walk home, I was pretty bummed. Are you serious? The first year I don’t play and they go to the freakin’ Super Bowl? It was easy to feel sorry for myself, to wallow in all that I was about to miss out on.
“Jon, remember, if you play, you die,” Anni said with a gentle smile. I’d been feeling robbed; all that work over eleven seasons, and now they go to the Super Bowl without me? But Anni snapped me out of it. She cut through that negative voice in my head and made me stop and think: Life happens, man. The difference between being happy and being depressed is how we deal with it. I’d rather be alive. What a great day to be alive.
“You’re my Super Bowl, babe,” I told her.
And then the damnedest thing happened. The cloud I’d been under lifted and I realized this wasn’t all about me. My boys—my blood brothers I had gone to war with every Sunday for eleven years—they were going to the Super Bowl. Darren Sproles, Jason Peters, Brent Celek, Foles, Jason Kelce, Brandon Graham, and Donnie Jones were all going to the freakin’ Super Bowl. And then I thought of staffers like “Cool as Shit” head of security Dom, and of the fans—was there a city more psyched to finally reach the NFL pinnacle?—and I started bursting with happiness for them. And then I realized that, hell, I was one of those fans now, so I was happy for me, too.
Meantime, I didn’t know it, but Donnie had gone into Coach Pederson’s office and they’d agreed that amid all the hoopla surrounding the team’s first Super Bowl appearance in twenty-eight years, “something’s missing.”
“I know what it is: Magic Man,” Donnie said.
“You think he’d come with us?” Doug asked.
They went to Jeff, who was thinking along the same lines. Within days, the call came from the Eagles: Would I join them for the Super Bowl? Uh, let me check my schedule… hells, yeah!
As a player, I always thought I’d be stressed out if I ever made it to a Super Bowl. But I never thought I’d be stressed at the Super Bowl because I had to be careful that, when in a crowd, I didn’t get jostled or bumped into, lest my newly wired-shut sternum shifted out of line.
That’s why, on the night before the big game, I found myself hanging back, waiting for all the other guests to clear out of the Minnesota art museum where Jeff Lurie had just hosted the party of all parties for about a hundred and fifty of his closest friends and family. “We’re so happy to finally be going to the Super Bowl and representing the city of Philadelphia,” Jeff had said to the crowd before unveiling a surprise. “Before we leave, I’d like to bring out a friend of mine to sing a couple of songs,” and out came Sheryl Crow and her band. Anni and I were sitting, and rocking out, with Dr. Oz and Wall Street guru Jim Cramer—both huge Eagles fans.
Now, afterward, Anni and I waited while the others filed out. My balance still wasn’t great, and I still walked slowly and carefully; this way, waiting for the place to empty, I could take my time leaving and not run the risk of colliding with anyone in the big crowd. We were the only two left in the room besides Jeff and Tina Lurie.
Jeff came up and gave me a light hug. I’ve never known him to cuss before, but he leaned in. “Hey, we’re going to win this fucking thing,” he said. “And when we do, you’re going to get a ring. But not just a ring. You’re going to get a player’s ring, because you deserve it, for everything you did for this organization for so many years. The Super Bowl for you is living. And your ring will be a symbol for the way you’ve lived your life.”
I ain’t often speechless. I just leaned in and hugged my bro. As Jeff and Tina walked away, the tears started falling once again. Annie hugged and kissed me. “You always thought you’d only get a ring from playing, because you never wanted to coach,” she said. “Isn’t it funny how life works its way out? You aren’t playing, and you sure as shit aren’t coaching, but you might get that ring, after all.”
The next afternoon, when the team was about to leave the hotel for the stadium, Mooney and I took a selfie with Foles and hung out with him for a few minutes, just talking about nothing. Once Foles got on the team bus, Mooney—a lifelong Eagles diehard—looked pale. “Dude,” he said, “should I be worried? Foles was so relaxed, he looked like he was on his way to a yoga class.”
That’s Nick for you, I reassured him. The most Zen field general I’ve ever seen. Sure enough, a few hours later, St. Nick worked his magic against the favored New England Patriots. Everything felt right about the moment. I’d been coming back from my surgery—hell, I’d been coming back in one form or another since I was twelve years old—and now here was my team, which had been the underdog in each of its postseason games, modeling resilience for the world. As Anni and I made our way to the field to take part in the celebration, it just felt so right.
Anni and I took a photo with the trophy, and I hugged Donnie, Darren Sproles, and all my other brothers-in-arms. At one point, I looked up as confetti rained down on us. So I didn’t get to play, but this is what the confetti feels like.
When Nick was named MVP and interviewed on the podium, hell if he didn’t once again provide a life lesson in how to be a humble leader. How many other MVP interviews have featured the star saying something like, “I never stopped believing in myself” or some such me, me, me-ism? Not Nick.
“I think the big thing that helped me was knowing that I didn’t have to be Superman,” he said. “I have amazing teammates, amazing coaches around me. And all I had to do was just go play as hard as I could, and play for one another, and play for those guys.”
Anni and I headed back to Philly for the parade. Something like three million fans turned out for it; Brian Dawkins and I waved to them from the alumni bus in the procession. Months later, the Eagles gave me my ring. That sucker is huge.
A lot of people were touched that I’d been given a ring, but there were also haters who weren’t happy about it. It’s true I didn’t play a down for this team on the field. In fact, I’ve never even heard of a player who gets traded and is then given a Super Bowl ring by his former team.
But I’ve come to see it as symbolic of something bigger, something like what Jeff was getting at that night before the big game. After Mom’s death, I had to learn how to lead with my heart. I had to learn to live my life like the most precious thing in it was my relationships. I like to think the Eagles gave me that ring because I treated everyone—teammates, coaches, staff, media—like they mattered, like each interaction was an end in itself, and not a means to an end. I don’t need a ring to remind me I was good at football. My ring tells me I treated people the right way.
In the months after the Super Bowl whirlwind, my health gradually came back. So much so that I started performing across the country, often having to haul ass back to LA to tape Ellen shows. Things were good: Saint, Anni, and I would just hang out—we called our digs Casa Amor. We were basking in family life.
And then one day, shortly after we went off birth control, I walked through the front door and Anni handed me three pregnancy-test sticks. I thought she was asking me to open them for her to use, so I started to paw at them like an idiot. But they’d already been opened. And used.
“We’re pregnant, honey,” she said.
I jumped into her arms. Me… a dad. When we got our first sonogram, without saying a word, we showed it to Nonnie, who stared at it long and hard. “What is that?” she asked finally. “A picture of a puppy?”
“I hope not!” I said.
The closer we got to the arrival of Amaya Love Dorenbos—that’s right, Daddy’s little girl—the more I thought of my own dad. It felt like everything in my life was coming together just as the universe had intended it to, but there was one relationship that never reached closure.
After it all—after the football, the magic, the heart scare, the Super Bowl, and the imminent arrival of Amaya—it was time to square the circle. It was time to come face-to-face with my father and tell him I forgave him.