MY OFF-SEASON HOME is in Flower Mound, Texas, and so no one was more delighted than I to be playing in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, twenty miles away. Playing near home didn’t distract me at all. It made me more comfortable. You might think that pro athletes are blasé about things like this, but I was living out a dream—playing in the Super Bowl in my backyard. It wasn’t in Houston, my hometown, but it was close enough. I was able to bring some forty family members to the game without having to fly them in. They were all able to come to Dallas and celebrate with me.
I thought it ironic that though we were playing in the South, in the days before the game not only was it freezing, with temperatures in the teens, but a weather system dumped snow all over the Dallas metropolitan area. The freeways and interstates were abandoned and empty. In the suburbs Texans slipped and slided on unplowed streets.
We were watching the pregame interviews on TV in our hotel room when we saw Bryant McFadden, a cornerback for the Steelers, our opponents, trash-talking. He was asked whether he had any fear facing “the best group of receivers in the NFL.”
I’ll admit it was a stupid question, but McFadden decided to be a wiseguy.
“Yeah, I’m afraid,” he said. “I should just go back to the hotel, pack my bag, get back on the plane, and go back to Pittsburgh.” Then he started to laugh.
James Jones, for one, took his comment personally.
“You’re not going to give us any credit on national TV!” James shouted at the TV set. “We’ll show you!”
And that’s exactly what we did.
In front of 103,000 fans at Cowboys Stadium, the first time the Super Bowl ever was played there, Aaron got us started with a twenty-nine-yard touchdown pass to Jordy. Our talented safety Nick Collins then intercepted a Ben Roethlisberger pass and returned it thirty-seven yards for a touchdown. We led 14–0. I had two catches and was feeling optimistic about things when at the end of the second quarter I suffered a severely sprained ankle and had to leave the game.
I ran a stick route—I was supposed to run five yards, catch the ball, and take off. Aaron got me the ball, and as I started to turn upfield, James Harrison, the Steelers middle linebacker, jumped on my back and dragged me down. My leg, knee, and ankle got all twisted around as I fell. I was in so much pain I don’t know how I was able to hold on to the ball.
“Drive, are you okay?” Harrison asked.
I shook my head no.
Everything was hurting as I limped to the sidelines.
All I could think about was getting back into the game.
This will have to calm down soon, I thought.
As I lay on the X-ray table, I heard someone say, “Oh my God, Charles is on his way in.”
Woodson had suffered a shoulder injury.
“What’s wrong with Wood?” was the reply.
Charles Woodson was our Pro Bowl safety. In 2009 he was the NFL defensive player of the year. He had played in a Super Bowl for the Oakland Raiders, but he had been hurt and not at full strength, and the Raiders lost. This was Charles’s Super Bowl quest, much as it was mine.
I sat on the X-ray table with ice on my ankle and knee. Wood came in holding his shoulder and looking fighting mad. He walked past me without saying anything and went into one of the other X-ray rooms. Then I heard crashing. Wood was tearing up the room, throwing objects, kicking things around. He had seen the X-rays. His collarbone was broken.
I could hear our team doctor Patrick McKenzie telling our head trainer Pepper Burrus, “Someone has to tell him he can’t play.”
That’s brutal, I thought.
I felt awful for Charles. This is what he dreamed about—dreamed about—getting back to the Super Bowl and winning it.
“Someone’s got to tell him,” the doc said again.
I kept thinking they were talking about Wood. But Wood already knew.
They were talking about me.
Doc and Pepper came over to tell me my day was done.
“Can’t you tape me up, like you did for the Seattle game?” I asked them.
“Flea,” I said to our trainer, Bryan Engel, “remember that tape job?”
He nodded yes.
Flea taped my ankle. I stood up. All I could feel was intense pain.
“I feel good,” I lied.
“Jump,” said Doc McKenzie.
“I’m good,” I said. “I don’t need to jump.”
“Jump,” he insisted. “Jump for me.”
I couldn’t. I couldn’t even take a tiny hop.
“I can’t,” I had to admit. “I’m in too much pain.”
Desperate to return, I begged them to inject my ankle with cortisone.
“Anything,” I pleaded. “Something. Put me in a walking cast. I’ve got to play. This is what I dreamed of.”
It was halftime when receiver Greg Jennings walked in. Earlier I had sworn to him that I was okay, that I would be ready for the second half. I sat on the table with my head down.
Greg came over and hugged me. Doc didn’t have the heart to speak the words that would tell me I couldn’t play, but Greg and I both knew.
My eyes began to water. I couldn’t stop myself from crying.
The other receivers were patting me on the back, telling me not to get down.
“We’re going to win this game for you, Drive,” they said.
Before every game our little group of receivers would gather together and huddle, and we’d chant, “One, two, three wide-outs.” Before they went out for the second half of the Super Bowl, they gathered around me and together we chanted, “One, two, three wide-outs.”
They left, leaving me in the locker room desolate and alone. Depressed, I figured I’d get dressed and sit alone in the locker room during the second half of the game. I could no longer contribute, and it hurt too much just to stand there and watch.
Doc and Pepper wouldn’t allow it.
“They need you out there,” they said. “The only way they’re going to win this game is to have you out there. You can contribute by coaching and cheerleading the guys.”
They put me in a boot so I wouldn’t have to go out there with crutches.
As I limped from the locker room out onto the Cowboys Stadium field, I looked up at the huge jumbotron that hovered above. We were leading 21–10.
On third down Aaron threw a pass to James Jones, who had the defender beat. Had he caught it, he would have had a touchdown. But he dropped it.
The Steelers scored again to pull to within four, at 21–17.
“Come on, J.J.!” I was screaming on the sidelines.
I talked to James. Everyone talked to James. To win we needed him to focus and catch the ball. After a couple of passes that Jordy didn’t catch, I did the same thing with him.
All the receivers came together on the sidelines.
“Go back to the basics,” I said. “Focus and catch the ball.” I said it in an encouraging way with a sense of urgency.
James wanted to know why everyone was on his case.
I didn’t say a word.
“You know what to do,” I told him. “Now go do it.”
We were leading 21–17 going into the fourth quarter. On third down Jordy made an unbelievable grab for thirty-eight yards, his longest catch of the game. He almost dove in for a touchdown, which would have been his second of the night.
It was at that point that I thought, We’re going to win this game. These boys are going to do it.
Greg Jennings caught a touchdown to put us ahead 28–17, and after he caught the ball he started pointing to his finger. I wondered whether he had dislocated it, but that wasn’t it at all. Greg was referring back to the night before when we were fitted for our Super Bowl rings.
On the sidelines when he was asked what he was doing, Greg said, “I was putting on my Super Bowl ring.”
That’s when I knew we were going to win.
That night we defeated Pittsburgh 31–25. After Mason Crosby kicked a field goal, our defense kept the Steelers from scoring as time ran out. Aaron Rodgers, who threw for 304 yards and three touchdowns and who rewarded Coach McCarthy’s confidence in his ability to replace Brett Favre, was named the Super Bowl MVP.
When the final whistle blew I didn’t feel cheated in any way, even though I was too injured to play in the second half. It would have been different if I hadn’t played at all. If I hadn’t played, people might have questioned whether I deserved a ring. But I had two catches for twenty-eight yards, so I contributed something, and I was satisfied, even happy to play a role in the Packers’ fourth Super Bowl victory in its history.
After the game was over I sat in the locker room with the other Packers players. Greg, Jordy, James Jones, Bryan Bulaga, Josh Sitton, and Ryan Taylor were sitting around me. I couldn’t help it, but I was crying. I couldn’t contain my emotions.
“Thank you, guys,” I said. “I appreciate this. After thirteen years I’m finally getting my opportunity to be a champion. I owe it to everyone in this locker room.”
The young players were looking at me as if to say, This is your first one?
They were thinking that they’d have plenty of opportunities to win a Super Bowl, but if you’re in the league long enough, you come to understand just how difficult it is. Usually it’s once in a lifetime. Not too many NFL football players even have the opportunity to play in the game.
WINNING THE SUPER Bowl was also a thrill for Tina and the kids. When we first came to Green Bay, I told Tina, “I will never attend a Super Bowl game until I’m in one. In fact, I will never watch one on TV until I’m in one.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said to me.
But it was how I felt about it. I refused to go. I refused to watch—until we beat the Steelers. And every year after that I’ve watched the games knowing I was a Super Bowl champion.
My son, Cristian, was excited as well. He knew it had always been his daddy’s dream to play in a Super Bowl game. My boy was happy for me.
We had a ring ceremony in Green Bay. Charles Woodson and I had our pictures taken together with our rings. Our entire careers—twenty-five years of NFL football between us—was all for that ring. No one can ever take that away from us.
My ring is in a safe.
A lot of people have told me that it would have been acceptable, even understandable, if I had retired right then. I was badly injured. I had won a Super Bowl, a storybook ending for a lowly seventh-round draft pick.
That thought never entered my mind.
When you win one, you want another.
AFTER WE DEFEATED Barack Obama’s Bears in the NFC Championship at Soldier Field and won the Super Bowl, we were invited to the White House as world champions. The first player President Obama hugged was me. Greg Jennings, who was standing behind us, wanted to know if everyone was going to get a hug.
“Donald and I go back a long way,” President Obama said. “We’re probably the same age, right Donald?”
“No,” I said, “you’re a little bit older than I am.”
It was very neat, very special.
When I look back at our Super Bowl victory, what I think about most is just how difficult it is to get there. You always think it’s going to happen, but then year after year, it doesn’t, so when you finally play in the game, you appreciate the atmosphere and everything that comes with it, the festivities, the throng of press, and buildup—I embraced everything about it. The other thing I love: I have a Super Bowl trophy and a Super Bowl ring in my house that I will cherish forever.
AFTER OUR SUPER Bowl win in February 2011, the owners locked us NFL players out. We had no collective bargaining agreement, and there were labor issues to resolve. We had to stay away from our teams.
I had messed up my medial collateral ligament (MCL) as well as my lateral collateral ligament (LCL) in my left knee on that play. The doctors gave me a boot to wear to take the pressure off my swollen foot. I wore it for almost two months.
When it appeared that the NFL owners and the NFL Players Association couldn’t agree on anything, on my own and without telling anyone I went ahead and had an operation on my hip. For years my hip had pinched me. Every time I planted my foot or came out of a break I felt the pain. Sometimes when I stretched, the hip joint would pop. I played on it anyway.
Dr. Thomas Byrd, my hip doctor, said that because I wasn’t able to twist and move the right way, I was overworking the other muscles. He said that’s why I had popped a quad muscle. Cartilage had formed over the bone, and he cleaned that up.
After the hip surgery, whenever I did a promotional or public appearance, I would come on crutches but then put them aside and hide them. I was on crutches for six weeks. It wasn’t too long before the pain in my hip was gone. I could run and cut again.
I had been badly hurt in the Super Bowl, and I knew I had to get my body back in shape. I felt it was important to keep the hip surgery from the public because at the age of thirty-six, if the press and public knew I had had my hip operated on in addition to the other procedures, questions concerning my ability to play would come fast and furious. Over and over I would have to answer questions like “How long can you still play? Are you declining?”
If I had been younger and had the surgeries, no one would have questioned it. I would have come back, felt amazing, and that would have been the end of it. But when you’re older …
My new goal was to play until I was forty. That, and to go to another Super Bowl.
THE LOCKOUT ENDED on the eve of training camp. The Packers came back to Green Bay heavily favored to repeat as Super Bowl champions.
The most games the Packers had ever won in a season was thirteen. In 2011 we began the season 13-0.
We finished the year with a stellar 15-1 record. Our only loss was to the Kansas City Chiefs in a huge upset. There is only one team in NFL history to go undefeated through the league championship, and that was the 1972 Miami Dolphins. We so badly wanted to be the second team to do that, but on any given Sunday you can lose, and that’s what happened to us against Kansas City.
It was a terrible loss, because we knew we didn’t play our best ball. Kansas City should not have beaten us. They were not a good team, but when you have a great team that doesn’t play as well as it should, then you lose. To go undefeated we had to play great every time we stepped onto that field, and on this day we didn’t do it.
But the loss to Kansas City was the turning point of our season because after that we decided, Okay, we can’t take teams lightly anymore. We’re going to have to put our feet on a team’s throat in games, and that’s what we started to do toward the end of the season. After that loss, we started putting teams away.
In the first quarter of that game I broke my middle finger again. I reached down to catch a ball on third and twelve, running a twenty-yard route, and as I turned for the ball, Aaron threw it close to the ground. I probably shouldn’t have reached for it, but I’ve always caught with my hands, so I reached down, and as I was tackled, the next thing I heard was a crack. I dropped the ball for an incomplete pass, and ran to the sidelines.
“Are you okay, Drive?” asked the trainer.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I lied.
I knew my finger was broken. Later in the game I went back in and caught the only Packers touchdown in the game.
After the game was over I took my glove off and went back to see the trainer.
“You broke your finger when?” he wanted to know.
“The first quarter.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’d have pulled me out if I had told you.”
WE EARNED A first-round bye. After a week off we returned to prepare for the New York Giants in the playoffs. We had played the Giants during the regular season and just beat them. Aaron and Eli Manning had had a shoot-out. Aaron, who threw me two beautiful touchdown passes, won it. Clay Matthews, our star linebacker, intercepted Manning and ran the ball back thirty-eight yards for a touchdown, and with the score tied 35–35 with three seconds left, Mason Crosby coolly kicked a thirty-one-yard field goal to win it for us. We were sure the rematch in the playoffs would be just as tough.
As we returned to work, the Packers were struck by tragedy. Joe Philbin was our offensive coordinator, and for a day and a half his twenty-one-year-old son Michael had gone missing. Later there was a police report that early on a cold Sunday morning a man who had fallen through the ice in Fox River was crying out for help. We held out hope it wasn’t Joe’s son, but it was.
Why Michael was out on the thin ice in January in the middle of the night was a mystery. A student at Ripon College, Michael had spent Saturday night bar-hopping, and his friends thought he was heading back to the university. He never made it.
Coach Philbin left the team to be with his family and prepare for Michael’s funeral, which was on a Friday in Green Bay, two days before our playoff game with the Giants. It was tough. Joe and I had been friends. We had been together since 2003, when he began as the assistant line coach; he had quickly moved up to offensive coordinator. I knew Michael since he was a child.
Joe was the mastermind behind our offense, a guy with bright ideas. He’d write down plays on a napkin during dinner and show them to us the next day. He was one of the few coaches whom Mike McCarthy kept on the staff after Mike Sherman was fired.
He had a play to beat any coverage. He had a play for me called the flanker short post. I’d come in motion, and I’d split the linebackers real quick, and Brett or Aaron would throw me the ball. It was always a catch for me.
I loved to needle Joe.
“You need to put more plays in for number eighty,” I’d tell him.
“You have plenty of plays,” he’d say.
To get a call that your child is gone is devastating. We got a lot of questions about whether we were going to dedicate the Giants playoff game to Joe and Michael. How do you answer that? Most of the guys didn’t even know Michael. Hell, most of them didn’t really know Joe.
“I want to win for Joe,” I said.
I wanted to repeat what we had done the year before.
But I had another problem. My age. In 2011 the reporters wouldn’t let it go. I never should have read the papers. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have seen the doubters talking about my reduced playing time, how I had gone from six straight seasons of 70 or more catches for 1,000 yards to 51 catches in 2010 for 565 yards and 37 catches in 2011 for 445 yards.
At the start of the season they wondered whether I had lost my speed, but then against the Detroit Lions in November I had caught a pass from Matt Flynn in the middle, split the two defenders, and outrun everyone for a touchdown. That ended that debate.
Then I scored those two touchdowns against the Giants in the regular season. I caught one in the back of the end zone because they let me go. The second touchdown was scored in front of Corey Webster, a top cornerback. I caught it falling out of bounds. After the game the reporters were lavishing me with praise, calling me “twinkle toes,” which made me laugh because not long before that they were trying to bury me, pointing out that my numbers were declining.
I wanted to tell them it had nothing to do with my having less skill, but as it was with Brett, it came down to age. Once you turn thirty, everyone starts asking, Can you still play? All you can do is try to prove everyone wrong.
But I couldn’t get away from reporters asking about my reduced playing time. Hell, I was on a team with some truly great receivers like Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson, James Jones, Jermichael Finley, and Randall Cobb. These were first-class weapons.
I answered my critics when in the second-round playoff game against the Giants I had three catches for forty-five yards and a touchdown. With those catches I was able to set a Packers record for most postseason receptions with 49. My 675 career yards in playoff games is second in Packers history.
Unfortunately, we played a terrible game against the Giants. We did the same thing in the playoff game that we did against Kansas City that year. We didn’t finish. We dropped balls. We didn’t execute on special teams. We didn’t execute on offense. And we lost.
Eli Manning threw three touchdown passes, while our receivers dropped a total of nine passes. We also had four turnovers, including an interception. Why we were so bad will forever be a mystery, though the critics focused on the fact that Coach McCarthy had rested his starters in the final game against the Detroit Lions. Aaron went a full three weeks without taking the field.
One difference was that I didn’t play as much in the playoff game against the Giants as I did in the regular season game against them. As you get older you start asking yourself, Why aren’t I playing as much? I just couldn’t wrap my finger around that. I was having a good year, and then boom, I didn’t play much in the most important game of the year.
At the end of the game it was We have to step up, and they put the Old Man in. I was put in the game late in the third quarter against the Giants, and I caught everything, including for a touchdown. It just wasn’t enough. We didn’t have enough time left on the clock. We ran out of time. That’s what got us in the end.
The 37–20 loss to the Giants at Lambeau Field was terribly deflating. Here we had posted a 15-1 record, the best in Packers history, but what did it matter if we couldn’t get past the second round of the playoffs? Who among the Packers fans cared that the Giants themselves would go on to win the Super Bowl?
Not one.
It was going to be a long winter—until show business came a-calling.