Seventy-two-year-old Susan Collesidis was never a football fan until she heard Carson Wentz talk about his faith.
Then she was hooked on the Philadelphia Eagles.
When Wentz found out his newest fan was fighting an advanced stage of cancer
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”How much joy I get from watching him and his team play supernatural football every week,” she said after reading it.
Two weeks later, Collesidis lost her battle with cancer the night before Thanksgiving.
”The message meant so much to Susan because she admired Carson as a person and believer more than a football player,” son-in-law Doug Horton said. ”He’s the reason she started caring about sports and she couldn’t wait to watch the Eagles every week.”
Wentz isn’t playing in the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots because he tore his ACL in Week 14. But backup quarterback Nick Foles also is a ”brother in Christ” and one of the leaders in a locker room filled with guys who have formed a strong bond because of their faith.
”It truly is a brotherhood,” Pro Bowl tight end Zach Ertz said. ”Those guys are holding me accountable. Off the field, I’m holding them accountable. We truly care about each other, we truly care about the growth that each individual has in the word, as believers, as well as friends and family. There are a lot of guys who are truly trying to boost me up and keep me focused on the main thing, which is obviously the word. …”
Christian players openly expressing their faith is nothing new in the NFL: Reggie White, Kurt Warner, Tim Tebow, Ray Lewis and Russell Wilson among many others. But these Eagles are an unusually close-knit group.
”There is a stronger connection here,” said defensive end Steven Means, who played for three other teams. ”It’s another level because we push each other in certain areas that we are flawed at and open ourselves up to each other. We text each other throughout the day making sure that everybody is on the right path and doing the right thing.”
Torrey Smith played with Lewis on the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens in 2012. They had a solid core of Christian players who used their faith for inspiration during their journey. Smith also spent two years in San Francisco before the wide receiver came to Philadelphia this season. He said it’s different here.
”I’ve been lucky to be part of three organizations that do have a very strong Christian presence,” Smith said. ”The difference here is a lot of younger guys lead.”
It starts with Wentz, the face of the franchise.
Wentz went on a mission trip to Haiti last May with former teammate Jordan Matthews and a group led by Kyle Horner, lead pastor of The Connect Church. He delivered a sermon a month later at a church back home in North Dakota and launched his Audience of One Foundation in July. Wentz and several teammates even created a devotional video series for the Bible app.
Four days before the season opener, Wentz and teammates Trey Burton and Stefen Wisniewski spoke at a faith event in front of a crowd of 2,000 people who sat in the rain for a couple hours to hear their favorite players share their testimony.
But before he had an MVP-caliber season and led the Eagles from worst to first, Wentz received plenty of criticism from some media and fans because he openly talked about his faith on social media .
He wasn’t deterred.
”Jesus was persecuted everywhere he went
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A large group of players meet for Bible study on Thursdays and hold a study for couples on Mondays. They get together for prayer and devotionals the night before games. They’ve even gathered for baptisms in some unusual places.
In October 2016, Burton and pastor Ted Winsley baptized six players in a cold tub at the team’s practice facility.
”It was crazy,” said Winsley, the team’s longtime chaplain. ”The guys were just hungry, wanting their lives changed.”
Before a Thursday night game at Carolina last October, second-year pro Marcus Johnson was baptized in a hotel pool.
”Since I’ve come to Philly, I’ve grown in my faith so much,” Johnson said. ”As a rookie last year coming in, you always hear about the locker room and how dysfunctional it can be and people playing for money and this and that, but when I got here, everyone was so supportive and I knew it was something special.”
Having strong faith doesn’t make players immune to adversity, but it helps them deal with it. The Eagles (15-3) have overcome numerous injuries to important players on their way to winning the NFC championship.
Nine-time Pro Bowl left tackle Jason Peters, running back/return specialist Darren Sproles, special-teams captain Chris Maragos and kicker Caleb Sturgis suffered season-ending injuries along with Wentz and Jordan Hicks, the playmaking linebacker and quarterback on defense.
Instead of anger and resentment, they’ve leaned on their faith to maintain a positive attitude.
”Character is always revealed in times of testing,” said Horner, who pastors several players. ”For these men
http://www.coltsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-nyheim-hines-jersey , Christ is not a crutch to lean upon, he is the foundation which their life is built upon. For them, faith is not an intellectual acknowledgement of truth, but a day-by-day expression of their love for God. This is where it all starts.”
Walking in the freshly cut, bright green grass on Wednesday while directing the Minnesota Vikings through their first practice of training camp was, naturally, the best place for Mike Zimmer to be.
"It takes a little bit of the sting away," Zimmer said, pausing to recover from a crack in his voice, "of losing a great friend, a great coach, a good man."
The Vikings and the rest of the NFL were stunned on Sunday when Sparano, their tough-loving offensive line coach, died suddenly at age 56 of heart disease .
"It'll be a hard few days, but we'll get through it and we'll get back to work and do the things that we do," Zimmer said, "and that's what he'd want us to do."
After two days of workouts for rookies and others selected for early duty either due to relative inexperience or a recent injury, the Vikings will take a break Friday to attend Sparano's funeral in the Twin Cities area. Then the entire team will convene for the first full practice on Saturday.
"The most important thing is when you're a family, the family is what helps you get through it," said general manager Rick Spielman
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As evidenced by and during the run last season to the NFC championship game, the Vikings from the top down have forged an environment as tightly knit as any point in their history. This is an organization that has seen plenty of dysfunction over 57 years. The solidarity comes in handy at a tragic time like the unexpected loss of life, but it can also intensify the grief.
"We had quite a relationship," said Zimmer, who was on the same staff as Sparano for the last four of his 13 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys. "His wife, Jeanette, I told her the other day, she reminds me a lot of my wife. She's the sweetest lady."
Zimmer's wife, Vikki, passed away in 2009. His father, Bill, died in 2015. So he's had unfortunate experience in straddling the fine line between proper mourning and pressing on. What's clear to the Vikings, at least, is that Sparano would pick the latter.
"If Tony knew we were having this talk about him, I could just hear him in his very endearing way what his opinion on this would be," Spielman said.
With darkened sunglasses he wore since a teenage accident with hot oil from a deep fryer while working at a restaurant, Sparano had an intimidating presence. A significant portion of the screaming audible during a typical Vikings practice came from Sparano, who as a fellow understudy of former Cowboys head coach and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Bill Parcells came from the same hard-nosed mold as Zimmer.
"He was a lot like me, probably the only person in the building who was grumpier than I was," Zimmer said. "But he really cared about his players. I've sat in with him in offensive line rooms a lot, and he had a way of poking the stick at the guys and then putting his arms around him."
Sparano's daughter was married in Texas just 2陆 weeks ago. He told Zimmer last month he felt his health was the best it'd been. Since Zimmer hired Sparano in 2016 to help instill a tougher mentality in the offensive linemen
Authentic Jeremiah Attaochu Jersey , the two early-to-arrive-and-late-to-leave coaches spoke often, and not just about football. As a former NFL head coach, Sparano served as a sounding board for Zimmer, as was their shared mentor, Parcells, the source of many of Sparano's customary colloquialisms.
"Instead of saying, 'It's one or the other,'" Zimmer recalled, "he'd say, 'It's a horse apiece.'"
That could've been applied, for example, to an assessment of a couple of potential draftees. Spielman fondly remembered Sparano's thoroughness, taking the time to study video of a tackle prospect when he played guard in a years-old game.
"I've never been around a coach who put in so much time and energy into everything he did," Spielman said.
There was a soft side to Sparano, too, when it came to his family, whether immediate or football. Zimmer smiled as he recounted playing in Spielman's charity golf tournament on the course where Sparano's house was, not far from the team's old headquarters.
"We get to whatever hole he was on, and he'd have a big cooler out there with beer and wine," Zimmer said. "He gave me a bottle of wine so we could play the rest of the course. That's Tony. He was a genuine person who cared an awful lot about a lot of people."
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