What Winners Won't Tell You: Lessons from a Legendary Defender

PREFACE

On the morning of March 30, 2022, I wake up alone. It’s 5:58 a.m., two minutes before my alarm is set to go off. As my brain floods with the list of things I need to complete, I stare at the ceiling, and exhale.

I need to take my twelve-year-old Maltese Yorkie, Roxy, on her morning walk.

I need to wake my two daughters up, and have them washed, dressed, and fed before I take them to school at 7:20 a.m.

After that, I need to get back home to watch ESPN, because at 8:30 a.m. they will air the interview in which I announce that I’m retiring from NFL football.

After thirteen seasons in the NFL as a two-time Super Bowl champion and a three-time Pro Bowler, playing in 199 games with 1,044 tackles, 51 of them for losses; 35 quarterback hits; 13 ½ sacks; 11 fumble recoveries; 20 forced fumbles; 110 pass deflections; 21 interceptions; and 7 touchdowns, I am grateful to never have broken a bone or have had a major surgery. Though thirty-four years old is young, in a game where every inch counts, I’m old as shit. But what I may have lost in youth I’ve gained in wisdom.

In 2021, the season before I hung up my cleats for good, I decided, with me at the end of one journey and at the beginning of another, that I wanted to tell a story of my life that properly contextualized my career, shedding light on what drove me—honoring the people who inspired me, and sharing the lessons I learned that made me the man whom you watched play.

When my agent sent my proposal to publishers, we repeatedly received the same This looks great, we’ll get back to you response followed by radio silence. That was until a recently appointed senior editor gave me feedback. Because I played in this league for as long as I have and wanted the best book possible, I needed somebody who wasn’t afraid to tell me, Yo, homie, this shit is trash.

He wanted to talk to me alone, no agents, no managers, and that conversation sparked the clarity for the book you’re about to read. Anyone can write a linear story about their lives, giving you the play-by-play of every waking year, he told me on our call. But the legendary books tell a story that lasts in the minds of the readers long after they have finished the final page.

Not knowing the first thing about books, I needed a coach pushing me and pulling on every thread, challenging me to go deeper to help me connect dots even I didn’t see; my editor played that position.

One day during training camp, as I typed away at my computer, Saints quarterback Jameis Winston asked me what I was working on.

I’m writing a memoir.

He smiled.

I want to be like you when I grow up, man.

Though I knew he was joking, I also recognized his seriousness. That I was revising my book proposal in the middle of training camp became a point of fascination for my teammates. But every day, in training camp, I kept this routine until I finished the fifty-page proposal and sent it to my editor.

The next day, I got a call.

This right here is a story.

1

FEAR

Courage, brother! do not stumble,

Though your path be dark as night;

There’s a star to guide the humble:

Trust in God, and do the right.

—NORMAN MACLEOD

The first time my toes touched the Bermuda grass fields at the New Orleans Saints practice facility, it was hotter than a motherfucker. Like walking outside into a steam room, New Orleans is always humid. I normally wouldn’t be nervous stepping onto a football field for training camp. But this was the highest level of the game I’d played at that point. This was the NFL.

Though the Saints picked me, first round, fourteenth overall, in the 2009 draft, because my contract was nowhere near done, my agent, Ben Dogra, told me not to go.

The issue with my contract was simple: when you’re signed to the NFL, all players’ salaries and payment schedules are announced on various sports sites, like ESPN. Just like the fans, I know what everyone is being paid. In my case, being the fourteenth pick, I knew that the thirteenth pick, Brian Orakpo, the linebacker drafted out of Texas by the team now known as the Washington Commanders, signed a five-year deal for $20 million; and the sixteenth pick, Larry English, the defensive end drafted out of Northern Illinois by the San Diego Chargers, signed a five-year deal for $17.8 million. In the case of Brian Cushing, the linebacker drafted immediately after me out of USC by the Houston Texans, he signed a five-year deal for $14 million.

As a draft pick, you expect the player drafted ahead of you to make more than you, and you to make more than the player you’re drafted ahead of. Because English was being paid more for the same-length contract than Cushing was, even though he was the lower pick, it was important to me to (1) get to camp as quickly as possible, and (2) be paid between what English and Orakpo received. This was my first business decision: start training camp on time and accept whatever deal they offered or hold out until I was paid my worth. I chose the latter, and it cost me the first eleven days of training camp.

We were to report to camp on July 30, but I didn’t step on the field until August 10, the twelfth day of a thirty-five-day preseason schedule. I had twenty-three days to make up for the time lost and catch up with the veterans in front of me. By then Ben had successfully negotiated the terms of my contract: five years for $19 million.

Now I would have to earn every dollar.

The first five days of camp are what you’d call an acclimation period, which allows your body to adjust to the physical demands of training camp. The ten days following are the bulk of training camp, where you are evaluated from sunup to sundown on your performance in practice, your performance in workouts, and your attentiveness in the classroom. The remaining twenty days—give or take—overlap with the preseason, when you’re evaluated more for your performance on the field against other teams. Arriving on the twelfth day meant that while everyone else was making their best effort to climb the depth chart, I was still learning the plays.

On my first day of training camp, Dan Dalrymple, our strength coach, blew the whistle for the team to begin stretching. As we were jogging out onto the field, I heard the excitement of the fans who were there to watch us practice. As I was trotting behind veteran cornerback Jason David, who’d been on the Saints for two seasons and was going into his sixth season in the NFL at that point, a fan yelled, Thank God Jenkins is here! We can finally get rid of Jason David!

In college, fans were never at practice except for two open practice sessions held at the stadium every training camp. Fans couldn’t see the daily toils and follies of trying to improve your game on the practice field. But in the NFL, almost every day, weather permitting, a couple hundred fans line the edges of the practice field during training camp. Access that ends once the season starts. Beat writers write and post articles about who looked good in practice, who was where on the depth chart, and wrote daily predictions of who would make the team and who might find themselves on the chopping block.

Right then, before the coaches split offense and defense into different position groups, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams called the entire defense into a circle that closed around me. The night before, he’d told me I’d have to do forty up-downs to start practice.

An up-down is essentially a burpee: you jog in place until you hear a whistle. When the whistle blows, you drop down, do a push-up, stand up, and jump. This wasn’t a team-bonding moment. Gregg was a mastermind and told me about an experiment that researchers conducted at the University of Wisconsin in 1966. In this experiment, researchers put five monkeys into a large cage. In the middle of the cage, one of the researchers hung a ring of bananas at the top, with a ladder placed underneath for the monkeys to reach them. But whenever one of the monkeys climbed the ladder, the researcher sprayed them with cold water. Not stopping there, the researcher then turned the water on every other monkey who hadn’t climbed.

This cycle repeated itself until the monkeys understood to leave the bananas alone. At this point in the experiment, the researcher replaced one of the trained monkeys with a new one. When the new monkey saw the bananas and attempted to climb the ladder, all the other monkeys, in fear of being sprayed again, attacked the new monkey.

The experiment continued until all the original monkeys were rotated out of the cage and all the new monkeys understood the program: leave those bananas alone. After he finished telling me about the experiment, he turned to me with a grin.

That’s how you create culture.

When I stood up during my last burpee, I understood a few things about how Gregg ran his program. Fear was at the very core of his leadership style. He knew how to make us more afraid of letting each other down than we were of any opponent.

The first drill of the day was a team run. This is a period in practice in which the offense’s objective is to advance the ball only with run plays, and the defense’s objective is to stop those rushing attempts to three yards or less; anything more is considered a win for the offense. The logic is that if you can rush the ball for more than three yards every carry, then you will always get a first down. The simplest and most basic game plan there is. You must first establish if you are strong enough to run or stop the run of your opponent before you try any other approach. The defense ran back to the main field to meet with the offense, who drew up run plays.

Knowing they were run plays, it was our job as the defense to react to those plays—with the emphasis on the defensive line. This drill always got intense because if you played defense for Gregg, stopping the football was a lifestyle. Any ballcarrier running through the defense without their forward momentum being fully stopped was a problem. Most NFL practices are rarely live. We still run at our top speeds, and collide, but because we all understand that the most important thing is keeping our best players in one piece, the goal is for no one to hit the ground. Gregg would literally tell us daily that when he watched the tape from practice, anyone who was constantly on the ground was only communicating, Cut me.

This created a dilemma for us on the defense. How in the hell am I supposed to stop a ballcarrier’s forward momentum without tackling him? And how do I play football with the biggest and best in the world and not hit the ground? Technique! If you cannot play full-speed and still be under control, you are a danger to yourself and the other players around you. We practice getting better, and we show up every day to get better. Injuries prevent players from practicing, which stops them from getting better. A player must learn to play at a high enough rate of speed to challenge their limits with the sobriety of mind to keep from putting their teammates in compromising positions. The most important example of this is staying off the quarterback. Nothing will end your championship dreams faster than some out-to-prove-it-to-the-world rookie who injures your franchise quarterback, Drew Brees, before the season even starts. Imagine playing tag with a person you’re not allowed to touch and being evaluated on the hypothetical outcome of your positioning. Quarterbacks were the only players whose jerseys were red. A reminder to stay the fuck off them. But these parameters applied to almost everyone in practice. If we were to lose someone, let it be in a real game, not at practice.

A team run consisted of twenty plays. Starters ran the first four plays, second-stringers ran the next three, then third-stringers ran another three, and then we’d repeat. As I was at the bottom of the depth chart—behind veterans Jabari Greer, Tracy Porter, Randall Gay, Jason David, and Leigh Torrence—my first set of plays in an NFL practice would be with the guys fighting desperately to make the team. Because the rosters will hold only fifty-three spots, the depth charts become real-time standings of who’s on the chopping block of the eighty players invited to training camp.

On my first team run rep, Reggie Bush ran the ball to the opposite side of the field. But because Gregg believed in maximum effort, the play wasn’t dead until everyone touched him. The second play was a run in my direction, which allowed me to tag the runner sooner than the first play. I had one more play until I was off the field. In anticipating the moment I’d be able to leave the field, I didn’t see that our backup quarterback, Mark Brunell, had snapped the ball already.

All I saw next was Pierre Thomas sprinting through the middle and into the secondary, unimpeded, toward the goal. Over fans cheering, cameras clicking, Gregg’s voice cut through.

Stop the fucking ball!

For about forty yards down the field, I ran until I shoved Pierre out-of-bounds. My first three plays were finished. And so was I. Turning to jog off the field, I could no longer feel my legs. I could physically touch them, but I couldn’t feel them.

Quit fucking walking on my field!

Until my walk sped up to a fat man’s trot, more voices swarmed me. Nauseous, I hyperventilated. Trying to get as much access to air as possible, I took my helmet off. When the trainers saw this, they grabbed cold sponges, squeezing the water down my pads to help regulate my body heat. Desperately trying to cool off before I had to get back on the field, I stripped out of my shoulder pads. The defensive back coach, Dennis Allen, checked in.

Is he up or is he down?

If you’re up, you’re expected to perform the given task to the standard of the team. If you’re down: get off the field and go to rehab until you’re up again. I was down—and out. My opportunity to shine ended with a sponge bath in the cold tubs. The day was over.

When I was six years old, I attended the Chad School, a private, all-Black K–12 school in Newark, New Jersey, that prided itself on teaching its students Black history, culture, and identity. Mainly because of my new teacher, Sister Friar, I hated the school.

Before Sister Friar, I loved the Chad School. Instead of pledging allegiance to America’s flag every morning, we’d sing James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing. We referred to classmates and teachers as brother and sister.

In preschool, Sister Penny made her teaching atmosphere full of fun. In kindergarten, Sister Beatrice taught us about prominent figures in the Black community—from Malcolm X to Martin Luther King Jr.—and we put on a play in which I portrayed Marcus Garvey. My experience quickly turned into a hell of Sister Friar’s making. Suddenly, rules became the focus.

She made Agatha Trunchbull from Matilda look like a substitute teacher. If you didn’t pay attention, she snapped a yardstick across the top of your arm. When you didn’t do what she said, she made you write your offense on the blackboard, like Bart Simpson, till your arm fell off. Her favorite punishment was having a kid stand in the corner with their nose against the wall like a real-life dunce. Her authoritative style, marrying obedience with pain, worked. I was so afraid of her, rather than getting into trouble, I peed on myself when she refused to allow me to use the bathroom during assembly. The difference between Gregg Williams’s implementation of fear and Sister Friar’s? Gregg had something defensive players wanted: playing time.

In the second quarter of our first preseason game, just four days after my first practice, I found myself at the bottom of the depth chart, watching from the sidelines. Our opponent was the Cincinnati Bengals. It was third down with four yards to go on the 14-yard line with eleven seconds left in the half. We were up 7–0, and they just called a time-out.

Because their offense was already in field goal range, we knew, as a defense, that they only had enough time to execute one play, making the likelihood of that play being a pass all but guaranteed. Gregg radioed in the orders to our middle linebacker, who spread the word.

No double moves! Play the goal line.

With the second-stringers in the game, Jason David played the right-side cornerback. As a defender, Jason made a career out of anticipating offensive patterns and jumping between the ball and the receiver for an interception. What he didn’t understand: when you gamble, the house always wins. For every interception he snagged, it seemed like he gave up two touchdowns. In a seemingly harmless preseason game on 3rd and 4, I could tell by his stance that Jason was ready to gamble.

When J. T. O’Sullivan had the ball snapped to him, Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry executed the double move Gregg had warned the defense about. After only a few strides, Henry broke toward the end zone. Jason attempted to jump the short route and was caught out of position.

Touchdown, Bengals!

Gregg was livid. If Gregg could’ve cut him right there, he would’ve. Instead they cut him the next day. In that moment, I saw how the decisions we make on the field have real consequences, and even though my spot on the depth chart was secured for the time being, I understood I could be the next Jason David if I didn’t tighten up.

It was 3rd and 5 as my teammates and I lined up for the play. I was ten and the quarterback for my team. Summertime on Third Street in Piscataway, New Jersey, meant we played football from sunrise to sunset. We either played two-hand touch in the street or we played tackle in the rectangular plot of grass next to my house. Because we were all highly competitive in my neighborhood, these games were often heated, but they rarely escalated into physical fights.

All we needed was five yards to get a fresh set of downs, but everyone wanted to run deep and score touchdowns. My younger brother Martin—the tough and fearless middle child who’s two years younger than me—was one of the receivers on my team. Because Martin’s practical, he knew what to do without me saying a word.

Set, hike!

Martin ran five yards and stopped right over the middle with no defense. I dished it to him immediately. At that time, his favorite players to watch were the legendary half- and fullback duo for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott. Giving his best Alstott impression, Martin lowered his head, shielded the ball with both hands, and rammed his shoulder into Hassan’s chest, dragging him for another five yards.

Hassan was short—with an even shorter temper and a foul mouth. A bad combination on my block. But his secret weapon was his older brother, Hakeem, who was two or so years older than me. Hakeem constantly checked to make sure that you feared him, the type to jump at you just to see you flinch.

Earlier that summer while playing ball, Hassan pushed Martin into a set of hedges that outlined the grass field we played on. Instinctually, I threw a perfect spiral, hitting him in his spine. As he turned around, Hassan’s eyes welled with tears.

I’m going to go get my brother. He gon’ fuck you up.

A few minutes later, Hakeem arrived. As he got within about ten yards of me, I attempted to defuse the situation. Before I could finish my sentence, Hakeem cocked back with his right fist and threw a wild haymaker. As I ducked, I had a decision to make: Do I counterpunch him and fight a kid that’s older than me or do I run?

Before he could recover from his punch, I was three steps past him, through the bushes, and in the house. From that point on, the other boys in the neighborhood ridiculed me. Even the younger kids had jokes. Whenever I bossed up, they’d say, Shut up before I go get Hakeem.

Now, after Hassan felt the wrath of Martin’s shoulder, he pushed Martin again.

Ey! Keep your hands to yourself! I yelled.

Shut up, bitch, Hassan said, and then spit at me.

Knowing that Hassan was sure to summon his older brother, I cut my losses and went to the house. As I grabbed the handle to the red screen door, I realized it was locked. As I looked up, I saw my father’s mother on the other side of the screen.

My grandmother Barbra Jenkins, with her curly short Afro and soft caramel skin, was a retired social worker who worked for DCF in Child Protective Services. She was tough, independent, and loved to travel. She adorned her home with knickknacks and souvenirs from her adventures around the world. Because she always had pyramids all around her house and the pictures from her trip on her fridge, I think her favorite destination was Egypt. The magnets on her refrigerator showed all the places she had traveled. When arranged in the right order, they created a map of the world. Though her love for me, her oldest grandson, was unconditional, her love never stopped her from teaching me hard lessons.

Did that boy just spit at you?

Yeah, but it didn’t land…

Go punch that boy in the face.

Huh?

Somebody spitting at you is the worst thing they can do. Go punch that boy in the face. Don’t come in this house until you do.

The house in question was the same house she and my grandfather had bought in the early sixties, the same house she raised my father in; the same house that, when she and my grandfather got divorced, she converted into a two-family home and rented out the upstairs part to my parents. If she wouldn’t give her son a break on rent, I knew she meant what she said.

Emboldened by the request, and, quite frankly, fearing my grandmother more than Hakeem, I about-faced, walked directly down the pathway in my front yard to Hassan, grabbed him by the throat, and punched him in his face.

I’m going to get my brother!

After a few hours, Hakeem never materialized, so I thought the coast was clear. To blow off steam, I went down to the basketball court to shoot around. Right on cue, I saw Hakeem, Hassan, and their pudgy third wheel, Skeet, walking down the street, pointing at me.

As they approached me, I kept my cool, ignoring them. The closer they got, the tighter I clenched my fists. They stopped at the edge of the court.

I thought I told you to keep your hands off my brother, Hakeem said.

You better tell him to keep his hands off mine.

Sensing that I wasn’t going to back down, Hakeem had an appetite for dialogue.

Yeah, aight, nigga, you heard what I said.

To my surprise, Hakeem turned around and left. That’s when I learned that, for fear to win, you have to be afraid, and for that moment, I wasn’t.

A few days prior to my second preseason game, where we were set to play the Texans, we arrived in Houston. In the days leading up to the game, we were scheduled to conduct three joint practices with them. On paper, joint practices sound like a good idea. To break up the monotony of training camp, and to get high-quality reps and evaluations, the league allows teams to compete in a controlled practice. Though everyone doesn’t play in the actual game, joint practices provide even the bottom-roster player an opportunity to show their value.

What this really turns into is a dick-swinging contest between teams and players. High-quality reps are replaced with fights, injuries, and overaggressive plays. After two fights broke out between us and the Texans, we only got through two of the three scheduled practices. On one field our offense was in an all-out brawl with their defense and on the other field our defense was in a melee with their offense.

During our downtime one evening, the veteran defensive backs invited the entire group for dinner. Though I wasn’t invited to attend the dinner as a guest, as a rookie who was expected to pay for this dinner, my presence was mandatory. For first-round draft picks, this was tradition. As if learning the ins and outs of the playbook weren’t enough, we stocked the meeting room fridge with snacks, bought and delivered breakfast upon request, and provided daily entertainment during the dog days of camp. Until this point in training camp, I did what I was told, kept quiet, and stayed out of the way. When I was asked to sing the Thong Song, I obliged. When they wanted to hear a joke, I yelled, "I’m rich, biatch!" in my best Donnell Rawlings voice. I did it all, with humility.

Though having to pay a bill of $10,000 or more—depending on the defiance of the rookie and the ruthlessness of the vets—wasn’t uncommon for rookies, the vets took it easy on me by only having me pay for the defensive backs and not the whole defense or whole team. The worst I’d ever heard was Dez Bryant’s purported $54,896 dinner bill. This came after Dez openly refused to carry other players’ football pads.

Del Frisco’s was the restaurant of choice. At a long table in a quiet corner of the restaurant, twelve of us on the Saints’ defensive back roster broke bread. Suddenly defensive captain Jonathan Vilma, or JV as we called him, and the entire linebacker core arrived, increasing the group from twelve to twenty-one. As they raised their glasses to me for covering the evening’s bill, I sat at the head of the table, worried.

After devouring plates of calamari and lobster, the check arrived. Looking at the total, I leaned over to Darren Sharper and Roman Harper.

Do I have to pay for the linebackers, too?

Roman smiled.

"Nah, bro, you’re our rookie. Let their rookies take care of them."

Sharper followed up.

Nah, we ain’t gonna do you like that.

When the waiter returned, I told him that I would only cover the twelve defensive backs I was with. The waiter then dropped another check on the opposite end of the table. Confused, JV grabbed it and looked at me.

What’s this?

They said I only had to pay for the DBs.

JV raised his eyebrows, slowly leaned back, and nodded.

Okay, that’s how we’re doing it.

When JV no longer directed the question-statement at me, but at Roman and Sharper, I realized they had set me up. When I tried to offer to pay, JV declined, reached into his pocket, paid for the linebackers, and left.

The next day, when the coaches blew the last whistle of practice, the team huddled, Sean Payton made a few comments, and we headed to the locker room. Walking off the field, veteran defensive linemen Will Smith and Paul Spicer walked up on both sides of me and lifted me off the ground. Besides cutting me in the lunch line