Where the Route Began

At five years old, my parents divorced. I was lucky to have a loving father I saw every other weekend—but the rest of the time, I lived in a home marked by physical abuse. I didn’t even realize it was abuse at first. I was a quiet kid who got good grades and stayed out of trouble, yet I lived in fear, never knowing what would set her off. I once got a beating for scoring a 95% on a math test because I hadn’t studied the night before. I carried that fear like a shadow.

The contrast when I was with my dad was night and day. He poured into me with love, and even taught me poems like Invictus and If to build mental toughness. At 11, after a particularly brutal beating, I showed him the bruises—and everything changed. Child Protective Services removed me from my mother’s home. From that moment on, I lived full time with my dad, and my healing began.

He introduced me to sports. At first, it was basketball, and eventually football. Though I only saw football as a path later in high school, it opened doors I didn’t expect. I earned a scholarship to the University of Miami after going from an unranked player to one of the top tight ends in the country. My college career was a roller coaster—early success, setbacks, then a comeback my senior year. That mindset helped me navigate the NFL as an undrafted player who fought for every snap across multiple teams.

But nothing prepared me for life after football. A sudden knee injury ended my career, and for the first time, I had no direction. Depression, anxiety, and a total loss of identity hit hard. It wasn’t until I started therapy that I realized I had been carrying childhood trauma into every part of my adult life. I had to confront it. I had to heal.

That healing process is what led me to write my book, Working Through the Dark, and to begin speaking publicly about resilience, adversity, and rediscovering yourself when everything falls apart. This is where my route truly began—not in the NFL, but in finding my way back to myself.