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This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love revealed he almost quit football at 14 years old in an article he wrote in “The Players Tribune” on Monday.
When Love was 14 years old, his father committed suicide the summer after his freshman year of high school.
Love wrote that when football began in the fall, he wanted to quit.
“When football started that fall, I wanted to quit. It wasn’t even that big of a deal. I was a nobody. I was the smallest kid on the field — literally. My freshman year, I was 5’6″, 136 pounds. Maybe 5’7″ with my Vans on. I didn’t even make JV. I was the backup QB on the freshman team. Just some dude,” Love wrote in “The Players Tribune.”
The Packers quarterback said his mom talked him out of quitting, and made him a deal.
“(Mom) saw right through me. She saw how much I was hurting. I just wasn’t in my right mind. So she made a deal with me,” Love wrote.
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”She said, ‘Just give it one more year. If you don’t love it at the end of this year, and you want to stop, then we’ll stop.’”
While Love didn’t magically turn into a superstar that season, he said that playing allowed him to “forget about everything for a few hours.”
“I couldn’t say no to my mom. I gave in. Got out the car….. Went to practice. Kept going. And I wish that I could say ‘The rest is history.’ But it wasn’t history. Like I said, I was a regular-a– dude. I made the JV squad, and I had a lot of fun with my friends. When I was on the field, I could kind of forget about everything for a few hours. That was a win,” he continued.
Love said without his mother, and “without that brotherhood of football, I never would have made it.”
“That camaraderie of football took me out of a really dark and lonely place. Through everything, the one thing that I could always count on was my friends and family. There’s just no way I’d be here without them. No way I’d have made it out of Bakersfield. No way in hell that I’d be the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers,” Love said.
Love is entering his fifth season, all with the Packers, and his third season as the team’s starting quarterback.
Last season, the team was 9-6 in Love’s starts, and he had a completion percentage of 63.1% with 3,389 yards and 25 touchdowns with 11 interceptions.
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