COMMENTARY: After hitting ‘rock bottom’ in the NFL, the Buccaneers quarterback says rediscovering Christ transformed his marriage, his mindset and the way he plays the game.
As Thanksgiving approaches, I am grateful for many things. Since the death of Charlie Kirk, however, I have become more and more attuned to and appreciative of those who speak about the faith in the spotlight. While it is true that the faith of the famous is not more important than the faith of the unknown disciples, those who have a wide stage to speak about the faith enable others to hear the faith that they never would have.
Particularly, I am grateful for the many professional athletes and coaches who are vocal about their Christian faith. There are Catholic players like Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker and coaches like Joe Mazzulla from the Boston Celtics who are beacons of hope for the growth of the Catholic faith among the pros. However, it has been the faith revival of a Christian NFL player that I have been recently grateful for — and I believe that Catholics can learn something from his journey.
Around a month ago, Baker Mayfield, the quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was interviewed on a platform called Sports Spectrum. In his interview, he is asked about how faith became more of a focal point of his life.
Baker admits that he grew up in a family that was not particularly religious. For them, Sunday worship took place on Easter and Christmas only. Earlier in his life, faith was a mere following of rules and adherence to commands. There was no need for faith because football was his god. In his high school and college years, his success on the field meant that there was no need for God, because Baker was constantly winning.
All of that changed when he began to have challenges on and off the field.
Mayfield was the first overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Then he broke the record for touchdown passes by a rookie quarterback. Slowly, after the start of his second season, his performance began to dwindle until he was later traded by the Cleveland Browns and then released by the Carolina Panthers after struggling on the field. It was this slump that led to his conversion.
“A couple years into my NFL career,” Baker continued, “God taught me a lesson. He had to take my career down to the studs and make me realize that I’m more than a football player — that there’s much more going on than just the game of football. To see that, I had to hit rock bottom. And it wasn’t just football — it was our marriage. We weren’t doing well at all. We were trying to have kids, and it wasn’t going well.”
Mayfield’s identity was football. It was winning and being successful. When that was taken from him, along with the trials of his marriage and family life, he hit rock bottom. It was in his time of need that he saw most clearly his need for God. Through conversations with some friends and a minister, he began to see that what he was looking for was a relationship with Christ. It was his encounter with Christ through Scripture and prayer that set him on a course to make his faith the center of his life.
“Tampa feels like home for me now,” he said. “But that’s because of what I built my foundation on — what my wife Emily and I built our foundation on — and that’s our faith. It’s been such a special ride to let God take us through it.”
What stands out to me most about Baker’s story is that it is Christ-centered, and the result of his vulnerability about his own life. As Catholics, we can take these lessons from his story and apply them to the way that we evangelize. We must speak to people about hardships and be honest about the need for God when things are most challenging. These vulnerable conversations allow for God’s Spirit to move and make us freer to choose him as the only One who brings us through the storms of life.
So this Thanksgiving, consider giving thanks for how Christ has brought you through your own rock bottom — and be convicted to share that story with others so that they, too, can be brought closer to him in the process.