For anyone who ever called Adam Archuleta a bust—please read this. Adam was an underdog from the start. Raised by a single mother, his father in Wyoming, he fought for every opportunity he ever had. He wasn’t handed a scholarship. He walked on at Arizona State University. No one expected him to succeed, yet he became a force on the field, defying every odd stacked against him. After proving himself, he went on to play in the NFL with the Rams. But the game took its toll. I remember the phone call as if it happened yesterday. He was laid out on the field, four concussions deep. His friend Kristie called me, and his mother, urging me to get to St. Louis. They told me he wasn’t the same after that hit. Even his own mother said he would never be the same. Who is he supposed to tell? The coaches? In the NFL, you can’t go up to a coach and say, “I can’t hit anymore.” No one would do that. For any man to play in the NFL, running headfirst toward another person, knowing you're going to collide with force, it takes something more. You have to have a few screws loose. But what happens when one of those screws gets damaged? You change. Adam changed. He wasn’t the same player after that hit, and that’s not his fault. Maybe he should have retired then, but he pushed on. That’s who he is—driven by ego, competitive fire, and the belief that he was still OK. He went to the Redskins, where it wasn’t about proving anything anymore—it was about securing a future. And then he went on to the Bears, with our son on the way. During OTA, he was told that most women schedule C-sections so they can attend. But Adam refused to put football before family. He told them we were going to have this baby the way we wanted to. That was the man he is—loyal to his family, putting them above everything else. In 2008, his football career ended. But his greatness never did. I won’t mention any names, but I would always say to him, “Why don’t you just sit on the bench, like others?” There were times when he had a broken hand and still played through it. He had a herniated disc so bad he couldn’t even tie his cleats, and still, he didn’t sit out. I asked him why, and he said, "Because if I sit on that bench, somebody will take my job." He never sat on the bench. Sometimes I wish he would have, because maybe then he could’ve been on the "injured list" instead of playing through the pain and hearing people talk. It’s taken me a long time to write this because I always felt like it wasn’t my place. It wasn’t my story. But now, after all these years, I realize I’ve been with him long enough, through every high and low, that I know his story well enough to tell it. For anyone who dares to call Adam Archuleta a bust, you don’t know his story. You don’t know the sacrifices, the concussions, the moments when his life was on the line. Football is brutal, and when your brain shakes like that, you’ll never be the same. But he did the unexpected, as he always had. From a walk-on in college to an NFL career, Adam showed the world what it means to rise from nothing. So this is for the ones who didn’t make it, who could’ve made it, or who tried and failed. Before you talk, remember that Adam Archuleta was and always will be the man who defied the odds—and I’m proud to have stood by his side throughout it all. "Greatness is found in the fight to keep going when no one sees the struggle."-Jennifer Archuleta
And make sure to watch Concussed: The American Dream by Brett Favre. It’s a powerful documentary.
