Catch What You See

After a long practice with the Philadelphia Eagles, there were many dropped passes that were addressed after practice that day. A respected coach from the Eagles said “Fellas! You have to catch with your eyes!” 

Many of the guys would shrug it off at the time knowing that they already knew how to catch and that it was simply a mistake at the time. However, the saying stuck with me because I didn’t quite understand why he would put it like that. It was so vague yet so absolute. I soon came to a simple conclusion, the ball simply needed to be caught no matter what. I also figured it had something to do with making “the play”, since every play counts.

Everyone wants to be the X-factor when it comes to winning a game or competition. Proud to say I have made a game breaking play in the NFL and am alive to share the story, better yet, share the secret ingredient to my success with catching. It all began with the presence of Donavan Mcnabb.

All throughout Jr. High and High School I was a big fan of Donavan Mcnabb. I vividly remember when the Philadelphia Eagle’s made it to the Superbowl and Donavan McNabb was the starting quarterback. My eyes were glued to the T.V. that Sunday, and my dad would say, like he would say every Super bowl Sunday, “Son…this is the best right here, the greatest players.” If you saw his face you would think he was talking about angels from the heavens. I would reply in disinterest, “I know dad.” But inside my head I was always in Awww. These guys were the best and more importantly Donavan Mcnabb was amongst them.

Fast forwarding to the present, I found myself in a position I had only dreamt of being in. I was in a 3 point stance on Philadelphia’s 3-yard line headed into the Endzone (meaning we were 3 yards from scoring). The play call was “Strong Right Goal Line Fk 35 Boot Right”, which indicates that the ball can very well be thrown to me in the flats. I hear McNabb yelling the cadence “Blue 80, Blue 80…” and the whole time I was thinking, man this is really about to happen. I’m playing side by side with one of the best NFL quarterbacks working together to win this game. I was starting to get nervous about catching the key pass. When he hiked the ball, I took my counter steps to the left then headed back to the right. When I turned I saw McNabb and his action to throw….just before he released the ball I told myself, “It’s just a ball, It’s just a ball.” While it was in the air, I thought to myself, ‘I’ve seen a ball many times in my life like that, twirling and whirling towards me.’ I caught it like I would to any and finished the play with a dive into the end zone ----It was a dream come true!

 I had scored my first NFL touchdown. I could not have done it, if I did not simplify the task upon its arrival. As an athlete, awareness grows with experience, sometimes to a fault.

When looking into a bowl of lucky charms as an adolescent, I kid you not (haha); the only objects that appealed to me in the bowl were the colorful marshmallows. Those colorful marshmallows to me were “thee lucky charms” and the rest were just charms.

Similar to catching the football, a lot of the commotions in a football (crowd, defenders, fear…etc.) are like normal charms and seem to be a distraction of what really mattered. There are many cases where we athletes tend to focus on more then what we ultimately want. Some of us get too excited to make the big play before a catch and focus on the upcoming move, rather than focusing on the necessary catch. Some of us freeze up out of fear- causing a late reaction to catch the ball, and some of us find ourselves in awww, due to extraordinary circumstances. More or less we do need to catch the ball.

Similar to how I saw what I wanted the most in my bowl of Lucky Charms.

We can do the same on the field! Make the ball your “lucky charm”. Then CATCH WHAT YOU SEE!