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If you luv the Axe...get to know the man!, Espn Article.....
GREENER PASTURESby Eddie Matz, ESPN MagazineFool’s Hill. It’s a place Jeremiah Trotter grew up dreaming about. As he chopped wood with his father deep into the Texas night, he’d think about the lush grass on top of Fool’s Hill. As he did homework on the school bus, he’d picture the roaring waterfalls on the other side of Fool’s Hill.“I know you don’t understand why I’m so tough on you,” his father would say. “Someday, when you get over Fool’s Hill, you will.”When he was older, Jeremiah realized the hard truth: there was no Fool’s Hill. It was just an expression, but one with some serious truth in it. In fact, Trotter knows precisely when he got over Fool’s Hill and first saw life as an adult: May 28, 1998, the day he buried his father, the day Trotter says he grew up. For a while, anyway. With Pop gone, that damn hill was kinda slippery.FOUR HUNDRED twenty thousand dollars. That was Trotter’s signing bonus with the Eagles when he came out of college in 1998. “More zeroes than I’d ever seen,” he says, his linebacker’s shoulders barely contained by a black leather chair. His words come out deep and slow, Southern and captivating. The man could’ve easily been a minister. No doubt his folks would’ve preferred it. Growing up in the tiny northeast Texas town of Hooks, none of the eight Trotter kids was allowed to play sports. Too much praying to be done. Too much work, too. “Ever since I was old enough to pick up a stick,” Trotter says, “I was workin’ for my pop.”Myra Trotter was a soft-spoken ox of a man who provided for his family by felling trees and selling them for firewood. When Jeremiah came home from school, Myra would be waiting under the big shade tree, next to a 30-pound maul ax and a pile of wood. Some days they’d chop until 9 or 10, some days past midnight. For Myra, the only thing more important than work was faith. Three times a week he and his wife, Ethel, piled the kids into their old station wagon and drove 20 miles to pray at Ethel’s childhood church. As for Jeremiah, he gobbled up everything his father fed him, from beans and cornbread to an unrelenting work ethic and an undying love of God. “Pop taught me everything I know,” Jeremiah says. Including persistence.SEVENTH GRADE. That’s when Jeremiah Trotter received permission to play football. For one day. “I remember running over everybody,” Trotter says, a boyish glimmer in his eyes. “I was playing running back, and I would go from one side of the field to the other just looking for contact.” But Myra, scared his son would get hurt, changed his mind. And every day for the next two years, Jeremiah asked, “Pop, you gonna lemme play football?” Then, the summer before ninth grade, the boy went away on a youth trip. The day he came back, he saw Myra out front. “Pop, you gonna lemme play football?” Without looking up from the mower he was fixing, Myra said, “Yeah, you can play.” Jeremiah still thinks of it as a minor miracle. “God put it in his heart to let me play,” he says.And play Trotter did, starring at lineman and linebacker for Hooks High. He earned a scholarship to Stephen F. Austin, where he was named a D1-AA All-America at linebacker as a junior. Naturally, when deciding if he should apply for the NFL draft a year early, Jeremiah asked Myra. The elder Trotter, 74 and in failing health, advised him to come out. “Time to become the man of the house,” Myra said. “Time to take care of the family.” The 6’1”, 262-pound Trotter posted monster numbers at the 1998 scouting combine, including 32 reps of 225 on the bench (only three players, all linemen, beat him). But a torn left ACL late in his sophomore year scared teams, and he fell to Philadelphia in the third round. The $420,000 bonus was peanuts by NFL standards, but plenty for a kid from Hooks. Right away Trotter replaced Mom’s old wagon with a Chrysler 300M and tried to retire Dad’s beat-up truck. Myra refused. “Just help me with the bills,” he told his son. “That’s plenty.”And so Jeremiah did. For a few weeks. Three days before Trotter’s first minicamp, Myra died of natural causes. Trotter buried him and reported to work the next day, like Myra would’ve wanted. Jeremiah Trotter had scaled Fool’s Hill. For the first time, anyway.***TWENTY MILLION dollars. That’s what Trotter turned down. Midway through the 2000 season, the Eagles wanted to sign him to a deal that seemed exorbitant given his experience (one full season as a starter), but thrifty should he end up, say, a Pro Bowler. Yet somehow Myra’s boy refused a contract with seven zeroes, nine counting decimal places.Thing is, he wanted to stay in Philly. Defensive coordinator Jim Johnson’s aggressive blitzing schemes were perfect for Trotter’s bone-crushing downhill style. He led Philly in tackles three straight years, making two Pro Bowls, and in 2001 he helped the Eagles to their first NFC title game since 1980. The workaday Iggles faithful loved the blue-collar ‘backer and his celebration dance, an ax chop. Trotter loved Philly right back – the fans, the city, coach Andy Reid.Still, when his contract expired in 2002, there was no common ground. The Eagles, worried about losing Trotter to free agency and getting nothing in return, slapped the franchise tag on him, which meant just a one-year deal at $5.515million. Trotter, worried about respect, thought he should be paid like the NFL’s elite linebackers. Incensed, Trotter requested a meeting with Reid, who declined. “We already had one meeting,” Reid says. “I didn’t have anything new to add.”Over the next few weeks, Trotter spent time with his pastor, and after days of prayer he told his agent to accept the franchise deal. But that night, the Bottom Line crawl on ESPN told him the Eagles had removed the franchise tag. They were done with him. “It was clear,” says Eagles president Joe Banner, “that keeping Jeremiah wasn’t going to be good for either of us.”Two weeks later, Washington signed Trotter to a seven-year, $36 million deal that included a $7 million signing bonus. He was excited. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. In Week 2 of the 2002 season, Trotter had a huge Monday night against his old ‘mates, with 11 tackles. But the game was no contest. “I remember lining up late and looking at the scoreboard,” he says of the 37-7 shellacking Philly gave the Skins. “And it hit me. I wasn’t supposed to be in Washington.”Eleven weeks and six losses later, Trotter blew out his right knee – his good one. A few days later, Reid called to wish him a speedy recovery. “I was shocked,” Trotter says. “The way things ended, I assumed he didn’t care about me.” Trotter was back on the field in 2003, but the knee still wasn’t right, and before the 2004 season started, new Skins coach Joe Gibbs released him. For the first time in his life, Trotter was out of work. ONE DREAM. That’s what got Trotter back home this summer. A few weeks after getting cut, Trotter dreamed he was playing for the Eagles, and he took this as a sign to call Reid. He thanked the coach for his concern when he got hurt, apologized for how things ended in Philly, told him about the dream. And by the way, got an extra roster spot? Reid said he’d give him a look, but for the veteran minimum of $535,000. And, by the way, Mark Simoneau is our middle ‘backer and you’ll play special teams.Trotter said fine; he just wanted back. “He really sold us on that,” Banner says. “He was excited about playing on special teams.” Of course, Trotter never really thought he’d be busting wedges. “I believed without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to start,” he says. He right knee, though, never got the memo. “When Trot first came back” says Johnson, “He could barely run.”For the first time since his rookie year, Trotter was a second-class NFL citizen. At training camp, old pals like Brian Dawkins and Corey Simon napped or got massages while Trotter toiled in special-teams practices with rooks and undrafted free agents. “To go from a two-time Pro Bowler to playing on special teams,” Trotter says, “that hurt me a lot.” Walking onto the field for the opening kickoff of Philly’s first preseason game, he lowered his head in shame and hoped nobody would see the tears streaming down his face. All that kept him from walking off was that damn dream, and the one detail that he was too embarrassed to share with Reid: in his nocturnal musing he was playing special teams. As David Akers marked off his steps for the kickoff, Trotter prayed. “God, I know you’ve got more in store for me, and if this is what I gotta go through to get where you want me to be, so be it.” And just like that, Jeremiah Trotter got over Fool’s Hill for the second time.Funny how things work. Trotter became a special-teams terror. In the opener against the Giants, he tallied 25 production points (a special-teams stat that includes tackles, blocks and turnovers forced), the team’s highest single-game total since coach John Harbaugh arrived in 1998. He notched 29 against Detroit two weeks later. “At the rate he was going,” Banner says, “he would’ve gone to the Pro Bowl as a special teamer.” Meanwhile, Philly’s run D was struggling. Through seven games, it ranked 17th in the NFL. That didn’t matter with the McNabb-TO offense scoring 26.6 points a game, but lowly Cleveland racked up 165 rushing yards in a 34-31 overtime loss to the Eagles in Week 7. Two weeks later, the Steelers gashed them for 252 yards in a 27-3 rout. Johnson and Reid had seen enough. In Dallas the following week, Simoneau was moved outside. Now it was Trotter starting at middle linebacker, Trotter calling plays, Trotter all over the field making eight tackles and a sack in a 49-21 win. Neither he nor the Eagles have looked back since. “Trotter brings it, man, more than any other linebacker we’ve played this year,” says Dallas center Al Johnson, who’s also faced Ray Lewis. In December, Trotter was voted to the Pro Bowl, despite starting just six games before balloting ended. In those six starts, Philly’s run D vaulted from 27th to 11th; their yards per carry allowed was 4.7 before Trotter started, 3.5 in his first six starts. Most important, the Eagles won all six games and believe that, with or without Terrell Owens, they can get to Jacksonville.* * *TWO YEARS old. That’s the age of the guest of honor on this Saturday afternoon in December. Jeremiah Trotter struts into a South Jersey Gymboree for a birthday party and sits on a red mat to watch a bunch of tumbling tots, all with Eagles pedigrees. First comes Brian Dawkins Jr., then Hugh Douglas Jr. and, finally, the birthday boy, Jeremiah Trotter Jr. Watching his son roll around, Jeremiah Sr. can’t help but smile. The view’s nice on this side of Fool’s Hill.
