NFL star Jonathon Brooks turned to his faith following a series of personal and professional heartbreaks — and when he steps back on the football field in 2026, it’ll be as a newly-baptized athlete.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life,” Brooks, 22, said on Tuesday, April 28, via AP Sports. “I lost my father. I’ve torn my ACL twice. Every single time I reverted back to my faith.”
The Carolina Panthers running back revealed that after his dad’s 2022 passing and a second ACL tear in 2024, he chose to rededicate himself to God.
“For me, my baptism was a recommitment of my faith — to not only change myself, but from that day forward to stop making excuses for my surroundings,” Brooks shared, noting he was baptized after learning he was cleared to fully participate in Carolina’s offseason conditioning program earlier this month.
While Brooks has always been a man of faith, he said his time off the football field made him realize, “I didn’t live accordingly.”
“I used to use the excuse of being around the locker room my whole football career, whether it’s high school, college, or NFL, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m around people who cuss and do all this,’” he recalled. “I kept trying to, I guess, put the blame on others in a sense. And, in reality, I just needed to check myself.”
Brooks has had a long road to the NFL, filled with personal woes among the highs of being one of the league’s biggest prospects.
The football player’s father, James “Skip” Brooks, died in March 2022 due to complications from a blood clot that impacted his heart. He was 49.
Jonathon, for his part, was a freshman at the University of Texas, Austin, when his dad died. In honor of his late father, Jonathon and his brother, Jordon, got matching tattoos of the date Skip died on their right forearms.
Whenever Jonathon scored a touchdown at Texas he would tap or point to the tattoo as a nod to his father. While Jonathon was selected in the second round of the 2024 NFL Draft by the Panthers, he has yet to point to his tattoo on the NFL stage after two major injuries.
Jonathon entered his rookie season in fall 2024 while still healing from a torn ACL in his right knee, which he sustained during the 2023 college football season. (An anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, tear happens in your knee and is common in athletes. It usually requires surgery to repair.)
The Texas native underwent months of rehabilitation and made his NFL debut in November 2024. After just three games in the span of two weeks, he tore his ACL for a second time.
That injury resulted in Jonathon missing the remainder of his rookie year and the entire 2025-2026 season.
However, the Panthers confirmed on Tuesday that Jonathon was healthy enough to return to full practice ahead of the 2026-2027 NFL season.
“I’ve been cleared by my surgeon,” Jonathon said Tuesday, via the Charlotte Observer. “[Panthers vice president of health and performance] Denny [Kellington] and the training staff and the coaches have a plan for me. And, you know, just going off what they tell me to do. And just taking it how it is, you know.”
He noted that he’s “just getting better every day still — and yeah, I’m cleared to go.” While Jonathon knows his knee recovery is “something that I have to work on” as spring training continues, he said he’s “getting there.”
