Mens Journal

(Steven Felgate) #1
a player and a franchise resurrecting each
other. “He just breathes conf idence” says
Kevin Ross the Cardinals’ secondary coach.
“A nd w e fe e d of f h i m .”
Mathieu is the game’s great freelance
disrupter: knifing in from safety to blow
up bubble screens; blitzing to stuff runners
behind the line of scrimmage; and leaving
his man to pick off throws halfway across
the f ield. It’s no wonder he’s nicknamed
the Honey Badger after the diminutive
mammal known to savagely f ight far larger
predators even lions. “He’s the heart of
everything we do” says Patrick Peterson
the team’s all-world cornerback. “We’re so
used to seeing him make hero plays the
kind that lift the whole team during a game.”
They’ve come a long way in their short
time together: Mathieu to the peace and
stability of adulthood the Cardinals to a
divisional title last year and a berth in the
NFC title game. They’ve built a team with-
outholesorexcusesaveterangroupthat’s
grown together and is braced for the f inal
push. One more hump — and a complete
season from Mathieu — and maybe they’ll
gain the ledge win their f irst championship
since 1947 when the team played its games
inChicago.ButasMathieucantellyoufrom
hard experience you better make that last
step your best one. Because if you slip it’s a
long way down and Christ will it ever hurt
when you land.

ON A CLOUDLESS Friday night in midtown
Phoenix — a swath of pop-art galleries one-
off boutiques and boisterous gastropubs —
I’m sitting on the f loor of Sutra Yoga
watching Mathieu attempt a Warrior III
pose. It would be generous to say that he’s
holding his own. His plant leg rattles and
sweat pours off him as he f ights the Earth’s
rotation to a draw. In a room full of bendy
ponytailed blondes Mathieu is like a catf ish
in Vanilla Coke — something’s seriously off
with this picture. But don’t tell that to the
only brother in the house. Mathieu’s work-
ing it like fourth down on his own goal line.
When the hour’s mercifully over the
yoginis roll their mats and make idle chat
with their instructor. Not Mathieu: He’s still
in Corpse pose which is to say sound asleep.
Someone taps him on the leg. He wakes with
a snort then sheepishly towels himself dry.
In the foyer I watch the women circle well
aware of who he is. After the place clears
out I ask him the obvious: “Why would you
do this to yourself ?”
He smiles his camper–at–Six Flags smile
whichmakes himlook about11yearsold.
“Dude I don’t know. I guess for the peace.
Yeah it’s about the peace.”
A couple of days later Mathieu asks me to
join him at his megachurch North Phoenix
Baptist. The building a beige dome of peb-
bled concrete that seats several thousand in
air-cooled comfort is packed with congre-
gants in Sunday casual. Mathieu is the only
person of color here. Scott Savage a young

night overaprojects squabble.Thenames
run together in a blur of urban carnage
their blood tide turned to cruciform squibs
of ink. “How?” I ask him. “How are you still
here when all these people are gone?”
“I’m a warrior” he says after some
ref lection. “I’ve lived through a lot — and it
couldn’t kill me.”
We’re in a strange place to be speaking of
death: an organic bistro in a Phoenix sub-
urb where Mathieu and I are the only diners
not dressed in tennis whites or yoga pants.
The vibe is New Age mindful meets stage II
melanomabutMathieu’smadethisspothis
cafeteria. Gone is all the greasy junk he grew
up eating replaced by Buddha bowls and
blueberry smoothies. His regimen: no sugar
no dairy no soy no fried food. Just yoga
ref lection solitude and prayer. Ninety
days into a start-from-scratch rehab from
the total tear of his right knee last Decem-
ber — the third major injury in his three-
year career; his third consecutive season cut
short in its last month — he pushes himself
daily to the point of collapse to recover in
time for training camp.
He’s already running intervals of seven-
minute miles on a treadmill called the
Unloader which is equipped with a harness
attached to pulleys to mitigate his weight
and soften the landing impact as he sprints.
In six weeks he’ll be off to minicamp where
he’ll drill but not practice with his team
andthen report —barringsetbacks—to
the team’s facility in Glendale.
It’s a preposterously tall order but
Mathieu has done it once before. Three years
ago he wrecked his other knee in a late-
season game against St. Louis. Mauled by
f ive tacklers after returning a kick Mathieu
ripped everything you can rip in a knee —
ACL LCL MCL and meniscus — and
somehow returned to play 10 months later.
It was the one season he didn’t make the All-
Pro team though he did have 13 starts and
was just getting strong again when he broke
athumbmakingatackle.Sonohe’s not
unkillable. He just plays like he is a 5-foot-9
runt crushing 6-foot-8 tight ends as the best
slot defender on the planet.
And here he is once more on his ump-
teenthresetpushingthatbad-luckboulder
up a hill. To spend time with Mathieu is to
marvel at his resolve and good cheer and that
very rare quality called grace. It makes sense
that he wound up playing in Phoenix home
of hope-seekers and second-chancers chas-
ingsalvation inthecrucibleofthedesert.
He’s been brought here by good fortune (and
an astute general manager) to author his
own rewrite — and his team’s. The Cardinals
had fallen hard after losing the Super Bowl
in 2009 f inishing last twice and playing dull
football in front of shrinking crowds. Then
they took a chance on a kid who’d plunged as
well crashing out of college for multiple pot
suspensions and costing himself millions in
the draft. That gamble has netted a payoff
rarely seen anymore in the risk-averse NFL:

Some men wear the wounds of their wars;
TyrannMathieulugsaroundagraveyard.
Look there at the ink below his right knee:
22 crosses carved in dark green a portable
shrine to the people he’s lost and the talis-
manic marks they left on him. “I hear their
voices always: ‘Keep going keep going’ ”
Mathieu says. “It’s like they passed their
strength to me when they died.”
Mathieu the All-Pro safety of the Arizona
Cardinals and the game’s next megastar
defenderturned24inMay.Indoingsohe
outlived his wildest expectations: “My dad
was a murderer” he says. “My uncles were
murdered. I thought I’d be like them too.”
Some part of him knew better sensed that
he was chosen. He starred in every sport
heturnedhishandto.Butinthe5thWard
of New Orleans talent is no certain ticket.
Often it’s just a ruse to break your heart.
Hewalksmethroughtheliturgyofhis
dead. The f irst cross is for his grandpa
Lorenzo who took in Mathieu when his
mom abandoned him at birth. “The heroin
got him though he died of heart failure.”
Beside Grandpa is Uncle Donell dead of
AIDS “from dirty needles.” Beside Donell
is Uncle Keith “murdered in the street while
holding his baby son in his hands.” Next to
him is Aunt Trina who “died on Thanksgiv-
ing when some jackass ran a red light.” Next
to Trina is Uncle Andre murdered late at


Contributing editor Paul
Solotaroff wrote about baseball’s best
fastballers in the May issue ofMen’s Journal.


MEN’S JOURNAL 94 SEPTEMBER 2016


PREVIOUS SPREAD: STYLING AND GROOMING

BY MARY WRIGHT. PRODUCTION BY SCOUT ARIZONA.
Free download pdf