Before quickly closing its pages and snapping shut the cover of the book he was suddenly famous for reading on the sidelines during an NFC wild-card game, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown briefly made the case for belief in his claim that he reads on the sideline almost every week during games.
The book—Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy—was recommended to him by teammate Moro Ojomo at the beginning of the season, and Brown says he reads about two books per month (having once talked to Brown about a book of devotionals we’d both read before Super Bowl LVII, I can confirm that he is an avid reader). The corner of the front cover was bent backward and inside the cover were a handful of notes written in red marker with bullet points. Various passages in the early portion of the book were highlighted, including the following:
• “We’ve all had times when everything came together in perfect harmony: sacred moments when we were totally immersed in the experience and felt fully alive.”
• “We’re so hard on ourselves, amplifying all our regrets and failures, that we neglect to see what’s possible—a life of freedom, filled with deep contentment, joy and confidence, independent of circumstances.”
• “In the pursuit of extraordinary performance, it’s easy to succumb to anxiety and pressure, because so much is out of your control. When you learn to live a life that is fully engaged, however, then you can perform your best and love the challenge."
The shape of the book is familiar to anyone who has taken reading material with them on a summer vacation waterside, with some pages warped from moisture and eventual drying in the sun.
“You should read it,” he said to a handful of reporters who lingered in the locker room to get a look at the book, and to inquire about how, mysteriously, it traveled from the bench to his stall without Brown himself transporting it (he was not seen with the book after the game). He added that everyone should read more and that he doesn’t typically enjoy fiction.
When put on the spot about what exactly in the book Brown found so valuable, he said that he often goes back to the beginning to review its messages. He smiled sheepishly and demurred a bit when asked to relay its lessons and the specificity of certain passages (before later posting some of them on social media). Like almost any of us asked about the contents of a book on mental reframing, mindset and inner peace, its lessons are likely deeply personal.
Of course, after a 22–10 Eagles win over the Green Bay Packers, it seems like his teammates have adopted some of its key principles, or at least latched onto some of Brown’s zen by proxy. On an afternoon in which the team seemed sluggish and unable to pull away from a Packers team that was gutting itself one possession after the next—three costly Jordan Love interceptions, the Packers fumbling the opening kickoff (and a possible helmet-to-helmet collision not flagged), Brandon McManus missing an early field goal, a ridiculous personal foul penalty in which Keisean Nixon was penalized for the on-field equivalent of a shoulder rub, Green Bay losing 60% of its starting receiver corps and, after a record-setting stretch of continuity, their starting guard Elgton Jenkins (and later, when the game was completely out of reach, center Josh Myers)—the mood in a locker room full of Remember the Titans–era soul music was less rigid and more emotionally flexible. Or, as Saquon Barkley noted: “This is playoff football, it don’t matter how it looks.”
“[The book] gives me a sense of peace,” Brown said. “That’s a book I bring every single game. My teammates call it ‘The Recipe.’ It’s got a lot of points in there. A lot of mental game. Because for me, this game is mental. It’s something that helps me refresh after every drive, whether I score a touchdown or drop a pass, it’s something that helps me refocus.”
The book begins with an anecdote about an 18th-century Japanese samurai who was driven to alcoholism when the warrior class was removed from power in the country, thus robbing the samurai of his identity. Murphy, the author, juxtaposed the troubled life of the former samurai with that of his own, having discovered after years of living in the desert, an insight about how living a meaningful life actually mirrors the pursuit of excellence taken by so many high-performing athletes (Murphy himself was formerly in the Chicago Cubs’ organization). And, yes, you read correctly that the author had given up most of his possessions and moved to Arizona to live a life of solitude and find answers to pressing questions about life, meaning and living with purpose.
“Most of us have been playing the wrong game our entire lives,” the book reads. “We’ve been focusing on short-term wins, temporary happiness and surface-level achievements, when we were created for so much more. We’ve been playing a zero-sum, finite game, with a winner and a loser, a beginning and an end, when it’s really an infinite one.”
The early stages of the book also introduce a list of common presuppositions of the mind that we should rid ourselves of. For example: Worrying too much about the content of one’s own thoughts, believing that self-worth is dependent on production and results, and that we are born a certain way without the ability to improve.
Instead, the reader is asked to understand that we all have the same basic needs and desires, that the people we meet and the circumstances we endure are sent to us via life as teachers and instructors, and that there is no such thing as failure in life, “only feedback.”
Brown guessed—correctly—that many of us assumed he was reading as a gesture of discontent. He finished the game with just one catch for 10 yards on three targets, and we are not far removed from a time when one of the Eagles’ most senior players, Brandon Graham, went on live radio to air a supposed rift between the receiver and his quarterback (which Graham later tried to walk back). After a torrid start Saturday, Jalen Hurts vanished for a majority of the game’s back half, with a long stretch of incomplete passes and an offensive play sheet that tipped heavily toward first- and second-down runs.
Instead, Brown was simply trying to recapture some inner peace. The ritual now rests alongside some more prevalent examples of how football players cope with immense stress on the sidelines. Justin Fields began repeating breathing exercises taught by the team’s yoga instructor during his time with the Chicago Bears. In a bygone era, Hall of Fame quarterback Len Dawson used to rip unfiltered cigarettes.
It should be a reminder to us about the lengths many of these players go to in order to compartmentalize a swell of feelings that ebb and flow with nearly every play, and the crushing mental weight that is placed on each singular moment. And, maybe for the Eagles, as they begin to traverse a far more serious and talented portion of the NFC playoff bracket, a reminder that anything is still possible, even if Sunday didn’t quite look like it.
Or, as the book’s final chapter relays, via a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Searching A.J. Brown’s Book ‘Inner Excellence’ for the Lessons He May Have Learned.