About a month ago, Eric Weddle called Tony Jefferson late one night for some small talk and big news. Their two years together in Baltimore had forged a deep friendship, keeping the former Ravens safeties in each other’s orbit long after they’d left — weekly texts, San Diego hangouts, even the occasional childcare assist. Weddle asked Jefferson how he was doing.
Jefferson could hear the wind whipping on the other line. Weddle was driving somewhere. He told Jefferson he was headed north, to Los Angeles. What for? Jefferson asked. Maybe Disneyland with the kids. Maybe a road trip.
“I just got a call from the guys up in Los Angeles, for the Rams. I’m going up there,” Jefferson recalled Weddle telling him. Jefferson was miffed; Weddle was retired. “To scout? Or …”
“Nah. I’m going to play.”
“’Bruh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Are you playing around? What are you doing right now, bro? It’s late at night, man. I’ve got to get ready for bed. What’s going on?’
“Bro, I swear on everything,” Weddle told him. “I’m dead serious.”
More than two years since he last played in the NFL, about a week removed from his 37th birthday, Weddle was set to try out for the Rams, take a physical and re-sign with a team just days away from its NFC wild-card-round matchup.
“This is the craziest story ever,” Weddle said Monday in Los Angeles, partly because his comeback story, the craziest of the NFL’s postseason, isn’t over. On Sunday, Weddle’s expected to start for the Rams in Super Bowl LVI. A win over the Cincinnati Bengals would send Weddle into permanent retirement — “Definitely not coming back after this,” he joked — with his first NFL title, an unexpected capstone to a Hall of Fame-worthy career.
As Weddle stroked his beard Monday, grinning as he considered all that had led him to these three playoff games, 131 defensive snaps and 13 tackles for the Rams, Baltimore was not far from mind. He told reporters that Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti had reached out to say he was pulling for Weddle. Old teammates buzzed Weddle’s phone in a group text. Their only wish: that this Hollywood comeback had been with the Ravens.
“While he was retired, I had been telling him, like, ‘Bro, come back. Come back and play,’ ” Jefferson, who re-signed with the Ravens in mid-December, said in a phone interview. “I’d been asking him. … ‘Let’s team up.’
“We [used to] tell him all the time, like, ‘Dub, come back.’ ‘Come back to the Ravens,’ ” recently retired Ravens defensive back Anthony Levine Sr. said. “If anybody thought he’d come back, I thought he’d come back for us. But I didn’t know that he would come back for the Rams. But he did, and I’m happy for him either way.”
Weddle stepped away from football after the Rams’ 2019 season, his 13th year in the NFL, explaining that he didn’t want to be “the guy that held on too long.” But even as Weddle embraced the joys of retirement — playing pickup basketball with his friends, chauffeuring his four children around town, cutting 10 pounds off his playing weight — he could not disengage from the sport that had given him so much.
Weddle would watch every Ravens game and Rams game that he could. He would offer Rams star cornerback Jalen Ramsey encouragement and critiques over text. He would coach his son’s Pop Warner football team to a championship and demand excellence from every preteen on the roster.
Jefferson recalled attending a few of the under-12 games with his own young son, Tony III, and hearing the defensive play calls. “I’m like, ‘Hey, we ran that play in Baltimore.’ How are these kids who are, like, 10, 11 years old running these saw-under fronts and everything?” he said, referring to a run-stopping defensive alignment.
“If you really know who Eric Weddle is, you know there’s never anything that can’t be done by him,” Jefferson said. “I think even when he retired, he was still very into the game. … You just kind of can tell, Weddle’s just the type of guy, whenever there’s a situation, he feels he can come out on top. And we’re seeing that now come into effect.”
Weddle’s return was an unlikely solution to a defensive emergency. In the Rams’ regular-season finale against the San Francisco 49ers, Jordan Fuller suffered a season-ending ankle injury, while fellow starting safety Taylor Rapp was knocked out of the game with a concussion.
When Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris reached out to Weddle to gauge his availability ahead of the team’s playoff opener against Arizona, according to Sports Illustrated, he asked him, “You’re not fat and out of shape, are you?”
In just a couple of days, Weddle absorbed the Rams’ playbook. He played 19 snaps in a blowout win over the Cardinals, then 61 against the defending Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then all 51 against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game. He finished with a team-high nine tackles, including a key tackle for loss to help force a fourth-quarter punt in a comeback win.
“Everybody said ‘coming off the couch,’ ” Levine said. “Trust me, Eric Weddle did not come off the couch.”
That’s why Levine and Jefferson wanted him back in Baltimore, where in three years (2016 to 2018) he’d made three Pro Bowls and helped pilot one of the NFL’s best defenses. Every so often this season, with injuries and the coronavirus gradually turning the Ravens’ vaunted secondary into a grab bag of Week 1 starters and practice squad call-ups, Levine would text Weddle to tell him that he was missed, only half-jokingly. But Weddle, who said Monday that he “enjoyed every second” with the team, stayed retired.
“That’s a guy that you want in your locker room,” Levine said. “He’s a leader, but he’s for the people. He gets things done. You miss guys like that.”
“That’s what I was praying for and hoping for,” Jefferson said of reuniting with Weddle, whom he partnered with in 2016 and 2017. “I was really wishing that was going to go down and happen, but it didn’t.”
Their missed connection hasn’t dampened their delight in Weddle’s unretirement. When Jefferson left home to join the 49ers and then the Ravens earlier this season, Weddle would sometimes swing by his friend’s house to pick up Jefferson’s son for hangouts with Weddle’s son, Gaige. After the Rams’ win in the NFC championship game, Tony III announced, “Uncle Weddle gets to get a ring!”
“Our whole family, we wanted to get a little emotional just watching it,” the elder Tony said, “because we know how deserving him and his family are. We love all of them.”
No one doubts that Sunday’s game will be Weddle’s last, or that there’s anything else on his mind. After singling out Bengals wide receiver Tee Martin for his contributions to his fantasy football team this season, Weddle said Monday that he was “going to go stop him” Sunday. Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth, who called Weddle’s energy “infectious,” said the safety all but lives at the team facility, working from 5 a.m. until midnight.
Such is Weddle’s dedication to his craft that, before the Rams faced the 49ers, Levine reminded him in a text message that there were limits to what he could glean from a film study of San Francisco’s starting quarterback.
“I told him, ‘Dub, it’s OK. Dub, you ain’t got to know what Jimmy Garoppolo ate for breakfast, OK?’ ” Levine said. “Because that’s how much he studies. … He just burst out laughing. Because we know how much he works, how much film he watches and how much he studies and how hard he works. He’s that kind of guy.”
Said Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta: “Eric is a pro’s pro. Really smart, does everything the right way, and I couldn’t be happier for him and proud of him. … I can probably put him on one hand, as far as players that I’ve come to admire and appreciate.”
Jefferson said Weddle, a five-time All-Pro selection by the Associated Press and six-time Pro Bowl pick, is already a “first-ballot Hall of Famer.” With a Super Bowl ring, “he’s got to be in there,” Jefferson said.
Weddle, who once vowed to grow his beard until his San Diego Chargers reached the Super Bowl, has downplayed the significance of his first appearance on the sport’s grandest stage. “Whatever happens, happens,” he said, before adding, “I’ve already won.”
But if he really wins Sunday night — if the Rams claim their second NFL title in franchise history — Weddle joked that he’d party until sunrise, maybe change his name to Champ. A heaping serving of ice cream, a longtime victory ritual, would probably be on the menu, too. After that, though? He’s already looking forward to coaching Gaige’s football team next season. He said he wants to push them closer to greatness. It’s what he’s always wanted.
“Let me tell you this,” Levine said. “He’s not getting to that big game and losing. That’s out. I’m going to tell you that right now. He waited his whole career, retired, came back and got to the big game? Dub’s not losing that game.”