For Richmond’s Super Bowl participants, bumpy roads led to football’s pinnacle
Morgan Moses’ kids have missed a lot of school recently, as many Northern Virginia families have. They’ll get a few more days off, though.
“I called and said, ‘Hey, they’re going to miss school, if you can send some homework with them,’” Moses recalled. “They asked why they were missing school. I was like, ‘Oh, their dad is playing in the Super Bowl.’
“That’s a good call to make.”
Moses attended Meadowbrook High School, then played for the University of Virginia before an NFL career that is now in its 12th season. Sunday, he will be the starting right tackle for the New England Patriots, protecting quarterback Drake Maye as the franchise attempts to win its seventh Super Bowl, breaking a tie with the Steelers for the most ever.
The Patriots have another local tie as well. Running back TreVeyon Henderson grew up in Hopewell. He will attempt to become the second area athlete to win a high school, college and professional championship in any sport.
Before taking on the Seattle Seahawks, they reflected on their journeys to get to this spot.
“I’ve gone through a lot to get to where I am now,” Henderson said. “Looking back on my younger self, honestly, I never would have imagined that I’d be in this position that I am now.”
Beating the odds
At 6-foot-6, 320 pounds, Moses was seemingly born to be a football player. But his personal life took him bouncing around between his mom’s house and friends’ houses.
“I’ve been on my own since I was about 14 or 15,” he said. “I was going through a lot.”
He was recruited by some of the nation’s best colleges, but after choosing to play at UVA, he wasn’t able to qualify academically. Coaches recommended he spend a year at Fork Union Military Academy to get his grades in order.
“It brought a lot of stability in my life,” he said. “Not only discipline in the academic world, but it gave me a place where I knew I was going to have shelter every day, and clothes, because we had to wear uniforms – so it didn’t matter what you had on. I feel like that’s where things took off.”
He noted that “there were probably a lot of people that weren’t happy that I got into UVA. But I proved them wrong, and graduated.”
A standout college career led to the opportunity to play in the NFL.
But Moses, who was signed by the Washington Redskins, almost saw that opportunity disappear when he got injured during his first season. He suffered a Lisfranc injury, a foot injury that takes several months to heal from – some athletes never recover.
“It can be a career-ending injury,” he said. “But I think it reshaped my vision of becoming a professional athlete.”
Out of that experience came a renewed commitment to taking care of his body. He bought a house in Northern Virginia, where he still lives, with state-of-the art equipment. It has a hot tub, cold tub, sauna, hyperbaric chamber and a full weight room encased in concrete so he could work out and play loud music without waking up his kids.
With his career taking him to New England, he flies home on off days to spend time with the children – three sons and a daughter.
The three boys play football, and Moses has helped coach them. In return, they keep him honest about his obligations, nudging him into the weight room and to rehab appointments late in the season when he’d rather be resting.
As a result, Moses has gained a reputation as a football iron man. He has played 183 games in his career, and since that rookie season has rarely missed time for injury, including playing through torn ligaments in his knee last year.
“You never know how many games you have left, and you don’t want to let your guys down,” Moses said. “You build this camaraderie, this relationship and brotherhood with these guys, and you want to be out there on Sunday because they’re counting on you.”
A foundation of faith
TreVeyon Henderson has been destined for stardom seemingly since the first time he touched a football.
A running back, he rewrote the Hopewell High record book despite missing a season because of the COVID pandemic. He went to Ohio State, where he won a national championship with the Buckeyes.
When it came time for the NFL draft, there was no doubt he would be selected. But he had heard bad things about the Patriots organization during the process, and was hopeful he wouldn’t be selected by the team.
The draft unfolds quicker in real time than it does on the TV broadcast, something Henderson didn’t know.
“When I got the call, it was the Chicago Bears (picking) on TV,” he said. “Then they told me it was the New England Patriots. I was smiling, but my heart sank at the time, because during the draft process everyone was telling me the Patriots is the last team, the last organization you want to go to.
“I just remember getting a text later that night, though, that really opened my eyes. Someone sent me an article about New England being one of the least religious areas in the U.S. And then it made sense why God was choosing me to be here … to share my faith in Jesus Christ and to live it out.”
Henderson shares his Christian faith freely, and was quoting Bible verses to reporters during the Super Bowl’s annual media night, as he reflected on his journey to the big game.
“Honestly, to be where I am now, coming from a rough area like Hopewell, Virginia,” he said. “Man, who would have thought?”
With high school and college titles in hand, Henderson is seeking to join rarified air with a victory on Sunday. Highland Springs safety K’Von Wallace came one game short of the trifecta a few years ago, losing in the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles.
The only local player to accomplish it is Willie Lanier, who won the Super Bowl in 1970 with the Kansas City Chiefs. Lanier, who is Black, played during segregation, and won the VIA title while at Maggie Walker (Black schools didn’t play in the VHSL). He then won the Orange Blossom Classic while at Morgan State, a game referred to at the time as the “Black national championship.”
His Morgan State team would later go on to win one of the first integrated college football bowl games, the 1966 Tangerine Bowl.
Other local athletes have come close. Collegiate's Russell Wilson and his sister, Anna, both have two of the three titles. Swimmer Townley Haas won a college and pro title, but wasn’t a state champ at Benedictine. Petersburg’s Moses Malone was a high school and NBA champion, but skipped college.
"It's taken a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifices," Henderson said. "All those things have paid off, so I'm grateful to be in this position."
The Patriots way
What Henderson didn’t know about the Patriots at the time was that the team’s culture was about to change with the hiring of new coach Mike Vrabel.
Vrabel demands respect from his players. He requires them to know the names of every employee at the team facility. During Super Bowl week, he asked them to stop at security checkpoints and show their credentials, even though many of them are now nationally famous.
Moses, who was able to pick what team he would play for, knew New England was the right spot during his first conversation with Vrabel. Instead of asking about football, he asked about Moses’ boys.
“I want the players to experience this with their families. I want them to experience this with their kids. I want Morgan Moses to experience this with his three boys,” Vrabel told reporters this week. “I’m not talking about his play on the field, which has been superb, but just his presence and demeanor. He’s a wonderful father. The way that he cares for his boys and does his job is something that I appreciate. So, I want them to experience that and that feeling.”
The boys arrived at the team hotel in Santa Clara on Thursday afternoon, and will be in the stadium on Sunday night for the Super Bowl.
Moses said he learns more from them than they do from him, but he wants them to take one lesson away from watching their father play in the nation’s biggest football game on Sunday.
“You know, obviously it took a long time to get here,” he said with a chuckle. “It shows them, no matter where you go, no matter where you are, you just keep on pushing and you’ll get there.”
Contact Michael Phillips at mphillips@richmonder.org.
