GOLDEN ADVICE
With Hall of Famer and exemplary man as his father, Pats’ Slater well-schooled about life — on and of f the f ield
FOXBORO — Matthew Slater can still remember his father, Hall of Fame offensive tackle Jackie Slater, calling him and his brother together on Super Bowl Sunday in 1999, but it wasn’t to talk about the game between the Denver Broncos and the same Atlanta Falcons franchise he will face Feb. 5 in Super Bowl LI. It was to talk about the pitfalls of life.
“I was 14,” Slater recalled this week. “He wanted to talk to me and my brother about a life lesson.”
The lesson was one that came as a shock at the time that Slater has never forgotten. It will not be lost on him next Saturday either.
That’s when Slater will be handed Athletes In Action’s Bart Starr Award at their annual Super Bowl breakfast, the same award his father won in 1996. A family of deeply held faith, the Slaters are the only father-and-son tandem to win the award, which is given annually to the NFL player “who best exemplifies outstanding character and leadership in the home, on the field and in the community.”
The day before a teenage Slater sat down with his father and brother to talk of difficult things, that award had been given to Atlanta’s Pro Bowl safety Eugene Robinson. Later that evening, Robinson was arrested in a seedy section of Miami on a charge of soliciting an undercover officer, offering her $40 for oral sex.
The story made headlines around the country and shook the Falcons to their core. Robinson returned the Starr award and the next evening Atlanta was badly beaten by the Broncos, 34-19. A sluggish and distracted Robinson gave up an 80-yard touchdown completion to Rod Smith and badly missed a tackle on Terrell Davis in the fourth quarter that allowed a long run to the Atlanta 10 that sealed the game for Denver. The Robinson incident was believed by many to have crushed the Falcons’ hopes, dulling their edge and leaving them ill-focused and lifeless.
Art Shell was the Falcons offensive line coach at the time and drew the unenviable task of going to the police station to bail Robinson out and bring him back to the team hotel, where Robinson’s wife and family were waiting for him.
“That was the quietest car ride I ever had,” Shell said this week. “What could you say?”
Nothing that night, but the next afternoon after Shell had dressed for the game, he walked into the locker room and didn’t like what he heard.
“I went back and told (coach) Dan (Reeves) he better speak to the team because all they were talking about was what happened to Eugene,” Shell recalled. “It was such a shock, they couldn’t focus on the game.”
An anonymous Falcons player confirmed as much to the New York Times after the game saying, “Instead of getting mentally ready for the Broncos we were talking about Eugene. It was very tense.”
So was Robinson, who suffered through a sleepless night and played like it the next day. Robinson, whose family remained intact despite the incident and who now works as a radio commentator on Carolina Panthers game broadcasts, addressed the Panthers last year before they left for San Francisco and Super Bowl 50. He also spoke publicly about the event with his hometown paper, the Hartford Courant, telling them, “It was painful. I cried the entire night. I was like, ‘ How did I get so far over here when I was way over there?’ It’s easy to lose your way when you’re selfish and you’re only thinking about yourself. That’s what I did.”
Perhaps but Slater’s father had a different message for his two sons. It was not about the fall of Eugene Robinson, but rather the acceptance that we are all only one weak moment, one bad decision from that same seedy neighborhood.
“It was a teaching moment for me in my life,” Matthew Slater explained. “No man is perfect. That was the lesson.
“I was old enough to kind of know what had happened, but my dad was not condemning Mr. Robinson. I can’t overemphasize enough that what he said to us wasn’t about Mr. Robinson. He just told us to understand we all fall short in life. Some circumstances you’ll handle well. Others you won’t. That’s proven true in my life.
“You try to be the best person you can. The best husband, the best father, the best son. But at the end of the day we’re men and women. We make mistakes. It could happen to anyone. Who am I to pass judgment on him?”
Kiddingly, Slater was asked if this was something he needed to be concerned with himself next Saturday in Houston, as the tension builds and the biggest game of the year approaches?
He smiled and said, “No, I don’t think so.”
Yet the reason he has been talking with Bill Belichick to try and fit the Starr breakfast into his and the team’s Saturday schedule, is the same reason he feels as he does both about Robinson and the lesson he learned. “I don’t think so” doesn’t mean to him, “I’m better than that.”
“I know who I am,” Slater said. “I’m imperfect like everyone else. That’s why it’s really humbling to receive this award. It’s important to me to be there. It’s important to me that the Starr family know what he stands for to me.
“I respect that we have work obligations. It’s important for me to be with the team. But who you are off the field supersedes what I do on the field.”
What he has done on the field is become a six-time Pro Bowler at a thankless and difficult job, running under kicks and punts with unbridled enthusiasm. But it is his realization that there are things more important than that, which says the most about Matthew Slater, the kid who has never forgotten the Super Bowl lesson of Eugene Robinson while never condemning him for making what we all do at times — a mistake.