Why Super Bowl Champion Marcus Cannon Trusted God Amid Cancer
By Movieguide® Contributor
Three-time Super Bowl champion Marcus Cannon joined the Sports Spectrum Podcast to discuss his faith and battle to overcome cancer.
Cannon played for Texas Christian University (TCU), and although he grew up in church, he found himself drifting away from God when he started at TCU.
After a great junior and senior year, he began to prepare for the NFL combine. Cannon thought his projected draft pick would be the first round.
However, as he went through all of the general testing for the combine, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma during the medical portion.
“I remember when this first got dropped on me. First thing I did was I cried,” Cannon began. “I called my parents, and then I started to pray. And then I called the pastor, and I drove up to the church where we go as a team, and I tried to talk to the pastor because that’s all I had in Fort Worth.”
“After all this crying and weeping and praying, there was a peace that came over, and it was like ‘I’m going to trust God. I’m going to trust God’s going to get me through this,’” Cannon explained.
As the NFL draft approached, Cannon’s hopes for a first-round pick crashed, and he thought he would go undrafted.
However, a phone call from New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick revealed that God still had a plan. Cannon was selected in the fifth round of the NFL Draft.
He recalled, “Not only did I get drafted, he [Belichick] was reassuring me that ‘you don’t even have to worry about this first year. We’re going to pay you and you’re going to be on the team and we’re going to take care of all your health stuff.’”
“Every step of the way, God was there for me even though I took time off of going and doing the Christian thing, doing the right thing, the godly thing,” he expressed. “He was still there for me when I came back.”
Cannon would go on to become a 3-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots in 2015 (Super Bowl XLIX), 2017 (Super Bowl LI) and 2019 (Super Bowl LIII).
He was then traded to the Houston Texans in 2021, where he would retire shortly after.
A fan account for the New England Patriots, called Patriots 7th Ring, wrote on their X page, “Friday Facts: Marcus Cannon beat cancer, has 3 Super Bowl rings and the same number of playoff wins as Peyton Manning (14).”
Friday Facts:
Marcus Cannon beat cancer, has 3 Super Bowl rings and the same number of playoff wins as Peyton Manning (14). pic.twitter.com/TfRjy5nELG
— Patriots 7th Ring 🇺🇸 (@Patriots7thRing) March 22, 2019
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