Quote:”After I tore my ACL I feel like they gave up on me going into my next training camp,” Fowler says. “These three years I was trying to prove to them I was a guy they could trust, and I was trying to be the guy they drafted me to be. But I never got a chance to start a game. When it’s all said and done, I feel like they gave up on me.

“Yannick came and did what he was supposed to do, and that’s when I fell back into the shadows. I used to always go and ask why I was sitting on the bench. I can admit, I was depressed. I’ve never been in a bad place like that before, and that was one of the darkest times of my life. It made me question my love of football. I dreaded going to work, knowing how people feel about you and think about you. I had a dark cloud following me.”



...............

And post trade:


“That’s when I could tell everyone was for one goal. I was traded for, and there wasn’t an elephant in the room or anything. I’m grateful to work with a group of guys like that. We have a lot of star power, guys with accolades, rings, Hall of Fame credentials, but these guys are humble and they put all that behind them. They keep the main thing the main thing.”

Fowler says Jacksonville’s locker room had a hard time with that concept. He believes that after the Jaguars reached the AFC Championship Game in 2017, players thought too much of themselves. “It took me coming here to realize that we weren’t humble about it,” Fowler says. “Other teams were hungrier than us.”