Former NFL players discuss their playbook for fatherhood

Content provided by Toyota

Fatherhood in football is complicated. Players spend much of the season away from their families and homes and must contend with uprooting their children after changing teams and cities. Most players only make the pros after a lot of encouragement from their own fathers, but the line between encouragement and pressure can be very small. And for every player who grew up with a father, there is another in the same locker room who grew up without a positive male role model.

In Toyota’s new “To Be a Dad” video series, former pros LaVar Arrington and Kurt Warner discuss their own fathers, along with current stars Fred Jackson and DeMarcus Ware. Each player has their own story: while Arrington grew up with a father who supported his dreams, Ware did not meet his own father until his high school graduation. Jackson’s father could be slow to praise, while Warner knew his dad was his biggest fan.

All four men explore how their own fathers have impacted the way they have raised their own children. Warner’s parents divorced when he was still a child, but the former MVP has been married to his wife, Brenda, for more than 15 years. The two have raised seven children together. Ware and his wife met in high school, but suffered through difficult pregnancies before Ware’s wife gave birth to daughter Marley in 2008.