Stay in the game, p.1
Stay in the Game, page 1
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Stay in the Game: Making the Most of Every Season
Copyright © 2025 by Matt Forté. All rights reserved.
Cover and author photographs of Matt Forté copyright © David and Stephanie Hulthen. All rights reserved.
Interior photograph of Matt Forté #22 touchdown copyright © Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images. All rights reserved.
Interior photograph of Matt Forté #22 running copyright © Brian D. Kersey/Getty Images. All rights reserved.
Interior photograph of Matt Forté running with football copyright © The Chicago Bears. All rights reserved, and used with permission.
Interior photograph of Matt Forté jumping toward endzone copyright © Doug Pensinger/Getty Images. All rights reserved.
All other interior photographs from the personal collection of the author and used with permission.
Cover design by Alberto C. Navata Jr.
Interior design by Cathy Miller
Scripture taken from the Christian Standard Bible,® copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 979-8-4005-1078-6
Build: 2025-07-18 09:38:52 EPUB 3.0
Contents
Foreword
Prologue
1: Growing Up a Forté
2: Sense of Purpose
3: Following My Passion
4: All It Takes Is One
5: Starting All Over
6: The Katrina Season
7: A Season of Transitions
8: Uncommon Work, Uncommon Results
9: Answering the Questions
10: A New Beginning
11: Welcome to the NFL
12: Thrown for a Loss
13: One Step from a Super Bowl
14: Taking Care of Business
15: Big Decisions
16: The Season Everything Changed
17: Culture Matters
18: A Feeling of Finality
19: New York. New York?
20: “Is It Worth It?”
21: The End of a Season
22: Still in the Game
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Foreword
I’ll never forget the first time I met Matt Forté in person. First impressions matter.
I was entering my fifth season as head coach of the Chicago Bears and nearing my third decade as a coach. We had selected Matt in the second round of the 2008 NFL draft, and he and the other rookies were reporting to their first meeting at Halas Hall, the Bears’ headquarters.
Matt walked in wearing a suit. I had never seen a new player report to a team in coat and tie, and I never saw it again through the rest of my coaching career. Every other player showed up in sweatpants, sweatshirts, shorts, or T-shirts. Matt was different. He was there to play football, just like his peers, but he also was on a business trip. He viewed his first official day with the Bears as the most important job interview of his life, and he treated it as such.
That day, Matt set the tone—not only for the first day of his rookie season but also for his entire career. Matt was a professional in every sense of the word.
Now that I’m retired from football, I enjoy looking back on the big games and moments that occurred during my five decades in the sport. But I most relish the opportunity to reflect on the relationships I developed through football, especially with the hundreds of players I was blessed to coach. In a tough sport like football, in a job packed with pressure to win, a coach can’t afford to play favorites. But every coach has his favorite players. Mine were those who went about the sport and business of football the right way, and who I knew would give everything they had to the coaching staff and their teammates, 24/7.
Matt Forté was one of my favorite players.
Matt asking me to write the foreword for his book is one of the great honors I have received from one of my former players. I had to chuckle as I thought about the stories I could tell about Matt, because compared to the stories I could tell about other players I coached, some might say my stories about Matt were boring. And that’s a compliment to Matt!
The best surprise for an NFL head coach is to not have any surprises. We want our players to be who we believe they are, in every circumstance, and that’s precisely who Matt is.
We drafted Matt with the forty-fourth overall pick. Our top need entering the 2008 draft was an offensive lineman, and we filled that need by selecting Chris Williams in the first round. We had also identified “running back” as another crucial need. During our draft preparation, running backs coach Tim Spencer told me that Matt was the running back we wanted. Other running backs were ranked higher than Matt, I guess in part because he came from Tulane University, which was not a powerhouse football program.
But when we watched Matt’s film from Tulane, he clearly had all the skills necessary to be a top back in the NFL. He had the speed to go the distance, could catch the ball well, and was a good blocker. In Chicago, a running back has to be big enough and tough enough to run between the tackles and play in bad weather. Matt checked those boxes too. And he was intelligent.
Though the draft was deep at running back, we didn’t know if Matt would last until our pick early in the second round. Five running backs were taken in the first round, but Matt was still on the board when our turn came again. We were delighted to select him.
Matt arrived in Chicago wearing a nice suit and a chip on his shoulder. I’m sure he felt disrespected after seeing five other backs drafted ahead of him. Our team and Bears fans benefited from Matt’s drive to prove the other teams wrong.
Everything we saw in Matt on film showed up on the practice field. All we had learned about him off the field was also evident. He immediately showed himself to be coachable and a student of the game. He quickly picked up our offense—not an easy task for a rookie running back. He was never late for a meeting. He respected and listened to our veteran leaders.
Rookie running backs taken high in the draft usually arrive with enough talent to start for their team. But many don’t start right away, because it takes time to learn everything about a complex NFL offense. That was not the case with Matt, and I was able to call him into my office before the first game of the regular season and tell him that he would begin the season as our starting running back.
Matt took great pride in not just starting but in being an every-down back. Even good, veteran NFL running backs encounter issues with catching the ball and pass protection. Again, not Matt. Because of his intelligence, work ethic, determination, and the natural gifts the Lord blessed him with, he was as good a receiver out of the backfield as he was a running back taking a handoff from the quarterback. He also had our coaching staff’s complete trust to stay on the field for pass protection.
I was Matt’s head coach for his first five years in the league. We had veteran leadership in our locker room and a strong faith presence, which allowed Matt to come in as a rookie and simply fit in. But being the starting running back for the Bears—the same role on the same franchise that Walter Payton fulfilled as well as any back in NFL history—also carried public responsibilities. The TV reporters’ microphones and print media’s recorders were part of the landscape around Matt’s locker. Let me tell you, there are some players in the league that coaches don’t want speaking into a microphone. Or who at least need to be coached up on how to speak to the media. Again, not Matt. Even though he’s a rather quiet guy, Matt understood the importance of representing our team—and our city—to the media. As head coach, I wanted Matt to speak on behalf of our team. He boosted our brand.
Matt also embraced the city of Chicago and the opportunity to be a role model. I grew up playing football in Texas, and I’m proud of my East Texas roots. But there is no greater city than Chicago. The Bears mean everything in Chicago. To his credit, Matt, a southern Louisiana boy, moved to Chicago and became a leader in our community. He still lives there, and he has only expanded his involvement, post-retirement, in making some of the city’s roughest areas safer and better places to live, work, and play. I have three sons who grew up following the teams I coached. I wanted them to see Matt, hear Matt, and be around Matt. I have twelve grandchildren now. Matt is the type of role model I hope they will find too.
Finally, my favorite aspect of my relationship with Matt is that I can call him a brother in Christ. The NFL life appears glamorous to outsiders, but I assure you it is far from that. Once a player becomes publicly recognizable, temptations are everywhere. In Matt’s case, he had the added attention that comes with being a young, attractive running back for the Chicago Bears. I appreciate how Matt is open in this book about his faith and the struggles that came with his celebrity. His honesty is refreshing in today’s image-protecting culture, and I know he shares his expe riences and mistakes so that others can learn from them. Matt learned and grew as a man. And he never allowed anything to affect who he wanted to be as a football player and teammate.
From the first time I met him—standing out because of his suit—Matt Forté has always taken care of business.
Lovie Smith
Chicago Bears head coach, 2004–2012
Prologue
Ball cradled in my right arm, I turn the corner, dipping my left shoulder ever so slightly to create momentum as I step out of my cut. Squaring my shoulders, I reach full speed by my second step. I lock my eyes on the defender heading toward me. With my speed, I think he’ll either miss the tackle or I’ll break through his arms and stay on my feet. Either way, I’m not slowing down.
The next thing I know, I’m flat on my back, looking up at the hot Louisiana sun. I remain on the ground, taking inventory of my body parts as the feeling slowly returns to my extremities.
That hurt a little bit.
Water begins pooling in my eyes. Then tears start sliding down my cheeks. I look to the side as the large shadow of a man eclipses the sun.
It’s my dad, one of my coaches.
He stoops over until he’s close to my face mask, and he says matter-of-factly, “That’s football, Son.”
I’m seven years old, at my first football practice, and that was my very first carry—my introduction to the sport I had begged to play, even though my dad, a man with eight-inch scars on the insides of both knees from his own playing days, had told me I should wait a year.
And now he’s telling me, “That’s football, Son.”
The human brain is an amazing creation—able to process a rush of thoughts in mere seconds, and able to rationalize even at a young age. At that moment, I realize not only that football is a physical sport but also how I need to respond to having been planted into the grass of a city park practice field.
With those tears still finding their way down my face, I look squarely up at my dad, bite hard on my mouthpiece, and grunt my reply.
“I wanna go again.”
I roll over to my right—realizing for the first time that I hadn’t fumbled!—spring to my feet, and head straight to the front of the line of kids waiting their turn to carry the ball in the drill.
The coaches tell the same defender to step in to take me on again.
It’s him or me, I tell myself. And it’s not gonna be me.
When the coach blows his whistle, I take the same first step, make the same turn to the left, and accelerate to full speed. I see the same would-be-tackler heading straight toward me with the same bad intentions. But this time I have the benefit of a lesson learned. Instead of running high—standing too tall and making myself a target—I lower my left shoulder, determined to deliver the hit rather than absorb it.
You don’t need to have played football to understand what happened next. Athletes in other sports will know what I mean. It’s like a golfer or a baseball player who strikes the ball so purely, so perfectly, that they don’t feel the contact. Instead, it’s as if the ball jumps off the clubface or bat, the uninterrupted motion through impact making their swing look effortless. That’s the best way I can describe my second career carry in football. I hear the pop! when our shoulder pads collide, but I run right through the defender like he was never there and continue sprinting into the wide-open field ahead of me.
As I turn and jog back to the rest of the team, I’m not thinking about the teammate I left on the ground behind me. I wasn’t seeking revenge against him. I’m not looking to see what my coaches and teammates have to say about my run. I wasn’t trying to redeem myself.
Instead, I’m thinking, I know I can do this if I do it the right way.
That thought, that feeling, is immensely gratifying. I have discovered the spark—the fuel—for my desire to play football, for the confidence that I can play this game, especially as a running back. If “that’s football,” as my dad told me, I love it and I want to keep playing.
After that first practice, I loaded my gear into my dad’s car and hopped into the passenger seat. Before he could say anything or ask me a question, I wanted to make a statement, with full conviction in my heart and in my voice: “I’m going to be a professional football player when I grow up.”
I can still hear my dad’s voice whenever I think of that defining moment in my young life.
“That’s football, Son.”
Football is a tough sport. Football players are tough because the game demands it of us. We must choose to be tough to stay in the game, because football is tough by design.
The average length of an NFL career is 3.3 seasons. For running backs—my position—the average is only 2.67. That’s why many who have played at football’s highest level say that NFL stands for “Not For Long.”
By playing ten seasons in the pros, I crushed the odds.
The mindset that allowed me to not just play all those seasons but also stay on the field as an every-down back for the better part of my career, started when I was seven years old, in a city park in Slidell, Louisiana. The day I received the jarring introduction to the sport I would play for the next twenty-five years, my dad told me precisely what I needed to hear. He didn’t try to console me when I got knocked down. He didn’t try to stroke my ego when I had success. He wasn’t even trying to challenge me. True to his nature, my dad told me the plain truth. He has always had the ability to communicate a lot of truth in very few words. And the message packed inside those three little words he spoke as he leaned over me that day was, You say you want to play football. I support you. But you need to know that this is what you signed up for.
My dad looked a little surprised when I told him I was ready to give it another try. I might have seen a little pride on his face too—as if he was happy to discover that his youngest son had some dog in him.
From that day forward, I never doubted football would be tough. Or that I would need to be tougher than the sport.
Every down.
Every game.
Every season.
1GROWING UP A FORTÉ
“Play for the name on the front of your jersey” is a common way of telling athletes to prioritize the team over individual accomplishments. I played football with a team-first mindset while proudly wearing the jerseys of the Slidell High Tigers, the Tulane Green Wave, the Chicago Bears, and the New York Jets.
I also understood the responsibility that came with having FORTE stitched across the back of my shoulders. The generations of Fortés who came before me saw to it that our family name would stand for characteristics like integrity, hard work, excellence, and always giving your best regardless of circumstances.
More than anyone else, my parents, Gene and Gilda Forté, made me both the athlete and man I’ve become. I am eternally grateful for how they raised me, inconspicuously making sacrifices for my brother, Bryan, and me, bringing us up with a foundation of faith, teaching us the value of hard work, and instilling discipline into our character.
I was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on December 10, 1985. Lake Charles is less than an hour’s drive from the Louisiana Gulf Coast, where my dad found work in the oil industry after graduating from Tulane. Dad was a standout football player at Texas High School in Texarkana, Texas, and he received scholarship offers from the University of Texas and Texas A&M, among others. But on a visit to Tulane, he fell in love with the food of New Orleans and chose to play for the Green Wave.
Dad was a big guy—six foot three and 250 pounds as a defensive tackle in the mid-1970s—and he earned the nickname “Mean Gene” for how ferocious he was on opposing ball carriers. His Tulane teams had what they called a Big Hit Stick. Whenever the coaches noticed a tackle or a block on the game film that they deemed worthy of recognition, they awarded the player who had delivered the blow an opportunity to write his name on the Big Hit Stick. One season, despite missing most of the season with an injury, my dad signed his name to the stick more times than anyone else. I said he picked up his nickname because of how much he loved to hit people, but it wasn’t always a player from the other team. Once, leading up to a game against Boston College, my dad got tired of hearing members of the media talk about how big and physical their opponent’s offensive line was. During pregame warm-ups, he was so amped up to play that he hit one of his team’s running backs and knocked him to the ground. Dad wrote his name on the Big Hit Stick after that game, but not for the hit on his teammate.
