SAN DIEGO — At the end of Eric Weddle's run with the Chargers, he got some advice from Kobe Bryant.
"Make them pay in the worst way possible," said the Lakers star.
Bryant was referring to Chargers football executives who'd shown the All-Pro safety the door, following his ninth year in San Diego.
Weddle said Bryant's advice bolstered him as he and his family prepared for his next career move. Five years later, pieces of the "super-cool" 20-minute chat with the late five-time NBA champion, said Weddle, still come to mind on most days.
"You know who you are, you know what you stand for," he said, recounting Bryant's comments. "He reminded me to make them pay for what they did. And, I held on to that. And now, it's all coming full circle."
Weddle, 37, is headed to the Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams. He's wearing blue and gold, the same colors he wore as a Chargers captain and defensive quarterback on four playoff teams.
The 56th Super Bowl will be played in the Inglewood stadium that houses both the Rams and the Chargers. The canopied venue is 10 miles south of the downtown Los Angeles arena where Bryant chatted with Weddle — a longtime Lakers fan who grew up in San Bernardino County — after the two were introduced through friends on Jan. 26, 2016.
Weddle gave the Chargers excellent returns across a San Diego tenure that began with three AFC West titles and featured two playoff victories after the 2007 season.
Vocal, durable, savvy and cocky, Weddle immersed himself in the franchise's yearly mission. He played through injuries, earned captaincies as voted by teammates and shouldered extraordinary workloads because he also logged heavy duty on special teams.
In his final contract year in San Diego, relations went sideways between Weddle and a Chargers front office headed since January 2013 by John Spanos and Tom Telesco. A messy departure played out.
Just 20 minutes with Bryant stood him well, said Weddle, as he headed toward free agency that would land him a four-year contract with the Baltimore Ravens that March.
"I cherish that 20 minutes I had with him alone," Weddle said. "He went through his struggles and became the Silent Assassin, the Black Mamba. So much of what he was as a player is who I strive to be. Just being great in every facet of life."
Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna, 13, were killed in early 2020 when the helicopter in which they rode crashed in Calabasas. The day was Jan. 26, the same date Bryant and Weddle had met four years earlier. After the Bryant chat, Weddle's friend Morod Shah told Bryant it was an honor to have met him. "No, Morod," said Bryant, "the honor is mine."
Hoops serendipity
Behind Weddle's home in Poway is an NBA-length outdoor basketball court Weddle had built in anticipation of his transition from football.
Lights enable night games. A sound system blares music. Family and friends look on.
For some 18 months, the basketball games fed some of Weddle's competitive drive while maintaining his fitness along with other activities such as rowing, swimming and treadmill runs.
He'd announced his NFL retirement in February 2019, signing off on social media with #BeardOut.
As recently as five weeks ago, when he was still retired from the NFL, Weddle and friends were playing best-of-five basketball tournaments most weeks.
First team to 11 points won the game. Three-point baskets counted as two points. You had to win by two.
Music flowed from an eclectic playlist of R&B, hip hop, the pop-rock of Shawn Mendes and the Christian rap of NF.
Shah, the associate director of athletics at Cal State San Marcos, often had the misfortune of Weddle defending him.
"When he locks in, he'll take it away," said Shah, a former guard for San Marcos High who, at 6-foot-1, is two inches taller than Weddle. "I'll think I have Eric beat, and then he comes out of nowhere. He's just flying. He blocks the heck out of my shot."
If Shah, 37, and the other eight players were gasping for air, Weddle barely huffed.
About 10 years ago, Shah joined Weddle in a basketball game with Chargers stars Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates.
He remembered Weddle "floating through the air and dunking" at a gym near Rivers' former north San Diego home.
The "retired" Weddle didn't go to seed. On the contrary.
"It's the best I've ever seen you move on the basketball court," Shah told him last year.
When the Rams tried to coax Weddle back a week before their playoff opener, the athlete's longtime agent, David Canter, pressed him on his fitness level.
"You know me," Weddle replied, "I'm a beast."
Weddle said the hoops games — among other activities — maintained fitness that has contributed to his successful return. He said basketball's reactive elements provided a helpful if crude simulation of playing safety.
The notion that pick-up basketball games would shelter him on an NFL field elicited some guffaws, notably from Eli and Petyon Manning. The two Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks poked light fun at that notion during an ESPN telecast, while teasing Weddle for skipping training camp.
Whatever the causes, Weddle has held up physically.
He survived Rams practices, allowing him a chance to make the game roster. He logged 19 snaps in the playoff opener and full-time loads of 51 snaps and 61 snaps the next two weeks.
The Rams may not have reached the Super Bowl without Weddle and Co. gluing together a pass defense that fractured in the season's final game after both starting safeties went down with injuries.
Neither of the Rams' regular safeties have returned (though, one, Taylor Rapp, could be ready for the Super Bowl).
L.A's victories against Tampa Bay and San Francisco were by three points, the defense turning in the better game both times. In the NFC title match Weddle had a team-high nine tackles, including a tackle for loss that contributed to L.A. beating the 49ers for the first time in seven games.
"The pickup basketball helped with keeping his flexibility and his agility and his quick twitch," said Shah, whose friendship with Weddle dates to 2009. "It was amazing to see him out on the court moving the way he was moving after a 13-year NFL career."
If not for Rapp and Jordan Fuller going down in the final game, Weddle likely would be still ferrying his four children to various activities and not preparing for his first Super Bowl.
Subtract any one of numerous elements from his life journey, he said Monday, and the door to the Super Bowl doesn't unlock.
The 49ers — longtime thorns to the Rams, dating back decades, when they won five Super Bowls — may have untracked the Rams by beating them Jan. 9 to claim a playoff berth.
The resulting matchup, against a reeling Arizona team, was a Rams blowout victory. And when the Niners upset the top-seeded Packers a week later, the Rams were spared an NFC title game at Green Bay, where they'd lost during the season.
Weddle said he watched every 2021-season snap of the Rams and Ravens, while never giving a thought to returning to the NFL.
His studies of those 34 games have paid off. "When he watches a game, it's like he's watching 'The Matrix,' " Shah said.
Abundant energy, even by NFL standards, improved his odds of overcoming the football rust that accumulated in the some 750 days between his NFL games. Weddle — whose private workouts at Chargers Park often came before dawn — has gained seven pounds of muscle since rejoining the Rams on Jan. 12.
Athletically he had some cushion, having graded well as an A.J. Smith-selected, second-round draft pick from Utah. He brought good sprint speed (4.48 in the 40-yard dash), agility, play strength and suppleness to the NFL. He played all 16 games of his team's games in 10 seasons.
Because of his mental prowess, some NFL coaches had him relay and adjust their electronically transmitted play calls, a role that often goes to a middle linebacker.
As a former high school receiver and quarterback who dueled the brainy Rivers in practices for nine years at Chargers Park — at a walk-through session on an aircraft carrier in San Diego Bay, Weddle zinged 40-yard spirals across the flight deck — the free safety understood offensive thinking.
Weddle, who'd stayed in touch with Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey this past season, said his 13 years of NFL games and film study have served both him and his Rams teammates well. True to his basketball style, he involves all his teammates.
"I want me to do the thinking for everybody so they can feel free and play fast and know that if I alert something for them or if I see something, to trust me," he said. "And if it doesn't go well, then I own it and it's my fault, and it's not their fault. And that's how you have a great secondary. That's how you have a great defense."
"I've always trusted my gut and trusted my instincts," he added, "and that won't change. … When you see it or feel it inside your core that something's about to happen — go do it."
The Cincinnati Bengals will be the opponent Sunday.
The sociable Weddle, who has seemed to have a friend on every NFL team throughout his career, counts Bengals running back Joe Mixon among his buddies.
He said he's a big fan of Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow — "I love his grit. He just seems like a dude that you'd want to run through a wall for. ... He's not into the social media-type crap. He just wants to be great," he said — and lauded the offense's explosive playmaking.
Among the many unique aspects to the recent retiree appearing in (and perhaps starting) a Super Bowl is his relationship with Bengals receiver Tee Higgins.
"I played fantasy football for the first time," Weddle said of the 2021 NFL season, "and he was one of my receivers that I drafted and so I watched a lot of him all season just because he was on my team. Now, I'm guarding to go stop him in the Super Bowl. It's crazy how the world works."
Weddle said he plans to inform Higgins of their quirky relationship — on Sunday. Few dull moments with this guy.
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Staff writer Annie Heilbrunn contributed to this report.
