{"id":13601,"date":"2023-09-21T10:07:12","date_gmt":"2023-09-21T14:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/?p=13601"},"modified":"2023-09-21T10:07:12","modified_gmt":"2023-09-21T14:07:12","slug":"how-super-bowl-champion-marcus-cannon-trusted-god-amid-cancer-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/inspirationreport\/2023\/09\/how-super-bowl-champion-marcus-cannon-trusted-god-amid-cancer-battle.html","title":{"rendered":"How Super Bowl Champion Marcus Cannon Trusted God Amid Cancer Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_13610\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13610\" style=\"width: 768px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/89\/2023\/09\/marcus-cannon-patriots-credit-nesn-youtube.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13610\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/89\/2023\/09\/marcus-cannon-patriots-credit-nesn-youtube.png\" alt=\"marcus cannon\" width=\"768\" height=\"462\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13610\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">NESN\/YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Three-time Super Bowl champion Marcus Cannon recently joined the Sports Spectrum Podcast to discuss his battle to overcome cancer and faith. Cannon played for Texas Christian University (TCU). Although he grew up in church, Cannon was drifting away from God when he started at TCU.<\/p>\n<p>After an outstanding junior and senior year, he started preparing for the NFL combine and thought his projected draft pick would be the first round. However, as he went through the general testing for the combine, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin\u2019s Lymphoma during the medical portion. Cannon shared, \u201cI remember when this first got dropped on me. The first thing I did was I cried.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He continued, \u201cI 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\u2019s 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, \u2018I\u2019m going to trust God. I\u2019m going to trust God\u2019s going to get me through this.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As the NFL draft approached, Cannon&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vVPAwC1P_As?si=QKv_KTvFhaDupYsa\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vVPAwC1P_As\">recalled<\/a>, &#8220;Not only did I get drafted, he [Belichick] was reassuring me that &#8216;you don&#8217;t even have to worry about this first year. We&#8217;re going to pay you, and you&#8217;re going to be on the team, and we&#8217;re going to take care of all your health stuff.&#8217;\u201d Cannon expressed, \u201cEvery 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 was still there for me when I came back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cannon would go on to become a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/super-bowl\/\">3-time Super Bowl<\/a>\u00a0champion with the New England Patriots in 2015 (Super Bowl XLIX), 2017 (Super Bowl LI) and 2019 (Super Bowl LIII).\u00a0 He was then traded to the Houston Texans in 2021, where he would retire shortly after.\u00a0A fan account for the New England Patriots, called Patriots 7<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0Ring,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Patriots7thRing\/status\/1109240818664161280?ref_src=twsrc%255Etfw%257Ctwcamp%255Etweetembed%257Ctwterm%255E1109240818664161280%257Ctwgr%255E47272a2166cf52a68bb2562ae6f935d7e1d46a16%257Ctwcon%255Es1_&amp;ref_url=https:\/\/sportsspectrum.com\/podcast\/2023\/09\/08\/podcast-marcus-cannon-growing-faith-overcoming-cancer\/\">wrote<\/a>\u00a0on their X page, \u201cFriday Facts: Marcus Cannon beat cancer, has 3 Super Bowl rings and the same number of playoff wins as Peyton Manning (14).<\/p>\n<p>Cannon says he\u2019s grateful for the NFL combine, sharing, &#8220;Really, the combine maybe saved my life. It was a pure blessing. They found the cancer in time. If it weren&#8217;t for the combine thing, I wouldn&#8217;t have gotten the biopsy. It might have been a year or more before we found it. Maybe two or three years. That might&#8217;ve been too late.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some may question why Bill Belichick would take a chance on Cannon, knowing he had cancer. However, it was all a part of God\u2019s plan for Cannon to fulfill his dream of playing in the NFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three-time Super Bowl champion Marcus Cannon recently joined the Sports Spectrum Podcast to discuss his battle to overcome cancer and faith. Cannon played for Texas Christian University (TCU). Although he grew up in church, Cannon was drifting away from God when he started at TCU. After an outstanding junior and senior year, he started preparing&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":13610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[997,741,4,12,1007],"tags":[2123,2126],"class_list":["post-13601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-encounter-with-god","category-faith","category-inspiring-messages","category-inspiring-people","category-sports","tag-marcus-cannon","tag-non-hodgkins-lymphoma"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How Super Bowl Champion Marcus Cannon Trusted God Amid Cancer Battle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Marcus Cannon may be a three-time Super Bowl champion, but the hardest battle he had to endure was a battle with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.\" 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