Jonathon Brooks lost his dad at a young age, when he was eighteen years old. His father, James “Skip” Brooks, died on March 28, 2022, at forty-nine years old, after a blood clot traveled to his heart, as per a report shared by The Athletic in 2024. What followed were years of grief and injury for the Carolina Panthers running back, who tore his ACL not once but twice, the second time in 2024.
Earlier this month, cleared to join Carolina’s offseason conditioning program, the twenty-two-year-old did something he said had been in his heart for a while. He got baptized. Brooks spoke about it on April 28, via AP Sports.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life. I lost my father. I’ve torn my ACL twice. Every single time I reverted back to my faith,” he said.
He was direct about what the baptism meant to him.
“For me, my baptism was a recommitment of my faith — to not only change myself, but from that day forward to stop making excuses for my surroundings,” Brooks shared.
He returns to the field in 2026, a different person than the one who left it.
Jonathon Brooks opens up about his father’s tribute tattoo, touchdown ritual and the accountability his baptism demanded:
The date their father died is tattooed on both brothers’ right arms. As per a report shared by The Athletic, Jonathon Brooks and his older brother Jordon both carry March 28, 2022, in Roman numerals as a tribute to James “Skip” Brooks, one of their two biggest fans. Jordon spoke about what his dad would have made of where his younger brother stands right now.
“My dad would be going nuts for all this. He’d be ready to go down to Carolina. He’d be talking about it at his job,” Jordon said.
“Because all this stuff we’ve done beforehand — playing outside and going to the field with him and all these summer trips to San Antonio, Corpus (Christi), Florida, Louisiana, wherever we went to play — I can’t imagine how happy he is right now.”
Jonathon Brooks carries that loss with him on the field, too. As per a report shared by Associated Press back in 2023, whenever he got to the end zone, he tapped his right forearm.
“I really just miss, whenever I have success, the smile on his face, I think about that every time I score.” Jonathon said.
As per a report shared by Us Weekly, faith had always been part of Brooks’ life. That being said, Brooks admitted time off the field made him realize he hadn’t been living the way he believed he should.
“I used to use the excuse of being around the locker room my whole football career, whether it’s high school, college, or NFL, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m around people who cuss and do all this,'” he recalled.
“I kept trying to, I guess, put the blame on others in a sense. And, in reality, I just needed to check myself,” he added.
Here’s what we know about Jonathon Brooks’ late father:
Skip Brooks drove 18-wheelers across Texas for a living, hauling lumber and industrial-sized pipes out of Hallettsville. When his sons took up football, he rearranged his trucking schedule to be home so he could help coach their youth teams.
Skip had been a running back himself at Shiner High School in the late 1980s and early 1990s, something he never let his boys forget. He used to joke that they were lucky there was no video footage from back then. As per a report shared by Associated Press, Jonathon’s mother, Jennifer Donovan, confirmed that Skip’s friends and family stood by the claim that he was genuinely talented.
“So I’ll give him the credit. I wasn’t the football star, for sure,” she said, laughing.
Jonathon Brooks shared that his dad was hard on him at practice, though he appreciated having him around.
“I took a lot of notes from him. He played in high school. He was pretty good. He knew what he was talking about, and then my brother was playing, so I could learn from both of them,” he said.
Kidney disease had followed Skip for years. He spent several years on dialysis before receiving a transplant around 2013, when Jonathon Brooks was ten years old. For the next eight years or so, he kept working and umpired Little League baseball games. He also showed up to watch his sons play at Hallettsville High. The Brooks brothers were teammates for one season in 2017. Jordon was a senior receiver and Jonathon a freshman running back.
Skip’s health began slipping again after his feet started swelling, and he restarted dialysis in December 2021. A few months later, he had surgery to have a port placed in his right arm. His arm stayed uncomfortable over the weekend that followed, but he told Jennifer he didn’t want to go to the hospital. When he woke up Monday morning, struggling to breathe, Jennifer called his doctor and was told to bring him in immediately.
He passed out in the car on the way there. Paramedics were unable to revive him.
“They eventually just said a clot must have been in his body and traveled around, and his heart couldn’t handle it,” Jennifer said.
Edited by Priscillah Mueni