Almost-retired from the NFL, Jerricho Cotchery is still busy

No, the former NC State and NFL wide receiver didn’t play this past season, immediately after going to the Super Bowl with the Carolina Panthers last February. He hung up his cleats after the 24-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in San Francisco and never really looked back.

Still, he never officially filed his paperwork with the league to declare his 12-year career that spanned three different franchises — the New York Jets, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Panthers — over. He hopes to get to that sometime in the next week or so.

“I need to get that done, I guess,” Cotchery said.

Cotchery played 175 games over those dozen seasons, caught 524 passes for 6,623 yards and scored 34 touchdowns, an impressive compilation for a kid from Birmingham, Ala., who got little recruiting attention out of high school for many reasons.

First, as the 12th of 13 children, his family couldn’t afford to send him to the various camps that might have gotten him noticed. Also, admittedly, his grades weren’t the best following a rebellious stage in high school. And he probably spent more time in the summer playing AAU basketball than he did preparing for football season.

He came to NC State as part of Chuck Amato’s first recruiting class in 2000, thanks to the persistence of Wolfpack assistant coach Joe Pate, a holdover from fired head coach Mike O’Cain’s staff whose job it was to keep recruits on board until Amato was officially hired.

It didn’t hurt that one of his biggest references was an Athens, Ala., high school coach named Steve Rivers, father of quarterback and Cotchery basketball rival Philip Rivers. That made Pate pursue the wide receiver even more, and the Wolfpack was a better option than Cotchery’s only other offer — from hometown Alabama-Birmingham.

Cotchery and Rivers became a hand-in-hand, record-setting combination, football’s version of Fire and Ice. Each of Cotchery’s 200 career receptions was thrown by Rivers, including all 21 touchdown receptions.

Both of them turned heads and became coveted professional football prospects. Rivers was taken in the first round of the 2004 draft, the fourth overall pick, while Cotchery was a fourth-round pick of the Jets. He worked his way onto the field on special teams and eventually became the same sure-handed, dependable receiver he was at NC State.

There was, however, something that Cotchery thought was tragic about his life. He had already lived through a car crash at the age of 15 that took the life of a close friend, a seminal event that brought him back from his rebellious ways and strengthened in him the strong faith taught in his blended family home. He overcame those injuries and scars to become a college and professional football star.

He wasn’t sure, however, he would ever overcome what he and his wife Mercedes thought was another family tragedy: their inability to become natural parents. The couple met during their sophomore years at NC State and married shortly after Jerricho was drafted by the Jets.

They knew they would never be able to conceive, but they had hoped to have a successful surrogate pregnancy. That didn’t work either, a difficult diagnosis for a couple who both came from large families.

Jerricho was also dead set against adoption. He’s told the story on multiple occasions about how he didn’t think he would be able to love an adopted child as much. His mind changed during an NFL-sponsored spiritual retreat in 2007, and the couple began working with a private adoption agency soon after.

“I didn’t understand the gospel, and its teachings on adoption,” Cotchery said. “I didn’t think I could love a child that wasn’t ours. It was just pure ignorance and stubbornness. I wasn’t willing to listen like I should have.”

They soon were matched with a pregnant single mother who was ready to give up her son for adoption — until just after the birth, when she decided to keep him. Again the couple struggled with their inability to start a family, but just for a short while.

Three weeks later, they were selected to be the adoptive parents of another baby, a girl they named Jacey. Jerricho wasn’t there when Mercedes went to pick up their daughter — he was playing in the Jets’ 2007 season-opener against the New England Patriots.

Now, the couple have five adopted children, ages 9 through three months, and they are raising and home-schooling them in the home they bought near Charlotte. Their days are no longer built around practices, workouts and interviews, but they are no less busy than they were when Cotchery was playing football.

There are diapers to change, meals to share, piano lessons, swimming practices and errands to run — times five.

The couple tries to have most of their meals together, get everyone out of the house for Tuesday home-school meet-ups and an unbreakable Friday night date night, a carry-over from their childless days early in his NFL career.

However, this weekend they will return to Raleigh, the town where they met, for an important fundraiser that they want Wolfpack fans to know about. They will be the keynote speakers at A Winter’s Tale, the annual fundraiser for the Methodist Home For Children, one of the state’s largest faith-based adoption and family service agencies, reaching out to up to 1,500 families a year in the state. The event is Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Raleigh Convention Center.

“They cover a lot of ground, from adoption and foster care, to family preservation, juvenile justice, specialized services, help for children with developmental disabilities,” Cotchery says. “We’re just looking forward to helping out and giving them our support.”

There couldn’t be better spokespeople for adopted and foster children, when they talk about their journey to parenthood, something that was so circuitous they named one of their children Journey.

“I enjoy getting up and sharing our story,” Cotchery said. “It was a little difficult the first time I did it, but I feel like God has led me in this direction. This is the purpose and path he has chosen for me.”

Cotchery remains close with Rivers, even though they haven’t been teammates since their Wolfpack days. They’ve talked a lot about their core family beliefs and about how they want to raise their kids.

“Philip has always been a good friend,” Cotchery says. “We’ve always shared a lot of the same values. He’s the one that told me I needed to get to at least five — so we would have a full basketball team.”

Like his NFL retirement, Cotchery isn’t quite ready to say he and Mercedes are done adopting children. Since Philip and his wife Tiffany have eight, the Cotcherys will consider strengthening their roster in the future.

Besides, Cotchery still has the same competitive fire and wouldn’t mind making sure his family team always wins when they are old enough to square off against team Rivers.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.