EXCLUSIVE: New York Jets defensive tackle Harrison Phillips spoke to The Mirror U.S. about his grandmother, 'The Purple Lady', and his chaotic recruiting trip to Stanford

Harrison Phillips needed a miracle to play college football.

Growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, Phillips - who would go on to have a productive NFL career with the Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings, and New York Jets - dominated on high school football fields. But NIL hadn’t yet arrived, and the defensive tackle didn't have the capacity to visit many schools. He could visit just one, and needed to earn a scholarship.

Enter his grandmother, Sandra, ‘The Purple Lady.’ “I think it was between Texas, Alabama, Florida State, and Stanford,” Phillips recalled to The Mirror U.S. “We could only get a flight to visit one of them, and my grandmother heavily supported the idea of Stanford because of the education on offer there.

“I remember my flight was canceled on the way out to get there, and we missed the connection. We overnighted in Vegas or something, and I had maybe an hour and a half of sleep before the all-day camp. I remember being sluggish and not performing super well. I didn’t look great.

“When I got 11 hours of sleep the next night, I came back and dominated. They did some King of the Boards, an Oklahoma drill, and I ended up winning. I was offered a full scholarship the next day, when I got home. It was just the best feeling, knowing everything had paid off.

“Plus, my grandma really loved going out there and seeing California.”

Phillips’ grandmother has become the stuff of legend. She was known as ‘The Purple Lady’ for a very simple reason: “Everything in her house is purple. When I was growing up, all the walls in my house were purple. Our furniture is purple. The whole closet is purple.

“Everybody wore purple at her funeral. It was just her love. Tablecloths, napkins, plates, silverware, you name it, it's all purple at grandma's house. So, yeah. She just loved the color purple. I played for Minnesota for a few years, and I know she was definitely appreciative watching that down from heaven.”

Tragically, just days after tearing his ACL during Stanford’s season-opening game against Northwestern in September 2015, Phillips’ grandmother passed away. Two cataclysmic events threatened to send him into a spiral, but the 30-year-old found a way to stay above water, grow, and move forward.

“The injury helped shape my identity to be stronger outside of just football,” Phillips said. “When you're just a football player and the game is taken away, you don't have success. Then you have identity crisis and, you know, a big whole mental health burden with that, so I leaned in heavily to my faith. The passing of my grandmother was just a real trial period for me. A really difficult time. But I developed a more deep, mature faith that's helped carry through the ups and downs of my life since then.”

In his own words

You were a three-time state wrestling champion at Millard West. What did kind of wrestling teach you about competition and dealing with adversity?

“Wrestling was my first love for sure, and I actually still believe I'm a better wrestler than I am a football player. I think I started wrestling when I was three years old and it taught you a lot of- there's a lot of athletic parallels with balance and explosiveness and core and flexibility, hands. A lot of those things translate well to defensive line. But there's also the mentality of there's really no one else to blame on a wrestling mat. You can't blame the play call or your cleats or anything like that. It's just you and another man. So that mindset also helped me, I think, in sports. By the time my wrestling career was done, I was a multi-time national champion and it was fun.”

You have said you were a big fish in a small pond in high school. What was it like developing your own opportunities to take it to the next level in college?

“In Nebraska at the time, there wasn't a ton of highly recruited four- or five-star athletes. I was probably 6'3", 250, 240, somewhere in that range, and I'd be going against offensive linemen who are 190 pounds, 205 pounds, so it would give an unrealistic look. I remember sending in film to some of the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big Ten schools, and a lot of times they'd be like, ’The competition just seems so poor, we can't really grade the film. So you have to come to our camp in order for you to potentially get recruited or get a scholarship from us.’ Nebraska is a little more known for wrestling, and I got recruited for that, but once I started going to college circuits, I realized there were some really big, fast, strong dudes out here playing this game. That’s what attracted me more to football over wrestling, the challenge of it all. It would be harder to excel, and I appreciated that about it.”

How aware were you of your difficult financial situation while you were living through it?

“When we had to sell our house to move to a smaller place, that was a real clear indication. When I was getting recruited, it was tough. Some of my classmates or other people around the country were flying to all these different schools over the summer, and - I don’t know what the rules are now - they couldn’t pay for us to go out there to visit. It was on our own dollar. We had real, grown-up conversations with my parents about where was realistic for me to go. But they did everything they could. We made a couple 10- or 11-hour drives to go to some camps, so I will always appreciate everything. My grandparents helped us get out to Stanford, where I earned my scholarship and decided to take my talents out there.”

Why is off-field work important to you?

“I think my faith is a big reason for it. I think the game gives you just such a large platform to try to shed light on overlooked populations. I just think about my seven-year-old self and how much I would have valued an NFL player or, you know, if I had the opportunity to meet one or listen to one, how much it would have meant to me. I kind of always promised my younger self, like, if you're ever in this position, you better go out and try to inspire as many people and bring hope. There's just a lot of negative things out there in the world, and there's a lot of sadness and violence and hopelessness. I do everything I can to try to be light and try to be positive and make someone smile.”

You’ve been nominated for Walter Payton Man of the Year three times, and recognized by the United Way of New York. How do you measure the impact of your work away from football?

“I think what's most inspiring or rewarding for me is the testimonies of parents. We work with individuals even in their 40s and 50s, you know, later in life, too, but having a mother break down in tears talking about the impact that my organization or touchpoint with their child has had, I think, means the world. I can remember when I was in high school, inviting some individuals with developmental disabilities and special needs to prom with me and having their parents tell me, ‘I never thought that my child would ever get to go to a prom or a homecoming, and here they are going with a popular kid.’ I was prom king or whatever. I just saw early on how an extension of kindness can be the highlight of someone's year.”

Week 8 against the Raiders

Having suffered a disappointing loss to the previously winless Miami Dolphins, the Jets face a crucial matchup with the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 8. The Raiders are also in free fall, having lost each of their last four games, so Phillips and co. are hoping to bottle up the run game led by Ashton Jeanty and get back to winning ways - especially against a familiar face for the defensive tackle.

“I'm looking forward to chasing down Kirk, because I played with him in Minnesota and I really like him as a person, love his family, a lot of great memories we've had with him,” Phillips said. “If I can get over there and give him a brotherly tap or a brotherly hit, I would really love that.

“They have a really good front. They paid their center a ton of money because he's dang good at football; I got to go against him last year in Baltimore and see for myself that he's the real deal. Then their young runner has done a lot of great things, and his career is just going up and up and up.

“Ultimately we're trying to win this football game. You want to try to do that by making teams one-dimensional, knocking the run out, and forcing them to pass the football. We're hoping that we can get that done this week.”

The 2-5 Jets take on the 3-4 Raiders at MetLife Stadium in Week 8 on Sunday.