DC Defenders wide receiver Eli Rogers skips his mom’s funeral to play XFL game
WASHINGTON — DC Defenders wide receiver Eli Rogers suited up for Saturday’s matchup with the New York Guardians after an emotional 10 days.
The 27-year-old’s mother, Tranae Jackson, died on Feb. 5 at the age of 50, and her funeral was scheduled the same day as the Defenders’ second game.
In what he described on Twitter as “one of the toughest decisions” of his life, Rogers played Saturday, skipping the funeral at Faith Community Baptist Church in Miami.
“I was really just thinking about her, and what she would want for me,” Rogers said after the Defenders’ 27-0 win over the Guardians. “We have a certain relationship where she understands that I’m not too fond of certain things. I just wrote a letter. I let my family read it at the funeral. They said it was a great turnout. I can’t wait to go back there and speak to them, let them tell me all about it.”
Rogers did not disclose the cause of his mother’s death.
Rogers made an immediate impact for his team. He caught three passes on the Defenders’ opening drive that resulted in a touchdown, including a 25-yard strike on their first play from scrimmage. He finished the game with five catches for 49 yards on eight targets.
“It was a tough week for not just Eli but for myself and the rest of our locker room,” Defenders coach Pep Hamilton said. “It warmed me up just to see Eli enjoying the victory with his teammates. It’s just a testament of his character and the (mental strength) that you’ve got to have to be able to endure something like that. It would have been hard for me, I guess the average person, to focus under those circumstances.”
Jackson played a major role in Rogers’ upbringing. The family lived in Brownsville, a suburb outside of Miami that is considered one of the poorest and most dangerous towns in the country. She raised Rogers and his four siblings herself despite living with AIDS since Rogers was 8.
His mother helped instill a strong religious faith in Rogers, always telling him that his athletic talents would help improve his family’s life. She would push him harder to excel than her other children as a result.
“It was always something with me, like I was the special child,” Rogers told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2017. “She’d always tell me, ‘No, you don’t do this.’ Or always tried to pull me away from those things, that life that I could have seen. She always tried to do that and keep me away from it. I feel like she always believed I could be the one to bring the change to our family.”
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