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Odell Beckham Jr. has used My Cause My Cleats to flex his creativity and generosity over the years, but lately he’s been so focused on getting healthy that this year’s sneaked up on him. So, when his mom came to him with a cause, he was quick to tell her, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Heather Van Norman is very involved with all of Beckham’s charitable work, and this year she asked him if he would support the Black Women’s Health Initiative, the “first and only national non-profit solely dedicated to achieving health equity for Black women in America,” according to its website. The cause spoke to Beckham.
“I just watched her put in all her effort, energy and time taking care of a human, raising a human,” Beckham said. “Also working, providing, putting food on the table. And I just know that story and what it’s like. So, to me, it’s just something that’s close to home. Just wanted to bring awareness to it.”
He’s not the only one inspired by his mother. Long snapper Tyler Ott will be wearing cleats to support March of Dimes, for which his mom works as the executive director in Oklahoma. Although Ott doesn’t hold office, he’s been involved with March of Dimes since the day he was born.
Ott was born a month early and spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. He was lucky to be healthy, but he’s heard many times how hard it was for his parents not to be with their newborn. Now that he’s a dad twice over, he connects even more strongly to the mission of March of Dimes.
The foundation’s slogan is “Level the playing field for all moms and babies,” which goes perfectly with the platform the NFL is giving Ott.
“We get to use our story as a success story of a preemie, again, with the understanding that we were lucky that I was healthy and developed,” Ott said. “But it still gives a lot of hope to families to hear that, you know, a preemie has gone on to play in the NFL. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s other premature babies, premature guys that were born premature playing in the NFL.”
The platform the NFL provides has become even more important to safety Daryl Worley, who will be wearing cleats to raise awareness about autism. His son, Kaiden, was diagnosed in February at the age of 6, an earlier-than-normal diagnosis.
“Using my platform and being able to like uplift and being able to shine a light on it with him not only having autism but being a minority [and] where people don’t necessarily get diagnosed at such a young age,” Worley said. “So being able to put that out there and being able to partner with the group that I was able to find out here in Baltimore. It was awesome.”
His locker room neighbor, Del’Shawn Phillips, is excited to be in a spot where he can support a foundation, the Del’Shawn Phillips Foundation, and bring more awareness to it. He always wanted to give back to his community of Highland Park, Michigan, but he wanted to make sure he could support a foundation properly.
Now he helps provide resources for kids to “do more, see more, become more,” and he hopes to expand to help a wider region.
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“The look on the kids’ and the parents’ face when you’re giving them some type of resource to help their kids,” Phillips said. “It’s touching once you just see their faces and their reactions to it, like, ‘Wow.’”
For backup quarterback Tyler Huntley, who doesn’t have a foundation of his own, choosing a cause required research. There were lots of causes he wanted to support, but he settled on the Annie E. Casey Foundation & 4KIDS Foundation. He has three younger sisters who were adopted, in addition to two older biological brothers, and he liked what 4KIDS does to support families.
Lisa, Nia and Aaliyah joined the family when Huntley was heading to college, “flipping the script” for his mom, who had raised three boys. Huntley was ready to hand over the mantle of the youngest, and he’s loved being a big brother.
Huntley let the foundation design the shoes, requesting only that there’s a homage to his South Florida roots, and he has not yet seen the shoes. He wants them to be a surprise. Phillips and Beckham are also going to be surprised with their cleats.
Worley left the design in the hands of the artist, Maxwell Pierce, and has shared them on social media already. Ott’s were designed by an artist from March of Dimes and are currently in the hands of the Ravens’ media team. All of them can’t wait to see how they look with their uniforms in the one game they’re allowed to wear cleats that aren’t team colors.
“I think the NFL is moving in the right direction to kind of showcase what players are doing off the field as well,” Ott said. “A lot of guys have their own foundations, guys have causes that are near and dear because they’ve personally experienced something or their family has, or just something that resonates with them. ... I think there’s always room for improvement. So I think we can do bigger and better things too. So we’ll see where it keeps going.”
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Giana Han is a Ravens beat reporter from Howard County.
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