When the Eagles faced the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC championship game on Jan. 21, members of the Kendricks family wore special T-shirts, with half of a horned Viking head spliced onto half of a fearsome-looking Eagle head.
Eagles linebacker Mychal Kendricks was facing his younger brother, Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks, for the right to go to the Super Bowl. It was a story that gained national attention, with ESPN interviewing their mother, Yvonne Thagon, at the concession stand where she worked when the boys played for Herbert Hoover High in Fresno, Calif.
On Sunday, the Vikings will visit Lincoln Financial Field again. Eric Kendricks again will take the field, as a defensive leader for Minnesota. Mychal Kendricks said Thursday he would like to be there as well, "if I can get in."
In fact, he can't, after being indefinitely suspended from the NFL; suspended players can't even buy a ticket and go to a game.
So, there won't be a gathering of extended family, or any whimsical T-shirts.
Mychal Kendricks' weekend plans are uncertain, much like the rest of his life, right now.
"It's been very emotional," said Kendricks, whose three-game stint with the Seattle Seahawks ended Tuesday, when the suspension was announced. "I just pray, and try to stay positive."
Kendricks, 28, pleaded guilty to insider trading on Sept. 6 in a federal court in Philadelphia. He awaits sentencing in January, for a prison term that could be as long as 25 years but likely will be much shorter, given that he cooperated with authorities investigating the scheme to leverage inside stock information provided by a friend, Damilare Sonoiki, a Harvard-educated, Goldman Sachs analyst turned sitcom writer.
The Eagles released Kendricks in May, apparently to get out from under his $7.6 million salary-cap figure, thinking that with Jordan Hicks healing from the Achilles' tear that ended his 2017 season early, Kendricks projected as a part-time linebacker.
Could the federal investigation have played a role in that decision? A source close to the situation said the team was aware Kendricks was being investigated. The Cleveland Browns, who signed Kendricks for one year and $3.5 million after the Eagles made him a free agent, released him on Aug. 30, when news broke of the charges and his planned guilty plea. They said they had been led to believe that Kendricks was cooperating as a victim in the case, not that he would be charged.
"Four years ago, I participated in insider trading, and I deeply regret it," Kendricks said in a statement released when the charges became public. "While I didn't fully understand all of the details of the illegal trades, I knew it was wrong, and I wholeheartedly regret my actions."
Kendricks, an explosive linebacker capable of playing bigger than his listed 6-feet and 240 pounds, quickly found yet another home with the Seahawks, signing a one-year deal for a prorated share of the $790,000 veteran minimum, which worked out to $46,470 a week. He signed on a Thursday and played the next Monday night, starting at left inside linebacker against the Bears. Kendricks sacked Chicago quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. The next week he sacked Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott, equaling his sack total for the 2017 season with the Eagles. Last weekend, Kendricks forced a fumble in Seattle's victory over the Cardinals, though Arizona recovered. He rose to third on the team in tackles, with 15 in three games.
Two days later, the league stepped in. The announcement reportedly came as the result of Kendricks losing an appeal, which might account for why he was allowed to play three weeks for Seattle.
Observers were surprised when Seattle signed a player who likely wasn't going to be available for very long this season, but Seahawks coach Pete Carroll gave some insight into that on Wednesday _ basically, the Seahawks weren't expecting "indefinitely," a word that seems to mean the NFL will wait for the January sentencing to decide what else it needs to do. The league has guidelines for, say, domestic violence arrests, but nobody ever got charged with insider trading before.
"How do you define 'indefinitely'?" Carroll said. "I don't know. We pressed that. What does that mean? It means indefinitely. We don't have a sense for what's going to happen right now, and they couldn't give us any, so we know nothing moving forward.
"When we signed him up, we thought that ... there would be somewhat of a length of the suspension that wasn't indefinite . ... We thought it was going to be two, three weeks, or something like that. I don't know what's happening now with that."
Kendricks also does not know. He was still in Seattle Thursday, he said, getting ready to return to the Philadelphia area, where he played six seasons for the Eagles after arriving as a second-round draft pick from Cal. His plan for now is to "continue to work out," he said, before ending a brief phone interview.
Former teammates said they were stunned by the charges and that Kendricks is a good man who ended up in a bad situation.
Ex-Eagles linebacker Najee Goode, now with the Indianapolis Colts, said he has talked to Kendricks a few times since the guilty plea, "but not necessarily about what happened."
"I know he's gone through a lot, being signed and released, to keep his head in the right spot," Goode said. "I talked to him the day they played the Monday night game against the Bears, about him playing hard and keeping focused. Mike's a good dude. He got caught up in some crazy, unfortunate situations."
Goode spoke before the suspension was announced.
"In the article I saw, the league didn't know how to look at it. We didn't, either," he said about Kendricks' friends. "I didn't think he was going to be in that circumstance or situation. Regardless, he's still a hell of a player. You see he can come out there on Monday night after not playing and go out there and actually do something.
"He's handling it the best way he can. Anytime you get into stuff with the law, man, you've got to make sure you're cooperating and doing the right things, and I think that's what he's doing."
Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham said that he would "never suspect Mike to be in whatever he was in," and that he knew nothing of Kendricks being in any legal trouble before the announcement of charges and a plea.
"All I know is, Mike's a good guy. He just got caught up in the wrong thing, that's all. People make mistakes, but at the end of the day, he owned it," Graham said. "It ain't like he ran from it. I respect him more _ it's hard sometimes to own something. People try to make excuses."
Eric Kendricks has not discussed his brother's situation with reporters who cover the Vikings. His Twitter page header is a photo of the Kendricks brothers embracing after an Eagles-Vikings game in 2016.
"It's crazy we're both in this position," Eric Kendricks said before the January meeting.
Sunday's game will take place 259 days after that one. In the interim. Eric has signed a five-year, $50 million contract extension. Mychal has won a Super Bowl, then seen his career and his life go in a very different direction.
Before that NFC championship game, the Kendricks brothers talked about their relationship.
"He's more conservative, I'm more of a risk-taker," Mychal said. "He thinks things through; sometimes, I just go with the flow. There's pros and cons to both."
