{"id":612789,"date":"2025-12-19T17:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/612789\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:46:12","slug":"tony-jeffersons-nfl-odyssey-from-scout-to-bird-flipping-second-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/612789\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Jefferson&#8217;s NFL odyssey from scout to bird-flipping &#8216;second chance&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Jefferson\u2019s best friends told him to stay retired.<\/p>\n<p>If Jefferson was seeking brutal honesty from his inner circle in Feb. 2024 as he considered returning to play in the NFL \u2014 after spending one year as a pro scouting intern with the Ravens \u2014 the former Giants safety got it in bunches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI went back home and started training, and I was like, \u2018Am I really going to do this?\u2019\u201d Jefferson recently told The Post from his spot in the Chargers locker room. \u201cAll my friends were like, \u2018Don\u2019t do it. You\u2019re washed. Leave it alone. Your playing days are over.\u2019 These are my former\u00a0teammates. But I believed in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s likely no NFL player has endured more of an emotional roller coaster over the past two weeks than Jefferson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Jefferson\u2019s best friends told him to stay retired. If Jefferson was seeking brutal honesty from his inner&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2064],"tags":[241,7,1012,1014,262,2444,2443,56,6,13835,9,3248],"class_list":{"0":"post-612789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-chargers","8":"tag-chargers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-jim-harbaugh","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-chargers","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-losangeleschargers","15":"tag-new-york-giants","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-nfl-playbook","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115747487233106038","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}