7 quotes from Nate Solder’s emotional ‘Thank You’ to New England
The former Patriot penned a Players' Tribune column to reflect on his seven years in New England.
Nate Solder ended his tenure with the Patriots when he signed a four-year contract with the Giants in March. It brought a remarkable run to a close for the 30-year-old left tackle. In his seven years with the team, Solder helped New England reach a record seven consecutive AFC Championship Games, winning four of them.
Before turning his attention to his new team, Solder wrote a Players’ Tribune column titled, “Thank You, New England.” In it, he chronicled the standout aspects of his time with the Patriots, and how it extended far beyond the win-loss column in its impact on his life.
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Solder’s son, Hudson, was diagnosed with kidney cancer when he was three months old in 2015. The fight that Hudson and the Solder family have waged since – taking place entirely in their time in New England – has been a defining chapter in the life of the Patriots’ offensive lineman.
Here are a few passages from Solder’s column:
Winning didn’t solve everything.
Solder found that his drive to help the Patriots win as a rookie in 2011 didn’t fill a void in his life:
We went 13–3 in the regular season and made it to the Super Bowl. And even though we lost to the Giants, I expected to feel a certain way after it was all over. Not necessarily happy, because we ultimately lost the game. But … satisfied. Or at least fulfilled in some way.
But I didn’t.
All I felt was emptiness.
New England taught him an ironic lesson.
After helping the Patriots reach the Super Bowl in his first year, Solder then spent the offseason traveling extensively. To this, he noted afterward, “I can see that I was searching for something. I just didn’t know what. But whatever it was, I couldn’t find it.”
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Solder drew a poetic conclusion:
I was a kid who thought his entire purpose was to win, and then I went to New England, where winning is everything.
Only to learn that it’s not.
He felt guilty about his son’s illness.
When his son was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 2015, Solder and his wife, Lexi, were sent to Boston’s Children Hospital. Looking back, Solder explained his difficult experience:
Lexi and I cried the entire drive. Hudson was our first child. So Lexi and I were still brand new parents. You can understand our grief. But for me, I was overcome by guilt as much as anything. I couldn’t shake the idea that I was Hudson’s father. It was my job to protect him from everything, at all times. And I felt like I hadn’t done that.
I felt like I had failed my son.
Adversity drew him closer with Josh McDaniels.
Solder offered an emotional anecdote about his first visit back at the Patriots’ team facility following Hudson’s diagnosis. Standing for the pregame chapel, Solder and his wife broke down in tears. At that point, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was the only person in the team organization who knew about Hudson’s cancer other than Bill Belichick.
And McDaniels took notice:
After that day at chapel, I noticed a change in Josh. He gave Lexi a big hug every time he saw her, and held it a beat longer than usual to ask her how she was doing. Our conversations changed. They used to be only about football. Now, they would start with football and end with us talking about God, our families and just life in general.
The juxtaposition of the Patriots organization
In explaining the impact of how the Patriots organization reacted to his son’s diagnosis and ensuing fight with cancer, Solder outlined, “a little about what it’s really like playing for the Patriots.”
It can be a tough environment. It’s very businesslike, and at times it can be cold. Everything in New England is predicated on performance. It’s a place where people sometimes treat you differently based on how you practiced that day or how you answered a question in a meeting. One day, you could walk around the facility feeling like a Pro Bowler — the next, like you’re about to get cut.
Conversely, Solder then explained how much the support he received from the organization meant to him.
I don’t think I can even put into words how much I appreciated that — both what Bill said and how Josh handled everything. They treated me like a human being instead of a football player or a left tackle.
That kindness didn’t stop with my coaches, either. It went all the way to the top of the organization. All the way up to Mr. Kraft.
When snow threatened to make their commute to the hospital difficult, Kraft paid for a nice hotel room for the family to stay nearby.
“It was a small gesture — a little detail that I think speaks volumes about Mr. Kraft and the Patriots organization,” Solder recalled. “And it’s just another example of the kindness and compassion that they showed my family and me during some of our most difficult times. We never felt like we were alone in our fight.”
When the Patriots mounted a historic comeback in Super Bowl LI to beat the Falcons, 34-28, Solder was instrumental in the victory. Yet after helping to anchor the offensive line in one of the defining games of his career, it wasn’t the main source of his happiness:
Winning used to be everything to me. But in that moment — being on the field with my teammates and my family after winning the craziest Super Bowl ever — the game and the fact that we had just won our second championship in three seasons wasn’t even at the top of my mind.
For Solder, that moment was more about Hudson. Winning the game had been a bonus.
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“I remember looking at him playing on the field and kicking confetti around, and I was just thankful that he was O.K. His health was everything.”
‘We’re still fighting.’
With his son once again in chemotherapy after the cancer returned, Solder explained that his family is, “bringing that fight to New York” after signing with the Giants.
“Hudson is still fighting. We’re still fighting.”
Reflecting on the sum of his time in New England, Solder closed by thanking New England, and addressing what he’d taken away from living and working in the Patriots organization:
I learned a lot about life over the last seven years, and I also learned a lot about winning — mostly, that it’s not everything.
There’s so much more.
