CHARLOTTE, N.C. — James “Skip” Brooks has been gone for two years. But the father of Carolina Panthers rookie Jonathon Brooks had a seat at his son’s NFL Draft party and has a prominent spot on his right forearm and a permanent place in his heart.
After the Panthers traded up in the second round to draft Brooks, most of the focus was on his recovery from knee surgery and the Panthers’ decision to take two Texas players in the span of a day and a half after drafting only one Longhorn previously — 29 years ago in the team’s first year of existence.
So fans likely haven’t heard much yet about Skip Brooks. But they should soon enough when Jonathon Brooks taps his right forearm after his first NFL touchdown to memorialize a man who helped coach his two boys growing up, taught Jonathon how to play running back and good-naturedly bragged about his own football exploits.
Brooks was a freshman at Texas when his father died at 49 after a blood clot traveled to his heart on March 28, 2022. The date is tattooed in Roman numerals on the right arms of Jonathon and his older brother, Jordon, as a tribute to one of their two biggest fans.
“My dad would be going nuts for all this. He’d be ready to go down to Carolina. He’d be talking about it at his job,” Jordon Brooks said. “Because all this stuff we’ve done beforehand — playing outside and going to the field with him and all these summer trips to San Antonio, Corpus (Christi), Florida, Louisiana, wherever we went to play — I can’t imagine how happy he is right now.”
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