Lions all in on Rourke as unquestioned No. 1 quarterback

TSN Football Insider

Follow| Archive

Every athletic career has its turning points, events without which a story might be very different.

Nathan Rourke’s first one came at the tender age of three when, one day at home with his mother, Robyn, he stumbled upon a VHS tape highlighting the 1996 Green Bay Packers.

The tape belonged to his father, Larry, who was at work. So, Robyn, at first amused that her eldest boy seemed to find the tape interesting, allowed him to keep watching. 

“I thought, ‘This won’t last … it’s going to be pretty boring for a three-year-old,’” she recalls. “But he started watching that and he would watch it every day.”

For at least the next two years, it was all Rourke would watch. No cartoons. No Treehouse. Just the Packers.

“He didn’t want to watch anything that was age appropriate,” said Robyn. “I consider that he was studying film from the age of three … It was quite remarkable.”

Though he may not have realized it, Rourke’s study of Brett Favre and the Packers was more than just entertaining him, it was helping him form a vision of his future. He soon decided he wanted to play football and he wanted to play quarterback. Just like Favre.

His love of football was obvious in those early years when the family was living in Waterloo, Ont., even if it was occasionally misplaced.

“He was playing soccer at about age three and one game he was assigned to guard the best player on the other team,” recalls Larry. “And I do vividly remember this kid on the other team started with the ball and everyone was yelling ‘Nathan, get him, get him! So, Nathan dove and tackled him, which I thought was awesome.

“The parents on the other team were not happy about it … and I just thought ‘Okay, soccer is probably not going