A.J. Brown’s sideline read skyrockets to No. 1 hottest seller on Amazon

By: Dan Gelston, The Associated Press Posted:

Advertisement

Advertise with us

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Step aside, Oprah.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/01/2025 (635 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Step aside, Oprah.

Philadelphia Eagles star receiver A.J. Brown could launch a book club of his own after a little sideline reading skyrocketed self-help author Jim Murphy to the hottest seller on Amazon overnight.

The Eagles wide receiver passed on the playbook and checked out an inspirational title — Brown casually ignored the action in Philadelphia’s playoff game and flipped through the pages of Murphy’s book, “Inner Excellence.”

The little-known book by the mental skills coach was listed No. 1 on Amazon’s best-sellers list as of Monday morning. It took the top spot on the trending list after previously being ranked 523,497th. That jump earned it another top spot on the marketplace’s movers & shakers list.

It had yet to crack the top 100 for sales in 2025, however. Mel Robbins, Rebecca Yarros, Kristin Hannah and the likes still reigned supreme there.

Undoubtedly fueled by Eagles fans, “Inner Excellence” was reviewed 375 times and rated 4.7 out of 5 on Amazon. For comparison, Freida McFadden’s critically acclaimed book “The Housemaid” had 431,491 reviews with a 4.5 rating.

“AJ Brown recommended this book, so I’m looking forward to reading this. Fly Eagles Fly,” one reviewer wrote on the site.

Murphy, a former minor league outfielder in the Chicago Cubs organization, told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday night that his phone started blowing up with texts once his book was checked out on an NFL playoff game.

After his career ended, Murphy became intrigued by the idea of learning how to teach baseball players how to have confidence under pressure.

“I spent five years full-time writing and researching the answer to that question,” Murphy said. “That became the book ‘Inner Excellence.’”

Brown, who had 67 catches for 1,079 yards and seven touchdown this season, described the lessons in the book as useful because football is “90% mental and 10% physical for me.”

Brown later shared a photo of the book on social media with several passages highlighted and underlined in yellow.

Brown said he was surprised his moment went viral because he says he often reads on the sideline, but added: “Y’all caught me that time.”

“If I score a touchdown or drop a pass, it’s something how I refocus,” Brown said. “I always revert back to the beginning of the book. It states if you can just have a clear mind and remember that nothing else matters, clear conscience, nothing matters negative or positive. You’re willing to take risks. It also says if you’re humble, you can’t be embarrassed.”

It must have worked. The Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers and advanced in the NFL playoffs.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Advertisement Advertise With Us

Report Error Submit a Tip

Advertisement

Learn more about Winnipeg Free Press Advertising solutions

More Stories

Puppies, stocks — ‘zoomies’ abound

Andrew Froese 4 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

This spring, I adopted a three-month-old rescued German Shepherd mix. To say she is easily excitable is an understatement.

It is not really her fault. A puppy’s frontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps with decision-making and impulse control, is still developing. When an older dog, or a human, gets tired, we generally understand we should rest. Puppies have not quite figured that out. They often interpret tiredness as a signal something is wrong, which makes them more alert, more reactive and harder to settle.

That creates a feedback loop. The puppy gets tired, which makes her frantic, which makes her more tired, which makes her even more frantic. Eventually, this becomes what people call the “zoomies”: frantic sprinting, biting, jumping and general chaos.

From the outside, it looks like the puppy has too much energy. In reality, the opposite is true. The zoomies are not a sign of excess energy. They are a sign the puppy is overtired and does not know it yet.

‘Please excuse us from writing these notes …’

‘Please excuse us from writing these notes …’

Editorial 4 minute read Preview

‘Please excuse us from writing these notes …’

Editorial 4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

It’s a common-sense prescription for the health-care system. The only wonder is that it took so long to happen.

On Oct. 1, new provincial legislation came into effect that will stop employers from requiring employees to get a sick note from a physician unless the employee has been absent for more than a week or has called in sick 10 or more times in a calendar year.

And the legislation could have a big effect.

Doctors Manitoba has calculated that its members write over 600,000 sick notes every year — a process that costs the provincial health-care system approximately $8 million annually. And the effort doesn’t even help sick workers get better: one-third of sick notes are written for patients who don’t even have symptoms anymore, making them little more than a comfortable fiction. To put it simply, doctors have to trust that a symptom-less patient was sick and write a note saying they were ill, in order to satisfy an employer who doesn’t share that same level of trust.

Read
Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

Final hurdles are moving on in your mind and life

Maureen Scurfield 3 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I just ran into my former husband with his new woman. It was a shock. She looked nothing like me — not nearly as good. In fact, she’s the opposite of me — red-haired, freckled, tall and skinny like a rake. I’m short, dark, with golden skin from my Italian background. That was what my husband used to say he loved in a woman.

Does that mean he lied — that he really didn’t like my looks and secretly longed for the opposite? That seems crazy to me. But I should mention that in our last miserable years together he didn’t even want to hold me in his arms and look at me. He sometimes slept at his office (or so he said) because he was “too tired to drive home.”

He could have been elsewhere — like in some other woman’s home — because he always used his cellphone to call me, not his office line.

How can I forget about the man I loved so much and finally move on?

Submit a news tip

1 minute read Monday, Mar. 16, 2026

Submit a news tip

Tim Smith / Brandon Sun files The decimation of the buffalo is a prime example of human wantonness, as explained in Neil Griffin’s Endings: Encounters with Extinction.

Naturalist offers personal reflections on the finite nature of life

Reviewed by Chris Smith 3 minute read Preview

Naturalist offers personal reflections on the finite nature of life

Reviewed by Chris Smith 3 minute read Saturday, Sep. 26, 2026

Canadian poet and naturalist Neil Griffin has written a historic and personal globe-spanning account of massive extinctions over centuries, caused by weather disruptions and by mankind. It’s a detailed, well-written account, sometimes with a touch of humour, but predominantly a frightening and depressing look at the losses and consequences.

Griffin opens by describing artifacts on his desk, “a pocket gallery of past and present ruin” — memento mori collected during his former life as a wildlife biologist and “cold reminders of what was and will not be again.”

The author combines geological and natural history with observations of his own, made during travels to destinations such as Canada’s boreal wetlands, the jungles of Belize, Kenya’s savannahs and the mountains of Rwanda — all places where he encountered endangered species.

Griffin takes readers through Earth’s five mass extinction events caused by upsets in the carbon capture cycle, planetary wobbles causing climate change, volcanic eruptions, meteors and how the “bad behaviour of Earth’s inhabitants” impact so many species. More than 99 per cent of Earth’s total plant, animal and fungal life is now extinct, and human beings will also be extinct someday, he writes, recognizing that extinction is a natural phenomenon, but that current extinction rates far exceed the norm.

Read
Saturday, Sep. 26, 2026
Russell Wangersky photo The sun breaks through the clouds in Gusset’s Cove.

Nature doesn’t waste its time

Russell Wangersky 6 minute read Preview

Nature doesn’t waste its time

Russell Wangersky 6 minute read 2:01 AM CDT

Sixteen months in and the black burn from a forest fire somehow transitions from the foreground to the background. I’m not sure if it actually softens, if it really changes, or if is just that your eyes, now used to the background, start seeing less of it.

One thing’s for certain: nature doesn’t waste any time taking its opportunities. In the sheltered ground behind where the shed over our Newfoundland root cellar used to be, a forest of sorrel has arisen, its dark-green leaves with their distinctive double horns at their base crowding in tight amongst each other.

It’s no surprise: sorrel is new beginnings, often the first plant I see recultivating abandoned gardens or disturbed ground and I’m happy to have it around always. Its distinctive lemony bite is a fine addition to salads, though we’re not likely to choose it from that particular root cellar patch. Not with the way the asphalt roof shingles burned right around there. I shovelled up the heavy pats of congealed black tar last spring, right after the fire, bringing them up from inside the cellar in big plastic buckets to send to safe disposal. But there’s probably plenty of tar still in the ground and out of sight — hardly an appetizing thought.

From other areas, maybe we will eventually sample sorrel: it depends on how close they were to the house or shed or anything else that burned. And so very much burned. The province has said gardens are safe from contamination by fire-retardant chemicals as nothing has shown up in tests. But we know what way the wind was blowing — what burned, and where, is always part of the equation. It’s a strange calculation to make: I’m just glad our house wasn’t heated with fuel oil, was too old to contain asbestos, and didn’t have indoor plumbing for decades.

Read
2:01 AM CDT