Giants’ Jermaine Eluemunor opens up about overcoming ‘rock bottom’

Giants free-agent offensive line addition Jermaine Eluemunor blocks out some time for some training camp Q&A with Post columnist Steve Serby. 

Q: You almost quit football twice. What was the darkest low point of your depression? 

Q: The first time it was 2020. Things were going wrong when I was in New England, it’s not for everyone out there. For me, just experiencing that, dealing with the injuries I was dealing with, I had a few things going on behind the scenes, and the combination of all that just really affected me in the wrong way. And in 2023, obviously everyone knows that game against [Chicago’s] Khalil Mack, he had six sacks, three of them were on me. Two of them were out of my control, but one of them he really just whooped me, and no tackle wants to have a game like that because that’s all everyone’s going to talk about. And I remember being on the plane ride home, I didn’t say nothing to no one. I didn’t think I was good enough. This was supposed to be the year that I truly showed who I was as an offensive lineman. And I had back-to-back weeks where I gave up five sacks. Like, no one wants that at all. That’s terrible. That can go one or two ways — either learn from it and be better, or you let it eat you up, and it destroys you from inside. And for a time it destroyed me. I was struggling bad. 

Q: Can you elaborate? 

A: I was at rock bottom. … You just have negative thoughts, like, you think you’re a piece of crap, you think you’re worthless. … You think that you don’t deserve to be in the position you’re in, you don’t think you’re worthy, and you don’t think that you’re like I said just good enough to be out there. And I had to fight all these negative thoughts and demons every single week when I was out there. My confidence was shot, I had no confidence at all. I was trying out there, but I just didn’t want to be there. I felt like a shell of myself. … So I actually reached out to [Eagles right tackle] Lane Johnson, because he had prior struggles with depression. And I was like … “I’m truly struggling right now. I don’t know what I can do to get out of the little funk I’m in, or big funk I’m in.” … And he recommended a mental coach for me, his name is Brian Cain. He has been a big game-changer for me. He’s worked with a ton of the biggest and best athletes in the world. And his thing is it’s all about your confidence and meditation and just believing in yourself. And he truly changed my entire life when I met with him. You don’t really see it, but pregame I meditate now before games just to get myself in the zone. I meditate twice before a game. I meditate when I go out there, right before my warmup, and then when I go back inside I do like a 15-, 16-minute meditation, and then I have like a mental video that I watch, and it gets me in the zone and gets me to where I need to be, and it centers me so I can go out there and truly dominate. Even if I’m struggling with confidence a tiny bit, I know I have the things in place to beat that — the little thing on your shoulder saying that you’re not good enough. I have the tools in place now because of what he’s done for me, and what he continues to do for me, and that was the biggest game-changer for me. 

Q: You speak to him how often?