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Vince Wilfork is in Kansas City to take in this evening’s AFC Championship game. Not only will he be rooting for his former team, the New England Patriots, but he will also serve as honorary captain.
Since leaving the NFL in 2017, Wilfork has lived a quiet life in Houston, Texas, with his wife, Bianca, and their three kids.
Here’s what you need to know:
He Retired in 2017
Wilfork played for the Patriots from 2004 through 2014. He is known as one of the best defensive tackles that the team has ever had.
“I would put [Jason Ferguson] on top first; he is the one that has made me better this year. But then Vince. The guys in our [division] are the best,” Samson Satele told Boston.com back in 2008. “[Vince is] just smart. He knows when to fire out and when not to. He has been in the league for quite a while, so he knows some of the little tips. If the guard looks at him, he knows that he is coming his way. He is a low-center-of-gravity guy; you can’t move him. I mean, you can, but you have to get lower than him,” he added.
In 2015, the Patriots declined their team option on Wilfork’s contract and he became a free agent. Two weeks later, he left New England, inking a two-year deal with the Houston Texans. In 2017, he signed a one-day contract with the Patriots so that he could retire with the team.
He & His Wife Bianca Call Houston Home
Wilfork and his wife Bianca live in Houston, Texas, with their three children, David, Destiny, and D’Aundre. Although the family spent a decade living in Massachusetts, they ultimately decided that they wanted to continue growing their roots in Texas after Wilfork retired.
The truth is, Bianca didn’t care for New England living that much — at least not when she first moved there.
“People up here are rude,” she said of New Englanders. “That was the hardest thing for me moving up here,” she told Boston Magazine back in 2006.
Nevertheless, Bianca Wilfork has been by her husband’s side through and through.
“His job is to go out on the field and play, and my job is everything else,” she told the Boston Globe in 2008. “What he takes on his body, I take on my brain. We do it together.”