ON THE DAY his daughter was diagnosed with cancer in 2019, DJ Eliot wrote a message to himself on his phone: "Make Drue's day the best it can be."
He set it as a 7 a.m. alarm, and every morning for the next six years, those same words pinged across the screen like a mission statement.
Drue was 12 when she first got sick, and DJ wanted to quit coaching to care for her. He was certain that was the only job that mattered, but Drue wouldn't allow it. She loved being a coach's kid, and she refused to let cancer take that from her.
Eventually, DJ came to understand football's place. The game afforded Drue a source of happiness, and it gave him the chance to provide her with as many good days as possible. That's why he was in Raleigh in the fall of 2025, four games into a new job as defensive coordinator at NC State, while Drue and the rest of his family remained in New Jersey, close to her doctors. He left, he said, for Drue.
"I had a purpose," DJ said. "The only way I could make it was to compartmentalize my feelings, and the only way I could do that was from Drue's inspiration."
Still, the guilt could be overwhelming, and, after issuing its mission statement again each morning, DJ's phone could devolve into a source of dread by day's end. On the field, he was hard-wired to football, but when practice ended, he'd retreat to the locker room and his phone would offer the latest -- and increasingly grim -- news about Drue.
On Friday, Sept. 19, the phone offered a reprieve. Drue was emaciated and exhausted, but a scan showed no signs of cancer in her lungs, where doctors expected a relapse to occur. It was likely an infection now playing havoc with her body, and for DJ, that was good news. Anything other than cancer was good. He listened to the message, then slumped in a chair, alone in the locker room, and sobbed.
A day later, NC State endured a frustrating loss to Duke, and DJ again found another message waiting on his phone. It was from Drue. It said, simply, "Love u."
DJ took a breath and tapped out a response: "I love you, too. Sorry about the game."
Drue, usually his most direct critic, offered support.
"Do not apologize," she replied. "Just move on to the next game."
But there would be no next game for Drue as she would die before NC State kicked off again.
Three days after that Duke loss, DJ returned from practice to find another message. The doctors had overlooked something. There was cancer in Drue's liver, something her oncologist had never seen in someone with her history; something they hadn't been looking for. Drue was deteriorating quickly.
On Wednesday, DJ's wife, Miekel, announced Drue would start a new chemo regimen -- experimental, a last hope. For six years, Drue had grasped so many last hopes and survived. She would do it again, DJ told himself.
Thursday brought a message from Drue's doctor, concerned he hadn't fully understood how bleak Drue's situation had become.
"DJ," she said, "you need to come home."
DJ HADN'T PLANNED to become a coach. His father is a dentist, one brother is an endodontist and the other is an attorney. DJ studied science at Wyoming while playing linebacker on the football team. He had a year of school left when his playing days ended, and Mark Stoops, an assistant on the staff, asked if DJ wanted to help with the scout team linebackers.
"And that was it," he said. "I fell in love with it."
He married Miekel in 2001, followed Stoops to Houston for a GA job, then on to Miami, Texas State, Tulsa, Rice and Florida State before landing as Stoops' defensive coordinator at Kentucky in 2013, adding four kids to the family along the way: son Dawson and daughters Drue, Page and Reace. They had all embraced the often chaotic lifestyle of a football family -- except for Saturdays. The games were too stressful for everyone. Everyone except Drue. She watched with intensity, lambasting a linebacker who couldn't hold up in coverage or a tackle who failed to fill a gap.
"She was the most competitive one," DJ said. "She hated to lose."
When Kentucky lost to woeful Vanderbilt in DJ's first year as coordinator, Drue cried. Her grandmother asked if she was worried her dad would get fired.
"No," she screamed. "If we can't win, I don't want to be here."
Even as her cancer worsened and the drugs left her groggy, she'd point at the TV and yell. "Who's that? He's terrible!"
Each time DJ landed a new job and the family moved, Drue would make new friends by joining the soccer or basketball team, where she was routinely the best player, DJ said, and the one whistled for the most fouls. She even played second base on her older brother's all-boys baseball team while Dawson was stuck in left field.
In the fall of 2019, DJ was the defensive coordinator at Kansas and Drue was in the seventh grade. As her soccer season wound down that November, she complained about a pain in her upper thigh. It was likely nothing, DJ told her -- a pinched nerve or a tweaked muscle, the cost of playing so hard. In fact, he said, he had been dealing with soreness in the same area.
During a basketball game that December though, Drue took a hard block in the paint, and as she struggled to her feet, the look of pain on her face alarmed Miekel. A doctor seemed unconcerned, but ordered an X-ray. A day later, Miekel's phone rang. Something hadn't looked right.
The family went for more tests, and Drue was laughing and joking with her parents when a radiation tech casually posed a question: "How long has this tumor been bothering you?"
It was the first time anyone said that word.
Afterward, the family was told Drue's doctor was waiting to see them. It was 7:30 at night. Doctors don't work this late unless it's bad, Miekel thought.
When they entered the doctor's office, she could tell the doctor had been crying.
"I've already called the hospital," the doctor said. "You have an appointment tomorrow with the pediatric oncologist."
DJ and Miekel were stunned. Drue cried hysterically. Then she remembered what DJ had said about his injury.
"Daddy," she said, "do you have cancer, too?"
She was 12. What did she know of cancer?
No, his injury was normal. Hers was, as DJ and Miekel have explained so many times since that day, just a cruel dose of bad luck.
DRUE WAS DIAGNOSED with Ewing sarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer that typically attacks children between the ages of 10 and 18. Only about 250 people a year are diagnosed in the U.S., and of that group, less than 25% are girls.
Ewing sarcoma is either localized -- with a high survival rate -- or metastatic. Drue's cancer had spread to her lungs. There was nothing they could've done to stop it.
DJ and Miekel listened as their doctor explained that nothing was certain, more tests were needed, there was a treatment plan they could follow -- all the usual caveats afforded a family in need of hope at the outset of a cancer battle. When it was over, DJ followed the doctor out of the office.
"Be honest with me," he said. "What are her odds?"
She looked up, her voice cracking.
"Maybe 30%."
Drue underwent chemo, radiation therapy and blood and platelet transfusions. The family spent Christmas Eve in the hospital when Drue had a fever, because any small infection could be deadly. Drue lost her hair, which for a 12-year-old girl, Miekel said, was humiliating. Drue needed surgery to remove the tumor in her groin, a procedure so dangerous, one doctor considered amputating her leg. Eventually, the family found a surgeon in St. Louis, Missouri, who could excise the tumor by removing part of Drue's hip while preserving her ability to walk. But she'd never play sports again.
That first year, Drue and Miekel shuffled from city to city -- a month in Houston, Texas, six weeks in St. Louis, Missouri, constant trips back and forth to Kansas City, Missouri. Miekel slept on a cot next to Drue's hospital bed every night.
"They say you get to a new normal," Miekel said, "but I didn't want a new normal."
DJ balanced life at home. Their youngest was still in preschool, and even with grandparents arriving in shifts to help, he knew he had to be a steadying force for the other kids who were still reeling from the sudden shift in their realities.
When COVID hit, it was a blessing, Miekel said. DJ worked from home, and family members came and stayed for weeks at a time. Drue, recovering from her latest treatment, would chase her siblings and cousins around the living room with her walker, and for a while, the battle wasn't so overwhelming.
"We were a team," DJ said. "It really made everybody close, because we were fighting it together."
Drue finished her initial round of treatment in October 2020, and the early results were encouraging. The cancer in her lungs had dissipated. The tumor removed from behind her pelvis was the size of a grapefruit, but her margins looked clean once it was gone. A biopsy of the tumor showed complete necrosis, which meant the chemo had done its job. Doctors had told DJ and Miekel that the response to the initial treatment was the best predictor of relapse, and Drue had fought off the cancer about as well as anyone could.
"We felt like turning the page. We were just so optimistic," Miekel said. "And then it just begins again."
FOR SIX MONTHS after Drue's initial recovery, the family scratched back something akin to their old life. Around Christmas, Drue's three-month scans came back clean, and the family went out to celebrate. Drue was planning a steak dinner after her six-month visit.
"I got nervous about being too hopeful," DJ said. "I always wanted her to think everything was going to be OK, but in the back of my mind -- there's a chance."
The newest scans showed two spots in Drue's pelvis, a "localized relapse" that doctors said was rare. She had taken the year off from school, but she was eager to return. Her hair had started to grow back. Her survival odds, encouraging before, had now dipped to near zero. It was a gut punch.
Miekel found a trial in Boston that offered some hope, and within 48 hours, Drue and Miekel were on a plane with no idea when they might return home.
This is why DJ kept working. His job provided health insurance and a salary that allowed Miekel and Drue to dash off on a moment's notice to some random city in search of hope.
Slowly, the family fell into a new rhythm. DJ was coaching, earning a paycheck and giving their other kids something approaching a regular routine. Miekel became Drue's right hand; booking appointments, researching trials, sleeping on sofas and cots at night and waking early each morning to catch the doctor making rounds. Miekel and Drue ultimately spent six weeks in Boston. Drue was diagnosed with typhlitis midway through her treatment, which made her incredibly sick and kept her in the hospital for 20 days straight. But by the end, another round scans showed massive improvement. Still, Drue would never be off chemo again.
DJ hated feeling tethered to his job while Drue and Miekel spent so many nights in hospitals. Sometimes in team meetings, as players and coaches detailed their own journeys, someone would mention cancer, and DJ would leave the room. He remembers one team meeting, years into Drue's cancer battle, when his head coach told the team about Brett Favre playing on Monday Night Football the day after his father died, praising Favre's ability to push all the grief and stress aside to focus on doing his job.
Afterward, DJ found the coach in his office.
"Man," he said, "that's what I do every day."
IN JANUARY 2022, Kansas fired Les Miles. The team had won just three games in the previous two years, but it was an array of off-field scandals that proved the final straw. DJ was out of a job, and the family needed a fresh start.
Miekel said she was "deflated, so down on football." They thought about selling their house and using their savings and just ... waiting. Waiting for Drue to get better so they could move on, or get worse, so they could invest all their time and energy into her.
Instead, DJ opted to test the waters during hiring season, and he soon got a call from Temple.
It was hardly a dream job. The Owls were historically one of the most miserable programs in the country, and although the previous decade had offered some tastes of success, the team had won just four of its past 15 games. Still, there was one major perk: Temple was just a handful of blocks from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), one of the best pediatric cancer facilities in the country. In the past year, Drue had spent 200 nights in a hospital, Miekel by her side. Now, DJ could work, Drue could receive treatment, and they could all be together.
Dawson and DJ flew out to Philadelphia that December -- a "recruiting trip" to make sure the job fit. The weather was frigid. The neighborhood surrounding Temple was unlike anywhere they had lived before -- parts bustling, parts bleak. Stan Drayton was a first-time head coach with limited support from the school. Nothing about the situation felt right, save the opportunity it provided Drue to live life as a normal kid.
That night, Dawson called home with a report.
"Mom," he said, "we're going to love it here."
THE MOVE WAS a boon for the family. They found a house in a quaint neighborhood in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Miekel and Drue quickly bonded with the team of doctors and nurses at CHOP. Drue's oncologist, Dr. Naomi Balamuth, became one of Miekel's closest friends. DJ could go home each night after coaching and see Drue.
"She was able to get cancer treatment but still live," DJ said. "Before, she wasn't really living."
DJ had taken Temple job with hopes of giving his daughter a shot at a normal life, but now, on the brink of her first day of high school, he was terrified.
Throughout her treatments, Drue had tried home schooling, but it was too chaotic. She hadn't set foot in a school in more than a year, but she was determined to go back.
DJ and Miekel met with Tammy McHale, Haddonfield Memorial High School's principal. It was critical, Miekel explained, that Drue's cancer wasn't shared with her classmates. Drue found an expensive wig at a boutique shop in New York City, and she had sworn her siblings to secrecy. She'd get treatment in the morning, before classes started. She wanted to feel normal.
"Don't worry," McHale said. "I've got her."
They gathered for a family photo before the first day of school in September 2022; four kids, all flush with excitement on the front stoop, ready for a new chapter.
"It was complete euphoria," Miekel said, "and sheer terror, all wrapped in one moment."
Miekel dropped Dawson and Drue at school that morning, then she waited in the parking lot for an hour, worried the whole plan would crumble under the weight of reality. Instead, it was quiet.
At Temple, DJ moved through his familiar routine. He watched film, coached, then found his phone. There was the text from Drue.
"I can't believe I actually get to go to school."
DRUE STROLLED INTO McHale's office one day during her junior year, beaming with news.
"A boy in gym class," she announced, "called me a b----."
McHale understood immediately. No one would say that to a girl with cancer.
Maintaining the facade wasn't easy. Friends were rarely invited to the house. Shades were kept closed and curtains drawn. If someone knocked on the door, Drue's youngest sister, Reace, would run to grab her wig. She had her eyebrows micro bladed, and she became an expert at doing her makeup.
"When you lose the ability to have normal things -- to go to school, play sports, hang out with your friends -- you desire those things so much," Dawson said. "She didn't want to be known as 'Drue with cancer.' She wasn't ashamed, but she wanted her friends to love her for her."
Drue joined the cheerleading squad, which at the time had just a handful of members. Her cancer limited what she could do, and at basketball games, she'd take a place on the back line, so she could lean against a wall for support during breaks. But her enthusiasm was infectious, and by the next year, the team's membership more than doubled.
Drue was also the soccer team manager, where she met McHale's daughter, Julia, one of the handful of friends who was eventually allowed behind Drue's veil of secrecy. She got her driver's license. She went on weekend trips to the Jersey shore. She went to prom.
"She never felt sorry for herself," McHale said. "She would come into my office sometimes to have a quick vent, and then she would put her shoulders back and her head up high and walk out in the hallway like nothing was going on. She was like Hannah Montana -- just living in two different worlds."
DJ, too, found a reprieve. With Drue flourishing, he had no intentions of leaving Philadelphia, but Temple was a dead end. Then, out of nowhere, he got a call from Philadelphia Eagles coach Nick Sirianni asking if he was interested in the team's vacant linebackers coaching job.
At his introductory news conference, DJ told the crowd of Eagles media how special the city of Philadelphia was to him. He didn't explain why, and no reporters asked.
"Drue ended up having, for the most part, a normal teenage life," DJ said. "It was the simple things that she lived for, and it made us all appreciate those things."
SHE NEVER WENT more than a few days without treatment, but she rarely missed school, she made friends, she felt good.
In August before her junior year, a new round of scans punctured the fantasy.
There were new cancer cells. The treatment she had tolerated so well was no longer working. They'd have to try something new, something more aggressive.
The news broke something inside of Drue. She shrieked in agony and ran from the room sobbing, an IV pole dragging behind her, and locked herself in a hospital bathroom. Balamuth and a nurse followed and implored Drue to let them in. Eventually Drue relented, and the three of them sat on the tiled floor and acknowledged the inevitable.
"I just feel like I'm going to die from this," Drue said.
Balamuth's stomach lurched. She had always tried to find the right balance of hope and honesty with her patients, but Drue was like family. The brutality of this moment, she said, was so unfair.
"Drue, honey," Balamuth said. "You are going to die from this."
It wasn't the first time Drue heard this diagnosis. She knew her time was limited, but on the good days, the cancer felt like vapor -- present, but indistinct. She had willed herself into living like a normal kid, but now, she faced reality head on, and the tears that had been streaming down her cheeks gave way to an indignant fury.
"I'm just so pissed," she said.
The family never talked about death. DJ and Miekel tried once, in the early days, when survival was all that mattered, but then they promised to focus on giving Drue as much life as possible.
"When you're playing a hard team, the players will look to the leaders to see what their emotion is," DJ said. "If they see doubt or they see fear, then they have doubt and fear. But if they see confidence and they see courage, then they'll have confidence and courage. They look to the leaders. That's what my approach was. I never wanted my family to see fear in me."
They had been steadfast through early-morning treatments before school and too many ER visits to count. Some nights, Drue would be in so much pain, she'd "scream like she was giving birth," DJ said. She suffered through proton treatments -- five days a week in six-weeks increments -- where she'd be strapped to a bed from the neck down in what felt like a straight jacket to keep her from moving. She'd be wheeled into a giant machine where her lungs would be bombarded with radiation for 45 minutes, and she'd sob the whole time.
"She f---ing struggled, man," DJ said. "But she never complained."
After one relapse, Drue met with a therapist at her doctor's suggestion. The woman asked if Drue had thought of suicide -- a standard question in this situation.
"Are you crazy?" Drue asked. "Do you know what I've been through so I could live?"
But now her parents wondered if she had enough. Drue was 18, and as she raged against her fate on the hospital floor, DJ and Miekel told her it was OK if she wanted to opt out of another battle.
Drue wiped her eyes, shook her head and forced a smile.
"Oh, you're all so stupid," she said. "You know I'm going to do it."
That night she drove to the shore with her friends, never once mentioning cancer.
"You look at the pictures," Balamuth said, "and you'd have no idea anything was happening. She was happy. Beaming, beaming, beaming happy."
LAST SUMMER, THE Eliots trekked to their beach house in Florida for the Fourth of July. DJ -- along with the entire defensive staff -- had been let go by the Eagles after a miserable ending to the 2023 season, so he spent 2024 working from home as an analyst for Baylor before landing the NC State job. After months alone in Raleigh, this trip was a reunion for him -- with Miekel and the kids, as well as with Stoops and his family, and a handful of other friends. Drue, for the first time in ages, took off her wig. Will Stoops, Mark's son, carried her over the dunes and down to the shoreline. She laughed, swam and devoured every moment.
"That was my sister," Page said. "Not the one in the hospital or the feeding tube. It was just a perfect weekend to have."
On the night of the Fourth, Miekel made the kids dress up for a walk along the beach, and she snapped a picture of them as fireworks lit up the sky in the background. It was the last formal family picture she'd take.
"And after that," DJ said, "she was never the same."
By the fall, Drue was constantly nauseous. Doctors had put in a feeding tube, and each day, Page would rush home from school to help inject the nutrients that kept her sister alive. It was a tedious process, 30 minutes or more for each injection, but the sisters would scroll through TikTok, giggling at clips from a world removed from Drue's cancer.
"I never really thought [the videos] were that funny," Page said, "but I thought it was funny that she thought they were so funny."
Drue texted her dad about football, and teased Dawson when his teachers offered to reschedule his exams because of her health. One day in mid-September, Miekel convinced Drue to go into school and have lunch with her friends. It was a joyous reunion after weeks apart.
Alone in Raleigh, DJ heard the stories and hoped Drue would rebound again. He never imagined it was the end, even when that MRI showed cancer in Drue's liver on Sept. 23.
DJ flew home to Philadelphia for Drue's oncologist appointment, but he returned to Raleigh that night to prepare for NC State's next game.
Doctors told Miekel to think about hospice care, but even during that appointment with Balamuth, Drue still chided her doctor -- "Fix my blanket!" -- and giggled at her role as boss.
"She still sassed me like she always did," Balamuth said. "It speaks to her grit. She was going to have it her way until it couldn't be her way."
When they got back to the house, however, Drue could hardly move. Dawson, who had come home just as his sophomore year at Kentucky was starting, carried her inside and up the stairs and laid her down in their parents' bed.
DJ flew home again that night and asked to sleep next to Drue. It was near 3 a.m. when he woke Miekel. Drue's breathing was labored. Her oxygen levels had fallen below 60.
Drue slept through Friday morning and early afternoon. Tammy, Julia and a handful of friends spent time by Drue's bedside that afternoon. Drue's grandparents, aunts and uncles arrived late as Julia and her father headed home. Julia got the news before reaching her driveway.
With the bedroom crowded with family, saying their goodbyes, it was Page who noticed first.
"Mom," she said, "I don't think she's breathing."
Drue was 18 when she died. She battled cancer for six years. It wasn't enough time, DJ said, and yet it all felt like a gift.
"She lived so much more than most people," DJ said. "In her short time, she loved more than most people love in a lifetime. She fought more than most people fight in a lifetime. And she had more joy than most people have. And I think that's because every day was borrowed time."
DJ HAD WANTED to give the eulogy. He wanted to be the strong one, he said, but that was never his place. Even as the rest of the family spent years burnishing their defenses, DJ's emotions remained raw.
So Dawson and Page retreated to a quiet room and, in about 10 minutes, jotted down their thoughts on their sister and what her life meant.
Nearly 1,000 people turned out for the funeral -- classmates, friends, coaches from stops across the country.
Page spoke first. She talked about how Drue battled cancer with dignity and never dimmed anyone else's joy.
Dawson followed by explaining how Drue reframed his perspective on grief. Loss is painful, he said, but it's also a gift. It's a reminder of how much you've loved.
Afterward, friends DJ hadn't seen in years came up to him and gushed over the bravery and insight his kids showed. He had done a great job raising them, they all said.
"But it wasn't me," DJ said. "It was Drue. They saw her battle, and the way she lived influenced who they are. They don't complain about anything. They're always optimistic. They appreciate things and they find joy in so many things, and they're compassionate and kind and tough. And she taught them that."
In the months that followed, the Eliots would start a charity through CHOP in Drue's honor. Pediatric cancer is the No. 1 disease-related killer of children under 18, but just 4% of federal funding goes to childhood cancers. As private as she was, Drue's family believes she'd want her story to help other kids now.
With little reason to stay in New Jersey, the Eliots put their house up for sale, so they could be closer to DJ. There were so many memories though -- more good than bad -- that it was hard to say goodbye.
The girls lacrosse team at Haddonfield honored Drue before their final game, and in June, the school invited DJ and Miekel for graduation, offering an honorary degree for Drue.
NC State, meanwhile, rebounded from a 4-4 start to win four of its final five games of the 2025 season. DJ's defense allowed just 37 points over the final three. A season that looked lost in September now offered hope for 2026.
But before all that, DJ sat alone at the airport and tried to comprehend his next new normal. This, DJ said, was his low point.
For six years, he had been on a mission for Drue. Suddenly, he realized how useless that mission statement was now. Why keep doing this when the battle was over? He took out his phone, pulled up his alarm and deleted the words that had pushed him out into the world each morning for the past six years. He thought about Drue, took a long breath and typed out something new.
DJ woke up the next morning at the team hotel, feeling lost. Miekel and the kids were flying in for the game, and he was eager to get back on the field, where he had always found some comfort. Still, he kept thinking about that last text he had received from Drue.
"Just move on to the next game," she had told him.
And here it was. His next game. His first game without her.
Then his phone buzzed. It was 7 a.m., and a message glowed on the screen, the words he wants to be reminded of each morning for the rest of his life.
"Make Drue proud every day."