Kim Singleton swears she knew something was wrong with her son, before anybody truly knew what was wrong with Alex Singleton. She saw something. It was the way he buttoned his pants on that first Sunday of November , she thinks. Or the way he spoke to her, after the Broncos outlasted the Texans in Houston that day.
She’d watched her son play football since Pop Warner, the same happy-go-lucky kid through 31 years of life . She couldn’t place it. But she knew.
“Mother’s intuition,” Kim said.
Perhaps she sensed fear that Sunday, a rare emotion for her son. Worry, at least. Singleton had failed a league-mandated drug test earlier that week, which detected elevated levels of the hormone hCG in his bloodstream. He didn’t know why. He didn’t like not knowing why. But one symptom of elevated hCG in men, Singleton came to learn, was testicular cancer.
On the bench after one defensive drive against the Texans Nov. 3 — in the middle of the game — Singleton sat next to linebacker Justin Strnad and blurted it all out.
Dude, Singleton told Strnad. You’re not gonna believe what happened.
It was shocking, friend Strnad reflected. It only spiraled. Two doctors’ appointments and an ultrasound on Monday, Nov. 3 confirmed Singleton had a tumor.
A funny thing happened, on this day that made little sense: Singleton came to immediate terms with the fact that a turbulent journey might be over.
“It’s a relief, now that I know what it is,” Singleton told friend Evan Yabu over the phone that Monday.
“It’s a relief?” Yabu remembered responding. “What are you talking about? You got cancer.”
It was a relief, because an unknown had become a known, for a man who was always able to control his own destiny. When Singleton was four, all he wanted to do in life was watch his cousin play football. When he was in eighth grade, all he wanted to do was play varsity football. When he was playing college football at Montana State, all he wanted to do was play pro football. He’d made it in Denver, becoming the head of one of the best defenses in the NFL, after years of failed tryouts and a stint in Canada.
“Alex would never walk away if it was up to him,” Kim said. “Ever.”
So he didn’t.
Three weeks later, Singleton sat with The Denver Post in the lobby of the Broncos’ facility in Dove Valley, entirely grateful to still be there. He will play again on Sunday against the Commanders in Maryland, healthy and cleared after surgery. He’s missed all of one game. The only massive changes in his life have been a horde of social-media messages, an appearance on “Good Morning America,” and his own proclamations to advocate for men’s health and early detection.
Singleton, though, will play the rest of this season with a new lease on life. Because he’d already accepted his own football mortality.
“It’s house money,” Singleton grinned.
On Nov. 3, doctors told Singleton that the cancer was perfectly curable. So he told them — and those in his circle that knew the diagnosis — that he would play in that Thursday’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders. Singleton didn’t know, then, if the cancer had spread. If it was elsewhere in his body. If it was elsewhere in his brain. If he’d have to undergo chemotherapy. He was perfectly aware that Nov. 6 might be the last football game he would ever play.
If it was the last ride, Singleton was going out on his own terms.
“You always see the things of — ‘You never know the last day you hung out with your friends (as a kid), when the streetlights went on and you went home for the last time,’” Singleton told The Denver Post.
“At least, if it was going to be last Thursday, I knew when the streetlights were coming on.”
…
Toward the end of their conversation Nov. 3, after Singleton’s voice had shaken with the word cancer and settled back down, his brother Matt asked if he should still plan to come to Broncos-Raiders that Thursday.
Oh yeah, Singleton replied, perking up. I’m gonna play.
“I was like, ‘OK,’” Matt recounted, bewilderment in his tone.
Ultimately, this hardly surprised his brother. Or his parents. Or anyone who really knew Singleton. There is no real secret to his story. He grew up a boy in Thousand Oaks, California, who only ever wanted to play football. There was a dream, and never really an alternative. He’s never let go of that.
“He’s a very smart person,” Matt cracked. “But he understood football a lot better than he understood school.”
Singleton was a 5-foot-10, 180-pound linebacker in his junior season of high school ball, and suddenly shot up to 6-foot-3 entering his senior year. High school coach Mike Leibin would talk up Singleton to any collegiate coach who came through this office — with the caveat they couldn’t watch his junior-year film. Because they’d see a 5-foot-10 kid.
That kid ended up with one collegiate offer out of Thousand Oaks, and so Singleton went off to FCS program Montana State . He went undrafted after a standout four-year career, and so he went off to play in the Canadian Football League. In between came a year living at his parents’ home in Thousand Oaks, an endless cycle of working out and calls to try out and hopeful flights across the country and forlorn flights back home.
Mother Kim would putter up to the airport to pick him up after most every failed tryout. There were 16 of them, she estimated. He was cut by the Seahawks twice in the span of five months.
“It was awful,” Kim said.
This mattered little. Singleton still smiles remembering what he calls the most fun time in his life: the spring of 2020, when he’d set up a workout circuit in his parents’ garage and invite his buddies to work out. Singleton was grinding to win a linebacker job with the Philadelphia Eagles then, and would enforce what he called “50-calorie sprint” days on stationary bikes.
It was simple enough: spin the pedals as quick as possible until the rider burned 50 calories. Singleton would scribble his friends’ times down on a whiteboard, so they could set personal bests. They all usually ended up staggering out to his front yard to empty their stomachs.
Pure misery, friend Yabu recalled. Singleton would call it something different.
“I feel like I don’t work a day in my life,” Singleton grinned. “All those little, cliche sayings — I do feel that, and I believe that. I tell people all the time, ‘I play football so I can train in the offseason.’”
He won a starting linebacker job in Philadelphia that same fall, and has become the primary communicator in this Broncos defense since arriving in Denver four years ago. He has enjoyed every bit of it, through losing seasons and winning. It would be crazy not to, Singleton said.
The linebacker gained another dosage of appreciation for his situation, too, in the week of his diagnosis. Two days after an ultrasound identified the tumor, the Broncos’ medical staff scheduled a CT scan for Singleton. Those results, he reflected, revealed that the tumor was isolated and hadn’t spread. If he hadn’t been able to get that scan until after surgery — the normal process of events for most — he would’ve had to undergo a more invasive surgery that would’ve knocked him out through at least the end of the regular season, Singleton explained.
So why, deep down, did he want to play in that Thursday night game against Las Vegas?
“Because he could,” Kim said.
…
Singleton’s brother Matt flew down with family ahead of that Nov. 6 matchup with Las Vegas, helping take care of Singleton’s nine-month old daughter Tallyn amid a week of practice and conversations with doctors. And Matt suggested to his brother that he had to whip out a celebration, if he came up with a big tackle against Las Vegas. He did not provide any specifics.
Midway through the first quarter that Thursday night, Singleton stuffed Raiders running back Ashton Jeanty for no gain. The linebacker pounded his chest a few times, directly on the “C” on his jersey. Then Singleton turned and stared directly at Matt and his family on the sidelines, put his hand underneath his nether regions, and hopped back and forth.
His family broke down laughing. The public only realized the significance of Singleton’s testicle-themed celebration in the coming days, after he revealed his diagnosis.
“Everyone does it,” Singleton smiled. “Big nuts, whatever. It’s funny. And so I was like, ‘Oh, if I get a big hit or whatever, a turnover, whatever this week, I’m going to do it.”
Singleton’s sheer positivity in delivering life-altering news — actually smiling when he told Vance Joseph, the Broncos’ defensive coordinator recalled — has floored many. One of Singleton’s favorite hoodies is a Barstool Sports product that reads “Positive Vibes Only.” He pulls his hair back in a manbun and wears a grin around the facility in Dove Valley, and has generally carried the demeanor of a lottery winner rather than a cancer patient the last few weeks.
“He’s just relentlessly optimistic,” said Erin Baker, a movement specialist who’s worked with Singleton since the spring of 2024.
This, Singleton attests, comes from older sister Ashley, who was born with Down syndrome and has competed as a Special Olympics athlete for much of her life. Singleton has been an outspoken advocate for the Special Olympics and for athletes with mental disabilities, as his sister has been one of the most outspoken supporters of his career. Ashley keeps count of her brother’s tackles. And Kim believes her son counts his blessings in life because of his sister.
“If she can wake up every day and smile, and just enjoy the day?” Singleton said. “Like, I should be able to do the same.”
Kim and Ashley watched from their television in Thousand Oaks that Thursday night, because Kim was in no mental state to go in person to watch her son play a football game with an active tumor. And Singleton’s family decided to keep news of his diagnosis from his sister until he’d undergone surgery. Everyone Ashley knew who had cancer, Kim reflected, was dead.
They watched Singleton rack up nine tackles in a win over Las Vegas . Two days later, after doctors successfully removed the tumor, Singleton and his family sat down and told Ashley what happened.
She didn’t understand at first, Kim remembered. Then it clicked. Ashley was devastated. And chastised her family for not telling her earlier.
Eventually, though, as she understood her brother would be okay, Ashley calmed.
“It’s like, ‘Okay, alright, you’re fine, good,’” Kim recalled Ashley saying. “‘When are you going to get more tackles?’”
…
On Wednesday, an excited Ashley Singleton pulled up the Broncos’ injury report from practice and read it aloud to her mother.
Alex Singleton. ILB. Illness. Full participant.
Kim knew, of course, that her son was healthy, because he’d sent her a video of him sprinting inside the Broncos’ facility a week earlier.
I’m cleared, Singleton texted his mom.
The linebacker was already one of the Broncos’ elder statesmen, with a lifetime of stories he isn’t shy to share. He is at the center of a defense made up of men that have rarely had it easy in this game. Defensive end John Franklin-Myers didn’t win a game of high school football, and played college ball at the FCS level. Defensive tackle D.J. Jones came up from famed “Last Chance U” junior college East Mississippi Community College . Nickelback Ja’Quan McMillian went undrafted out of East Carolina University . Chips stack on the shoulders of this defense, and Singleton is its captain.
“His example is what carries us,” Joseph said, “and leads us.”
The last few weeks have only earned Singleton more respect, in a locker room that’s already seen him pull off the improbable. In 2024, he hurt his knee early against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, played the rest of the game, and racked up 10 tackles. It was only after the game when he’d learned he’d torn his ACL.
After season-ending surgery, Singleton has returned in 2025 to play some of the best football of his career, with 89 tackles in 10 games.
“Put another tally to his name, just how much of a fighter he is,” second-year linebacker Levelle Bailey told The Post. “Not only as a player, but as a person.”
Defensive tackle Malcolm Roach said he told Singleton he was “like Jon Snow,” the “Game of Thrones” character who came back to life after being stabbed to death.
“Like, he played with an ACL, and then he played with cancer,” Roach said this week. “Like, it’s crazy. I told him, they gon’ write a book on it, and it’s just gonna be a bestseller.”
Pathology from his surgery came back clean, and all testing has been positive, as Singleton’s prepared to return against the Commanders this weekend. In the meantime, he’s embracing advocacy for men’s health in a uniquely Singleton way.
“Like, it’s funny to make jokes about, like, dick and balls, if you can write that,” Singleton told The Post. Grinning.
“But it is. It’s funny. And so, it’s easy to stand somewhere and talk about it.”
On Friday morning, he caught the son of Beau Lowery — the Broncos’ vice president of player health — in the weight room.
“Don’t be afraid to go to the doctor!” Singleton told him. Somewhat joking. Mostly not.
Singleton is perfectly aware that if he hadn’t gone to a doctor after failing that drug test, his life could look utterly different. He specifically chose to put out a public statement to reveal his diagnosis.
“I think a lot of people look at our sport as a masculine sport, and so to be able to be a guy that’s like, ‘Hey, I went to the doctor and found this out and got it done, you can too, it’s not the worst thing in the world,’ I think makes a lot of people feel okay to do that,” Singleton said. “And from what my Instagram and Twitter messages have told me, it’s worked for a lot of people.”
He has emerged from a very real scare feeling lucky as ever, a man who’s only ever felt lucky to walk down a path that hasn’t been easy. Over the years, Singleton’s old high school coach Leiben made it out to Denver to watch a few games from the sideline. Singleton has come over pregame, grabbed Leiben, and delivered a flurry of self-motivational chatter.
Leiben won’t repeat the exact words, he chuckled. But the sentiment is the same.
“That he’s indestructible,” Leiben said.
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