On the night before Easter 2015, a shadowy figure crisscrossed a Houston suburb, carrying a flashlight, a ladder and a basket full of plastic eggs.

It wasn’t the Easter Bunny. It was NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, whom the Houston Texans had recently traded to the New York Jets. Fitzpatrick was completing the most important step of the gigantic Easter egg hunt he and his wife, Liza Barber, had planned for children in their neighborhood.

When...