I told him some things that I can’t even talk to my own family about, because it’s just too much. I told him how I was feeling, and we went pretty deep. I started talking to a therapist almost immediately. I’m as mentally strong as they come, believe me. Since I was eight years old, I was on my own. But I just felt like some people in the building were supportive, and other people were looking at me like, “You good, bro.” I know they got a lot of pressure to win, and they got their own job to do. That’s when I finally broke down and told the team that I needed help.Īnd this is where it gets tricky for me, because I don’t want to badmouth anybody from the franchise. We were supposed to go play in London, and I just couldn’t leave them. But all I wanted was to be at home with my wife and daughter. I’m trying to take people’s souls, every day. I’m walking in there to compete like hell. I mean, for three years, all those guys in that locker room know how I’m coming. I would come into the facility and I just wasn’t myself. It’s like I’m getting hit in my chest, 24/7, by somebody I can’t see. It felt like I was getting attacked - but almost by something invisible. I didn’t have the words for what I was experiencing yet. That’s when I really just started to feel the weight of the world on my chest. She couldn’t stand me being out of the house. If you have a child, that’s your worst nightmare. But then we watched the security footage, and we saw about five or six guys come in with guns drawn. They took a bunch of jewelry and stuff, but nothing we couldn’t replace. At first, me and my wife were pretty calm about everything. Our house had been robbed while we were at the game. I suited up Week 1 a shell of myself, but I played.Īfter the game, I drove home with my wife and daughter, and I saw the whole neighborhood lined up right outside our house. My plan was to get through another season with pills and shots. I knew something was off, but I didn’t want to let anybody down. I can’t even do anything but lie around in a dark room. She’s two years old, and she’s running straight up to me, “Dadddyyyyyy!!!” She’s wanting to bake some cookies in the Fisher-Price oven, you know? But I’m coming home broken. So you get trapped in this cycle where it’s like, “If you take this pill, you can run.”Īfter practice, once that painkiller wears off, you still have to come home and be a husband and a father. I still couldn’t plant without painkillers. I got the surgery and rushed back, but I showed up to camp just mentally drained. I was under so much pressure to be out there. It was only two months before the start of the season, and now you’re telling me it’s broken? You gotta remember - I was the No. Within the first hour, the doctor said, “Your foot is definitely broken.”
When the new trainer finally came in, he sent me to a specialist in Green Bay. We finished 4–12, and then the whole staff got fired.
I know what we get paid for, you feel me? If it’s really just a bruise, I’m gonna be out there. I took Toradol shots every Sunday, and I finished the season. When I got the MRI, though, the trainer told me it was just a bone bruise. Week 8, we were playing Carolina and I remember looking at Julio and I just knew. But then, my third year, the wheels came off. Just gritted through it with painkillers. Actually, I had played through bone spurs my first two years. Remember that 1,300-yard season? Nine touchdowns? I was killing it on one foot, for real. Hardly anybody knows this, but I played most of the 2020 season with a broken foot. Honestly, I couldn’t even get up off the chair in my living room. Football was the only thing that ever gave my life meaning, and I couldn’t even find any joy in that at the time. This is hard for a dude like me to talk about, but I want to be real with everybody. All I want is for people to understand that, when I made those bets, there was a hell of a lot more going on with me. And I can shoulder all of that, no problem. In 2021, I made the worst mistake of my life by gambling on football. To the football world, and everyone who loves this game:
0 kommentar(er)
