9 Football Players Who’ve Spoken Up About Mental Health

In January 2023, NFL players, personnel, and fans around the country — including the Los Angeles Rams linebacker Bobby Wagner — watched in shock and horror when the Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after tackling a Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver. Medical staff intervened quickly to save Hamlin’s life.

When he addressed the media in the days afterward, Wagner urged players to take time to process their feelings about what happened.

“You have traumatic experiences, you have to find a way to deal with them,” Wagner told reporters. “The best way to deal with them is expressing those feelings. The thing that we’re taught to do in this sport because it’s such a quote-unquote ‘manly sport’ is to hide your feelings, hide your emotions, and any expression of these feelings and emotions makes you less of a man. I think that’s a myth. Talking about your feelings, talking about things that affect you mentally, physically are more manly than anything because it takes a lot of courage to talk about those things.”

“[The hit on Lockette] wasn’t as extreme, but if the Seahawks didn’t do everything that they did, one wrong move, one wrong thing — Ricardo wouldn’t be even here today,” Wagner told reporters.

One of the most important takeaways from that situation, Wagner said, is for people to talk about the emotional impact it had on them. “Just try to let people talk and have their feelings and respect people’s feelings,” said Wagner.

“It’s crazy. All throughout the offseason, this quarantine and this offseason, I started experiencing emotions I’ve never felt before — anxiety for the main one,” Prescott revealed in an interview for In Depth With Graham Bensinger that aired in September 2020. “And then honestly a couple of days before my brother passed, I would say I started experiencing depression. I didn’t know necessarily what I was going through, to say the least, and hadn’t been sleeping at all.”

After his brother died, Prescott realized that he needed to reach out to those around him for support. “Our adversity, our struggles, what we go through is always going to be too much for ourselves, and maybe too much for even one or two people, but never, never too much for a community. Or never too much for the people in the family that you love. So, we have to share those things,” he told Bensinger.

For National Suicide Prevention Month in September 2021, Prescott launched the “Ask 4 Help” campaign to “prioritize mental health and stop the epidemic of suicide,” according to an Instagram post.

“I didn’t know, really didn’t take into consideration what depression really was. I always just brushed it off. That’s how I grew up. I just brushed off my feelings, and it got the best of me,” Brown explained at a press conference posted online on November 18, 2021, a few days after his Instagram video went live.

At the same press conference, he tackled the fear men face when being open about mental illness. “Us as men, to be honest, our feelings aren’t too much cared about,” Brown said.

Brown credits therapy with improving his mental health and “still [goes] to this day.” His advice to others in emotional pain? ”Especially men, get things off your chest. It’s okay to talk to someone. Seek help. You’re not too tough to talk to someone,” he said at the press conference.

The retired NFL linebacker Carl Nassib, who played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Las Vegas Raiders, and the Cleveland Browns, made history when he became the first openly gay NFL player. He came out in a June 2021 Instagram post.

In a press conference, Nassib described speaking publicly about his sexual orientation as a big relief. "It was definitely stressful growing up and being in the closet and doing all that," he said. "It has been a great weight off my shoulders. I've been out to my family and friends for years at this point, so it has been good to not have to lie when I come to work every day. It has been good."

As part of his announcement, Nassib revealed he was donating $100,000 to The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ+ youth. And the following year, during Pride Month in 2022, Nassib again revealed he was donating another $100,000 to the organization. The reason, he explained, was that “out there right now there's a kid saying that I'd rather be dead than be gay," People reported.

In October 2021, wide receiver Calvin Ridley, who now plays for the Tennessee Titans, announced he was stepping away from football to focus on his mental health. “This will help me be the best version of myself now and in the future,” Ridley posted on X (formerly Twitter). The announcement came after five games of the season — he played for the Atlanta Falcons at the time.

Ridley was then suspended for the 2022 NFL season for betting on games during the 2021 season amid his mental health break. He was reinstated for the 2023 season and played for the Jacksonville Jaguars. “The suspension gave me time to rest, get physically better, and mentally stronger,” Ridley told ESPN. “After that year, I was ready to come back.”

Philadelphia Eagles offensive tackle Lane Johnson delved into his struggles with anxiety and depression in an interview with the sports reporter Jay Glazer that aired in October 2021. “I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in college,” Johnson revealed. “The monster kept building and building and building.”

In the thick of his mental health struggles, Johnson lost touch with his sense of self, he told Glazer. His mounting anxiety had a debilitating effect on his physical health, too, causing symptoms including nausea, vomiting, and tremors in his hands.

Johnson reached a breaking point in the fall of 2021 and decided to briefly step away from football to address his mental health issues. “Depression and anxiety are things I’ve dealt with for a long time and kept hidden from my friends and family,” Johnson disclosed in an X (formerly Twitter) post on October 18, 2021, upon his return to football.

It took Johnson a while to address his life-disrupting emotional pain because he said he felt shame about it. “In this league, the NFL, where it’s a gladiator-sized sport, it’s something that is not often talked about, but is often felt throughout the league,” Johnson told Glazer.

With treatment, Johnson said, he was able to “get back into a good mindset again.” His advice to others: “Find your closest friend, family member. Tell a loved one. And if it’s to a degree of seriousness, there’s always help around the corner.”

“I will embrace it, and I will be an advocate for mental health,” Griffen wrote. “I been running from it for a long time. I’m not ashamed of it anymore.”

Griffen’s announcement came shortly after a November 2021 incident during which he called 911, believing there were intruders in his home. He also told police he had fired a gun but no one was hurt, according to a statement by the NFL. Once police determined there were no intruders, they — along with Minnesota Vikings team psychologists — spent hours getting Griffen to agree to be transported via ambulance to a local healthcare facility, NBC News reported.

On Instagram, Griffen divulged that his mental pain began spiraling after his mother’s death. “Went into a dark place,” Griffen wrote. Going forward, Griffen added, he would follow the advice of medical experts and his wife to stay well.

The former wide receiver D.J. Chark, who played for the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars, informed fans about his lifelong mental health struggles in a video for the NFL’s Mental Health and Wellness Series. Growing up, he’d had a hard time managing life, school, football, and relationships. But it wasn’t until he reached college that he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.

“There were times where I would be fearful about things that I had no control over,” Chark said.

Spending time with family and loved ones also helps keep Chark in a good state of mind, he said. What he wants others dealing with psychological distress to know is that they’re not alone. “Just know everyone in this world deals with something, and it’s okay to speak and ask for help because once you get help, the feeling of being in control of your life — no one can take that from you,” Chark said.

After high school, Hurst decided to stick solely with baseball. But once he took his pitching prowess to the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system, Hurst developed anxiety and depression that had a debilitating effect on his performance on the baseball field.

“I developed depression where I would stay in my spring training dorm room in Florida and sit in the dark all day because I didn’t want to come around people,” Hurst said. “I couldn’t really explain what was happening to me.”

For the next three years, Hurst tried to fix his feelings with drugs and alcohol, he said. He also walked away from baseball and joined the University of South Carolina’s football team in the hope it would ease the pain of leaving baseball, he explained in a YouTube video posted by the Atlanta Falcons in December 2020.

But his emotional pain didn’t go away and in January 2016, Hurst attempted suicide, he told the NFLPA.

After Hurst survived, with support from his family, he was able to give up drugs and alcohol and busy himself with a new goal — to reach the NFL, according to the Atlanta Falcons’s YouTube video.

In April 2018, that dream came true. Hurst was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens. Shortly afterward, he and his family started the Hayden Hurst Family Foundation, a nonprofit geared toward the health, wellness, and education of youth, military, and others in need.

Hurst hopes his story can help keep hope alive for those struggling with a mental health condition. “Keep going,” he advised in another YouTube video, posted by the NFL in September 2021. “Because as dark as it gets, I promise you there’s somebody out there in your life that loves you and that will support you, and that’ll help you get out of that situation.”