San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Pushed by players, league works to embrace mental health help
Defensive lineman Solomon Thomas remembers sitting at lunch one day during his rookie season with the 49ers in 2016 and pointing out the team therapist at an adjacent table. “Oh no, we can’t go over there,” he said a teammate told him. “Otherwise, we look like we’re crazy.”
Thomas was surprised. He had played college football at Stanford, where he considered the team very attentive to mental health. But as he experienced his first NFL practices and orientation meetings, he noticed that the issue was not so big a focus.
Players might have talked about stressful situations, he said, but there was little mention of sadness, anxiety or general check-ins about well-being, and players stayed quiet while trying to succeed in a profession of constant evaluation.
“It’s like you are being judged for everything you do,” said Thomas, now with the Las Vegas Raiders. “Guys are cut, traded and signed every day. As much as you want to say it should be different, it’s hard, because you might open up to someone one day, and they’re gone the next day.”
Thomas’ rookie impression was hardly unique. While some teams had introduced some type of mental health support system, back then there wasn’t a leaguewide protocol to help players deal with the NFL’s next-man-up, just-playthrough-it ethos.
In May 2019, the NFL Players Association and the NFL agreed to form the Comprehensive Mental Health and Wellness Committee, a panel of doctors appointed by both groups, which mandated that each team employ a behavioral health team clinician.
Seven teams now have a full-time clinician, and the rest employ someone part-time. As a result, more players have taken advantage, and have been more open about doing so.
Their outspokenness is part of a larger trend among athletes who are publicly emphasizing that mental health should be prioritized alongside physical care. In October, with the Atlanta Falcons’ support, receiver Calvin Ridley stepped away from football to “focus on my mental well-being.”
That week, Philadelphia Eagles tackle Lane Johnson disclosed that he had been absent from the team for three games while managing anxiety and depression.
On Friday, the Minnesota Vikings said defensive end Everson Griffen will be absent indefinitely after a mental health episode in his home on Wednesday that ended peacefully after a stand-off with mental health professionals.
Gymnast Simone Biles, tennis’ Naomi Osaka and other major stars have withdrawn from competitions after saying they didn’t feel mentally fit to compete. NBA players including Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have talked openly about mental health challenges.
But NFL players say the shift within football had been more gradual. The league’s machismo culture is entrenched enough that some players, including Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, argue that pro football lags other sports when it comes to fostering mental health practices and encouraging players to seek that support.
“I think the NFL is a dinosaur in that respect,” Rodgers said. “There’s a stigma around talking about feelings, struggles and dealing with stress. There’s a lot of vernacular that seems to tag it as weakness.”
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott learned the value of talking to a mental health professional while he was in college. During Mississippi State’s spring semester of 2014, the year after his mother, Peggy, died of cancer, the university recommended that Prescott see a psychologist.
As Prescott sat in the psychologist’s office, he realized that it helped to open up.
Prescott said that he is in regular contact with the Cowboys’ mental health and wellness consultant, Yolanda Bruce Brooks, as well as the team’s mental conditioning coach, Chad Bohling, and that he realized that talking to a therapist on both good days and bad helped him be consistent on and off the field.
His brother Jace died by suicide in April 2020, and Prescott has said he dealt with anxiety and depression that year, in part brought on by a contract negotiation and his recovery from season-ending ankle operations. He has publicly stressed the importance of mental health, writing “Ask4Help” on his game-day wristband to promote suicide prevention and starting FaithFightFinish, a foundation that, among other things, encourages prioritizing mental health.
Thomas’ sister, Ella, died by suicide in 2018, and he was depressed for months afterward.
In his second game of the 2020 season, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Recognizing the onset of depression, Thomas began talking to a therapist and established his own mental wellness routines.
In 2020, he and his family started a nonprofit organization called The Defensive Line, which is aimed at suicide prevention, particularly among young people of color.
He is hopeful about the cultural shift he said he had witnessed within the NFL. “I’ve seen how sensitive locker rooms can be now, in a loving and compassionate way — guys being such good teammates and being there for each other’s families,” Thomas said. “It’s definitely more open now.”