INDIANAPOLIS — It took Darius Leonard two months to get over the loss in Jacksonville, and even longer to find himself again.
The Colts’ All-Pro linebacker wasn’t feeling well when last season ended. Not physically, with an ankle that surgery just couldn’t heal; not mentally, with the loss of a cousin and the illness that took hold of his father and his sister and tugged at his heart.
For weeks last winter, his family needed him because his job kept him hundreds of miles away. But that job was such a public flop that by the time she had time on his side, she didn’t know what to do with it. Shame awaited him at home, with questions about what happened in that field in Jacksonville.
“I ask everyone how they are. Sometimes it’s okay to ask me how I’m doing,” Leonard said. “Don’t ask me just to ask me. Ask me to really have a conversation with me and understand that I am human too. I have problems. I went through things that a lot of people are going through.”
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It’s ironic that America’s most popular sports star, a man with 300,000 Twitter and Instagram followers and star of HBO’s weekly series “Hard Knocks,” could feel so misunderstood. Football begins as the vehicle of success. Then it becomes the façade, with each sack dance and Instagram filter pulling back more of the curtains until he is left in the dark.
Leonard started slipping around Christmas time. He was the NFL leader in turnovers, proudly declaring his case for Defensive Player of the Year with a team in playoff contention. But the ankle kept him sore, with a bye week too late to heal and mounting pressure to be on every play. Then he contracted COVID-19 and the Colts played a game without him. He wasn’t with them or his family, he was just isolated in Indianapolis, hoping that everyone would be fine without him.
The Colts did well that night, beating the Cardinals on national television to go 9-6. Everyone got their Christmases the next day, and euphoria ran through the team.
“When we went to the Cardinals and we won that game on Christmas night, I felt like that was our Super Bowl. A lot of people saw it as our Super Bowl and we felt invincible,” Leonard said.
“Last year, I wasn’t in the right headspace to hold everyone accountable. I felt like I let the team down in that regard the last two games.”
The last two weeks were the perfect storm of physical and emotional pain. The ankle was burned, the performance slipped and the critics stung inside.
The player they call Maniac, the trash-talking ball of energy that creates turnovers with a hard-hitting punch, was suddenly the one who needed inspiration. standard to maintain, a facade, built solely through the lens of a game.
“In this profession, sometimes you feel like you don’t have a say in your personal life just because it’s all football, all football,” Leonard said. “When you feel like you have to keep a shadow over your personal life because of your football life, it consumes you.
“I fell in love with the game. I didn’t enjoy it anymore.”
This is the story of a young man who rose higher and faster than anyone knew was possible, from starting one minute for South Carolina State against Bethune-Cookman to racking up 15 tackles in his second game of the season. NFL and have a sea of microphones and cameras. in his face to answer a basic question: Who is this child?
But the questions weren’t about the boy, not really, because under the shoulder pads and the helmet with the horseshoe is another football player with bulging muscles and sharp athleticism. He is a gladiator. How was he going to fail if he was a star when he arrived?
For Leonard, and so many others, the past two years have been about adjusting to a loss of control. A pandemic forced people to consider life without the parts that make them feel good, from sports to the comfort of the people around them. What remains at that time is what will have to continue.
That’s where Leonard found himself at the moment the seconds ticked down on the Jacksonville clock. Crouched on one knee, the tears flowed, and only he knew how much bigger they were than any football game. Who was he now to the family members he had to stay away from for this game, to the children he wanted to cheer up?
After that game, he asked his teammates to stop the humiliation of 26-11 to “burn through our hearts”. He implored them to do whatever it takes this offseason to rediscover the best versions of themselves. For Leonard, that meant fixing the person inside.
So he didn’t have that ankle surgery again. He didn’t think about football for two months. The Colts were hiring new coaches and struggling to locate him. That part of himself could wait.
Darius, the football player, was still in a great place, he was 26 years old, a three-time All-Pro on a five-year contract and making almost $20 million a year. Darius, the human being, needed his attention.
He sat down and wrote a letter. She then read it aloud on May 1, the first day of Mental Health Awareness Month.
“Dear Mental Health, First of all I would like to say that you are a tough guy to fight,” she wrote. “But every day, I keep fighting. Every day, I keep going to war. And every day, I keep winning this battle against you.”
He noted where the battle began: with a mother working two jobs to support nine children, with two brothers in prison and another murdered. Those odds made getting to the NFL incredible.
Once he did, a game became a measuring stick for self-esteem. When he finally experienced failure in her, he had to reconsider the health of such a proposition, as well as the purpose.
The game, with all its ups and downs, is a vehicle to all the places her mother and siblings couldn’t go.
Now, Leonard finds joy in the journey, in all its twists and turns.
It’s letting down the curtain.
“Mental health,” he wrote in the letter, “You will not beat me.”
Contact Colts pundit Nate Atkins at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.
