Football

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Antonio Brown Settles Suit With Sexual Assault Accuser

      by

      A statement released by lawyers for Brown and his accuser said, “Having reflected on their relationship, both feel that the time has come to move on.”Antonio Brown, one of the N.F.L.’s most prominent wide receivers, said through a representative on Wednesday that he had settled a lawsuit brought by his former trainer who had accused him of rape and sexual assault. The statement from Brown’s representative was also released by the accuser’s legal team.The resolution appeared to have ended the bitter and often public dispute between Brown and Britney Taylor, who filed a civil claim in September 2019 that accused the N.F.L. star of sexually assaulting her twice in June 2017 and raping her in May 2018. Taylor publicly identified herself as Brown’s accuser in a statement issued when the lawsuit was filed.She said that she had met Brown when they were students at Central Michigan and that they had stayed in contact after Brown reached the N.F.L., as a sixth-round draft pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2010. Brown had hired Taylor as a personal trainer and, according to the statement on Wednesday, they were business partners for a time.Brown has repeatedly denied the allegations, which the statement did not address.The settlement announced on Wednesday brought an abrupt end to a dispute that led to dueling lawsuits and caustic comments between Brown and Taylor.“Having reflected on their relationship, both feel that the time has come to move on,” Alana Burstyn, Brown’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Antonio is grateful for Britney’s excellent training assistance. They are pleased that Antonio is doing so well with the Bucs and has a ring. Their dispute is resolved and they wish each other great continued success.”Asked what prompted the settlement, Burstyn said that Brown and Taylor “got tired of fighting.”Burstyn and Taylor’s lawyer, David Haas, did not provide financial details of the settlement.The N.F.L.’s investigation into the case is continuing, a spokesman said.Brown, 32, was also accused of sexual misconduct by another woman in a Sports Illustrated report published a week after Taylor’s case became public. Brown also denied that accusation.The accusations surfaced soon after Brown joined the New England Patriots. The team released him on Sept. 20, 2019, after he sent threatening texts to his accuser in the second case. He sat out the remainder of the 2019 season, and during that hiatus was charged with burglary and battery in a January 2020 dispute with a moving company employee. Brown pleaded no contest in that case and received two years’ probation.When Taylor filed her case against Brown, he countersued, claiming she had defamed him and interfered with his N.F.L. contracts and endorsements.As his legal troubles piled up and he made increasingly strident pronouncements on social media, Brown went from a highly coveted receiver to an outcast on the verge of being bounced from the N.F.L. His future on the football field was clouded further when the league, as it continued to investigate Taylor’s claims, suspended him for the first half of the 2020 season because of the threatening texts and his role in the dispute with the moving company employee.The Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed Brown last October, with Taylor’s lawsuit and the N.F.L.’s investigation still pending. Before his first game for the Buccaneers, Brown said he was grateful for another chance to get back on the field and thanked the team’s quarterback, Tom Brady, who let Brown stay in his Tampa-area mansion. Brown said he hoped to prove himself to his new team and “win them over in my actions, how I move forward and how I handle my business.”Brown played in 11 games at the end of the 2020 N.F.L. season and during the playoffs, helping the Buccaneers win the Super Bowl in February.Even before Taylor’s suit was filed, Brown had earned a reputation in the N.F.L. as a fiery personality. He scuffled with teammates and was fined for touchdown celebrations during his nine seasons with the Steelers, and then had short stints with the Oakland Raiders and the Patriots in 2019.As a Raider, he fought with the team’s general manager, argued over which helmet he could use and sat out most of the 2019 training camp because of a severe case of frostbite on his feet that developed when he used a cryotherapy chamber. He criticized the Raiders and the Patriots after he was released and threatened to retire on Instagram, continuing to do so in elaborately produced videos even as he publicly disputed Taylor’s allegations. Brown’s tempestuousness ultimately prompted his longtime agent, Drew Rosenhaus, to walk away from a client who earned $77.5 million during his career.Brown earned $1.67 million on a one-year contract last season, as well as a playoff bonus. He has not re-signed with the Buccaneers and is an unrestricted free agent.Buccaneers General Manager Jason Licht said Wednesday that he has been negotiating to re-sign Brown for the 2021 season and that the status of the Taylor lawsuit had not affected the talks.“So, to have this resolved, it certainly helps,” Licht said. “But it wasn’t, you know, that isn’t necessarily the deciding factor of whether or not we’re going to continue to talk.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Deshaun Watson Calls Civil Suits ‘Simply Not True’ in Legal Filing

      by

      Lawyers for the Houston Texans quarterback on Monday rebutted the assault allegations filed against him by 22 women.Deshaun Watson, the star Houston Texans quarterback, on Monday officially rebutted the accusations of the 22 women who claim he engaged in sexual misconduct against them during massage therapy sessions, accusing those women in a civil court filing of fabricating their stories for money.According to the filing, which addresses all 22 claims against Watson, “These lawsuits are replete with mischaracterizations of Mr. Watson’s conduct. These range from being misleading, to fraudulent, to slanderous.”Watson received the names of all his accusers only last week, after the suits were filed against him anonymously beginning in mid-March. Two of his accusers voluntarily identified themselves in April and judges that month ruled that the women bringing suits against Watson must identify themselves, according to state law.Since then, Watson and his lawyers have scrambled to investigate the accusers and their claims, and said in the court filing that they discovered evidence that “numerous allegations in this onslaught of cases are simply not true or accurate.” In rebutting some allegations, the filing said that eight of the women who have brought suit bragged about massaging Watson and seven “willingly worked or offered to work” with Watson after the alleged misconduct was said to have occurred, including one woman who showed up at his house to give him another massage even before he had booked an appointment with her.The filing also claimed that some plaintiffs told others that they wanted to “get money out of” Watson, that some of the accusers lied about being traumatized by the conduct Watson’s accused of and that some scrubbed or deleted their social media accounts, disposing of evidence Watson would need to mount a proper defense.“I truly believe that this is a cash grab against a wealthy athlete,” Rusty Hardin, Watson’s lead lawyer, said Monday in a telephone interview. “If you’re asking, ‘Are you saying that all 22 are lying about whether he committed sexual misconduct?’ I sure am.”Hardin said in an April 9 news conference that there were “some consensual encounters,” between Watson and his accusers.Tony Buzbee, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said Monday in a statement that Watson’s response to the accusations did nothing to help his cause. He called Watson’s “weak and vague” allegations against his accusers in Monday’s court filing “demonstrably false.”“As fully anticipated and despite his lawyer’s previous statements, Deshaun Watson’s only defense is to call these brave women liars,” Buzbee said.Monday’s court filing is just one step in a long legal process that could take months, if not more than a year, to conclude. The lawsuits have accused Watson, 25, of engaging in a pattern of lewd behavior with women he hired via social media platforms to give him massages this year and last. The claims accuse him of exposing himself during massages, moving his body in a way to make his female massage therapists touch his penis, or coercing the women to touch him in a sexual manner. In two of the cases, women say he forced them to perform oral sex.At least one other massage therapist who had not brought suit against Watson publicly accused him of similar behavior, though she did not hire Buzbee to represent her. She told Sports Illustrated in late March that she was considering legal action.The court document filed Monday said one of the two plaintiffs who accused Watson of forced sexual acts “sought to blackmail” Watson before suing him.“She asked him to pay her $30,000 for ‘indefinite silence’ because her encounter would be ‘embarrassing’ if revealed,” the court filing said of one accuser.That plaintiff also asked Watson’s marketing manager for a copy of the nondisclosure agreement that she and Watson had signed “because she did not want people in her industry to know she had provided oral sex to her massage client,” the filing said, adding that Watson has a recording of a phone call of a conversation in which she discusses her concerns.Hardin, in Monday’s court document, requested a jury trial. He later explained that a trial might be the only way the public can weigh all the evidence and rightly decide what happened between Watson and the women he hired to massage him.“I’m totally comfortable that if there is a jury trial one day, a jury will find every one of these accusations false,” Hardin said. “But if we have to resort to the court, it’s a long way away.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Football

      After Opting Out, Micah Parsons Prepares for the 2021 NFL Draft

      by

      Players and scouts adjusted their methods to account for the absence of a traditional combine in Indianapolis.Micah Parsons relaxed his 246-pound body as he decelerated from running the 40-yard dash in front of N.F.L. scouts at a predraft showcase hosted by his college, Penn State, in late March.When Parsons, a linebacker projected to be one of the first defensive players selected in the 2021 N.F.L. draft, learned he clocked in at 4.39 seconds — a time comparable to receivers and running backs — he pounded his chest and pointed upward.“It’s like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” he said afterward. “Now I can finally relax.”Parsons, 21, is one of over 100 Division I players who opted out of the 2020 college football season because of coronavirus concerns, leaving N.F.L. talent evaluators precious little current information to go on in a year further hindered by the absence of a traditional scouting combine. Parsons knew that his data offered his strongest argument for why a franchise should still draft him a year after his last in-game action.Prospects and N.F.L. teams are adapting to having to rely on university-hosted workouts, teleconference interviews and video analysis, data that isn’t standardized and, in most cases, wasn’t collected in person, to make their draft cases.College-hosted workouts, or pro days, took on added importance after the N.F.L. canceled the in-person workout portion of its draft scouting combine, typically hosted in Indianapolis every spring. That decision meant players would conduct their 40-yard dashes, bench presses and vertical jumps — among other physical tests that can sway draft slotting drastically — at their college facilities, rather than at a neutral site with standardized measures.Many players who had opted out spent the college football season and beyond prepping specifically for that testing, as many draft eligible players do each spring. Without a college season, they had longer than usual to train. Parsons signed with an agency, Athletes First, and moved to Santa Ana, Calif., in September to train full time and focus on how he would perform in front of scouts in March.Along with some other star players who opted out, such as Louisiana State receiver Ja’Marr Chase and Oregon offensive lineman Penei Sewell, Parsons is among the potential first-round picks who are trying to remind N.F.L. teams of the promise and acumen they haven’t been able to display publicly in over a year.L.S.U. receiver Ja’Marr Chase spent the 2020 season training for the draft. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.38 seconds at the school’s pro day workout in March.Matthew Hinton/FR 170690AP, via Associated PressChase, who in 2019 set Southeastern Conference records with 1,780 receiving yards and 20 touchdowns on the way to a national championship and undefeated season, enrolled with Exos, a company that trains professional athletes, in October and temporarily relocated to Texas. There, his packed days mimicked his collegiate peers’. Starting at 8 a.m., he rotated through positional workouts, speed drills, weight training and physical therapy until around 3:30 p.m., six days a week.“We wanted him to be in a predictable situation,” said Brent Callaway, the company’s director of sport performance. “We wanted to put him in the best situation possible to be able to maximize his strength and change direction with speed whenever the stopwatches came out.”Still, being at his best for L.S.U.’s pro day on March 31 meant timing his gains to the testing. Chase entered Exos at 207 pounds and swelled to 213 pounds, so Callaway pulled him off upper-body lifts ahead of the pro day. Chase weighed 201 pounds by his workout, where he ran a 4.38-second 40-yard dash, faster, by nearly three-tenths of a second, than when he first got to Exos in October. Chase’s 41-inch vertical jump was an increase of seven inches.“I would say I kind of surprised myself,” Chase told reporters.As important as pro days have been to this year’s scouting process, those involved acknowledged that the circumstances were less than ideal. Prospects at one school may work out or test on grass while others run on FieldTurf or another surface, creating an unequal comparison.“I think also we’re trying to compensate for what we see on tape and matching what we see in the player,” said Howie Roseman, the Philadelphia Eagles’ general manager.With pro days scattered across the country and Covid-19 protocols still in effect for team staffs, scouting departments had to choose which workouts, if any, to attend in person. The Los Angeles Rams, who hold six total picks in this year’s draft, none in the first round, sent scouts to about a dozen pro day workouts, J.W. Jordan, the team’s director of draft management, said. Because of coronavirus concerns, the team instructed scouts to travel only by car and prohibited overnight stays, which limited them to regional workouts.“From a scouting perspective, it’s getting less and less necessary for you to go in person,” Jordan said. “Everything you’re trying to accomplish they already give it to you.”Rams staff relied mostly on videos and data of pro days provided to them by the league. To verify prospects’ times that seemed a tad fast, Jordan said their scouts would watch the drill onscreen and clock it themselves.This year’s limits on draft evaluations have also meant changes to the more subjective parts of the scouting process. Players recovering from injuries, like Syracuse’s Andre Cisco, whose knee injury early last season prompted him to opt out, got a chance to reassure N.F.L. teams of their health with in-person examinations in Indianapolis conducted by team doctors in April. While the top 100 athletes, plus 44 others who had an eligible medical history, received an additional physical checkup in Indianapolis, all of the draft prospects were given checkups by their local doctors, either virtually or in over-the-phone visits, which were then shared with teams that couldn’t evaluate those players in person.For players who opted out of playing the 2020 college season, prepping for video interviews with potential employers has been as important as training for drills.Parsons had 109 tackles and was an all-American as a sophomore in 2019, so he trusted that film of his game performance would show him as an elite competitor. But he said he faced questions about why he opted out last August as well as lingering character concerns stemming from a 2018 hazing accusation against him and other Penn State players made by a former teammate. Parsons’s accuser filed a lawsuit against Coach James Franklin and the university, claiming the coach ignored the claims. The university investigated the claims and took them to the Centre County, Pa., district attorney, who declined to bring charges. Penn State has filed for the suit to be dismissed.In his video interviews with teams, Parsons sometimes talked with just one person and at other times with a team’s entire defensive unit. He told evaluators that the health of his 2-year-old son, Malcolm, was his biggest concern in opting out, a response he said some teams easily accepted, while others pushed harder.Parsons said he had been more adamant, though, in addressing concerns over his character, emphasizing that once a team drafts him and interacts with him in person daily those concerns will be resolved.“It made me want to show how much of a hard worker I am and how good of a father I am,” said Parsons, who will attend the draft in Cleveland on April 29 with Malcolm in tow. “I’m going to make sure I never put myself in a situation that is going to dictate my future or put the team in jeopardy.” More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Football

      Months Before Season, N.F.L. and Players Clash Over Pandemic Workouts

      by

      Players on 14 teams announced they would not attend off-season programming because of concerns about the coronavirus. Some may give up financial benefits in the process.Five months before the regular season starts, the N.F.L. and its players are facing their first clash over playing in the pandemic, with players for nearly half of the teams vowing to skip voluntary off-season workouts.Players on 14 of the league’s 32 teams, including the Giants, the Jets and the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said in statements released by the N.F.L. Players Association that they would not participate in the workouts scheduled to begin Monday because of concerns it would be unsafe to gather.Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady was among players who spoke out to the news media and on social media.“We feel very strongly about the game, the short- and long-term health of the players, and there is no game without strong, healthy players,” Brady said in a conference call with The New York Times and the union’s leadership. “People within the league may think, ‘Oh, let’s just get back to business, let’s go back to what we’ve usually done.’ But I think it’s really smart for people and players to think, ‘Is this the best possible way to do things?’ Not, ‘Is this tolerable, but is it the best way to deal with the situation?’”The N.F.L. declined to comment.The union has called for a virtual off-season — essentially players working out on their own away from team complexes — similar to what took place in 2020. Although a nationwide vaccine campaign is underway, the union argues that the danger is still high.Last season, the N.F.L. shifted its off-season program to a virtual format, with the only in-person work happening at training camps in August. This spring, the union asked the league to use a similar format, while allowing for a mandatory minicamp in June. The league declined, citing protocols that it said would allow the workouts to occur safely.That prompted the players to mobilize. J.C. Tretter, a center for the Cleveland Browns and the president of the union, wrote an open letter to members with DeMaurice Smith, the union executive director, encouraging players not to attend.The league and the union signed a new collective bargaining agreement in 2020, stipulating that off-season workouts were optional, which Smith and Tretter’s letter emphasized. Players then organized calls and team meetings to discuss their stances, some choosing to collectively release statements.The nine-week off-season regimen, which the league published on Wednesday, consists of three phases that gradually increase the level of physical interaction. The first phase will be virtual, with chances for players to work out in the team weight rooms. The next phase allows for on-field work at a gradual pace before traditional full-speed, organized team activities and the minicamp conclude the program.Last season, despite virus outbreaks at team facilities and a flurry of schedule changes, the N.F.L. played all 256 regular-season games and a full playoff slate, culminating with the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla.The N.F.L., which had put in place protocols such as regular testing, mask wearing and social distancing at team facilities, reported that 262 players and 463 team personnel tested positive for the coronavirus, yielding a 0.08 percent positive rate. Similar protocols would be in place this off-season.But Smith said those procedures did not apply to the current situation. More players will be in team buildings as they vie for a spot on the active roster, increasing the possibility for transmission. Others may not live in the city where the team is based during the spring and summer — Tretter said he was one of about six players who had entered the Browns’ facility this off-season — and travel will create chances for exposure.Players should not need to jeopardize their health for optional workouts, unlike during the regular season when they would need to be present daily, Smith said.“It’s balancing necessary versus unnecessary risks,” Smith said. “Our guys have to be there from week to week to compete at the level that our fans want them to compete on Sunday. Off-season workouts are something we know that is not needed for a successful season.”Data compiled by the players association show 172 concussions were reported in 2020, a 30 percent drop from the average of 247 concussions reported per year over the last five seasons. Missed-time injuries, defined as injuries sustained that affect a player’s availability during the season, dropped to 2,716, a 23 percent decrease from the five-season average of 3,524.Tretter argued that those statistics show it is in the N.F.L.’s best interest to continue last season’s template, something Brady agreed with.“If we want to make the game better, we have to continue to make better year-round choices as individuals, as teams, as a league.” Brady said.Tretter said that the workouts had “completely lost the definition of voluntary” and that some players might feel forced to go. “There’s an expectation that you’re just supposed to show up and put up with whatever the N.F.L. asks of you,” Tretter said. “Guys are remembering now that they have a choice to attend.”Still, some view the off-season programs as beneficial. More than 200 players could receive financial bonuses for attending off-season workouts, according to OvertheCap.com, a perk included in their contracts. Teams have discretion to qualify what counts as a workout, including whether they want a player to attend physically or virtually.The face-to-face interaction can build camaraderie between new players, and offers those on the fringe of the roster a chance to impress coaches early.Leigh Steinberg, a longtime agent who represents Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, said he sided with the union, but would advise any client to make the best individual decision.“When they call for advice, it’s a personal choice,” Steinberg said. “It’s predicated on their position with the team, how secure they feel in their position and how much work they really need.” More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Football

      C.T.E. May Not Fully Explain Phillip Adams's Shooting Spree

      by

      A finding of C.T.E. can help explain violence and erratic behavior by former football players, but it will not give a clear picture of why Phillip Adams fatally shot seven people, including himself.It has become a grim but familiar pattern: Soon after an N.F.L. player dies, his family must decide whether to donate his brain to be tested for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head.That was the choice facing the relatives of Phillip Adams, who fatally shot six people and then himself in his hometown, Rock Hill, S.C., this month. The family asked that his brain be sent to the C.T.E. Center at Boston University, the leading site for research on the disease, which has been found in hundreds of football players and other athletes but can be diagnosed only after death.If investigators request an expedited diagnosis — and thus far they have not — the researchers at Boston University would still need about four months to produce a definitive answer.While it has become common for N.F.L. families to question whether, and how deeply, C.T.E. affected a player, the sudden and atypical nature of Adams’s violent outburst, plus the pressures in the football-mad community where he lived, figures to cloud the answers that brain testing might provide.“Having the disease can make it more likely for you to be depressed and even kill someone or yourself, but we’ll never know if it was the only or the main cause of this tragic outcome,” said Adam M. Finkel, a quantitative risk assessor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “But the inability to prove that the disease caused any particular outcome should not be used to cast doubt on the broader point, that exposure to repeated head hits is strongly associated with a disease that increases various bad outcomes.”Even if Adams, whose six-year N.F.L. career ended after the 2015 season, is found to have had C.T.E., that may provide only one clue as to why he killed himself and six others. The disease has been linked to a host of symptoms, including aggressive, impulsive behavior and even suicidal thoughts. In many cases, families and friends of players found to have had C.T.E. say that the symptoms were uncharacteristic of the person they knew and that they became more pronounced over time.In this case, Adams’s sister, Lauren Adams, told USA Today that her brother, who was 32, had recently become unusually aggressive.“His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,” she said. “There was unusual behavior.” The disease has also been tied to memory lapses, loss of focus and problems following directions and handling everyday chores. But researchers have found only associations, not causal links, between the disease and the many apparent symptoms.It remains difficult and perhaps impossible to determine a motive after a suicide because so many factors can play a role, including persistent mental distress and drug use. Adams does not appear to have left a note that tried to explain his motives, and such messages are often considered unreliable.While aggression is common in players who are ultimately found to have had C.T.E., rarely have they resorted to murder or suicide. Junior Seau and Dave Duerson are perhaps the best-known football players who killed themselves and were found to have had C.T.E. A far smaller group — including Jovan Belcher, a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker — has killed others before dying by suicide. Still, C.T.E. has grown in prominence as more former players are found to have had the disease, leading to vociferous debate about its role in their deaths.Much is still publicly unknown about what kind of medical treatment Adams may have received, or what relationship Adams had with Dr. Robert Lesslie, one of the six people who were murdered. Lesslie was a prominent local physician who specialized in emergency and occupational medicine.Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., last week that he had learned from law enforcement officials that Dr. Lesslie had seen Adams as a patient. The Sheriff’s Office for York County, S.C., has not confirmed the relationship.In 2017, Adams tried to apply for so-called line-of-duty benefits for injuries he obtained while in the N.F.L., but he had some trouble getting the necessary paperwork from his former teams, according to a disability adviser who worked with Adams. It is unclear how many of Adams’s six former teams provided injury records.A member of the York County Sheriff’s Office guarded the entrance to the home in Rock Hill, S.C., where Dr. Robert Lesslie; his wife, Barbara Lesslie; their two grandchildren; and two other men were fatally shot by Adams before he killed himself.Sam Wolfe/ReutersThose closest to Adams described him as not having come to terms with the end of his N.F.L. career and as someone who had a caretaker role in his family. He was very close to his mother, Phyllis Adams, and had been spending more time in his childhood home with her in recent months, neighbors said. His former agent, Scott Casterline, said Adams had turned down a job offer from him because he did not want to relocate to Texas, where he would be separated from his young son.Adams grew up in Rock Hill, which has given rise to so many N.F.L. players that it is known as Football City U.S.A.Casterline and some of Adams’s friends said Adams held himself to a high standard and never quite got over how his professional career had fizzled because of injuries and other factors.Like some other players, Adams focused so much of his early years honing his craft to get to the N.F.L. that he may have been at a loss over what to do next.“It always starts and ends with expectations,” said Seth Abrutyn, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia who studies the intersection of youth suicide and mental health. “If you are the main caretaker, or at least believe you are, the expectations you face can intensify. They are invisible pressures that exert real force on us.”Adams’s access to guns could have also been a factor in the tragedy. States with higher suicide rates tend to have higher gun ownership rates, research has shown. The average gun ownership rate in South Carolina was 43 percent in 2016, according to a recent Rand Corporation study, well above the average of 32 percent for all states.Police said Adams used two guns in the shootings last week, a .45-caliber and a 9 mm. He was arrested in 2016 in North Carolina and charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor.“What drives the overall suicide rate in the U.S. is gun ownership in the home,” said Matthew Miller, a professor of health sciences and epidemiology at Northeastern University, who has studied the intersection of guns and suicide. “It’s much easier to die when you can reach for a gun than when you can’t.”This and other factors may have fueled Adams’s fatal actions, Abrutyn said. Untangling them to find a clear pattern of behavior may never be possible.“It’s easy to have a monocausal explanation because it allows us to sleep better at night,” he said. “When we look our own lives, we know that that’s not true.” More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Football

      Britt Reid Charged With Felony D.W.I.

      by

      Reid, a former assistant coach for the Kansas City Chiefs and the son of the team’s head coach, crashed into two cars in February, leaving a child seriously injured.Britt Reid, the former outside linebackers coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and the son of the head coach Andy Reid, was charged Monday with one count of driving while intoxicated when he crashed into two cars, leaving a child seriously injured. The collision occurred just days before the Chiefs played in the Super Bowl in February.If Reid, 35, is convicted of the charge, a felony, he faces up to seven years in prison. The legal action could also increase scrutiny on the Chiefs’ workplace. Reid crashed about a mile from the team’s complex at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., and according to the charging document, Reid told police officers responding to the collision that he had just left work before it happened.On Feb. 4 at about 9 p.m., Reid crashed his truck into two cars that were pulled over on a highway entrance ramp. One of the vehicles had stalled, and the driver called a cousin for help.Shortly before the crash Reid was driving 83.9 miles per hours in a 65 m.p.h. zone, according to the charging document. Because the shoulder of the entrance ramp was narrow, the vehicles were sticking a foot or two out into the roadway. Reid told officers that he had been glancing over his shoulder preparing to merge before he struck the cars, and that he had not seen the first vehicle because its lights were off.The driver of the first car told the police that he had activated his hazard lights, but that they might have gone dead because the car’s battery was weak.Officers responding to the crash wrote in a statement that Reid smelled of alcohol and that his eyes were bloodshot. His blood alcohol concentration two hours after the crash was .113, the statement said. The legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in Missouri is .08.The effects of the crash were catastrophic. A 5-year-old girl in the second car that was struck sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, brain contusions and subdural hematomas, among other injuries. According to a crowd fund-raising campaign started for the girl, she remained in the hospital at least seven weeks after the crash. An adult who was in the same car had a concussion and facial lacerations.Reid was also severely injured. He sustained a “blunt force trauma injury to his groin” that required emergency surgery, according to the charging document.Jean Peters Baker, the prosecutor in Jackson County, Mo., said in an interview that felony driving while intoxicated was the highest charge Reid could be given. Missouri revised its criminal code in 2017, simplifying D.W.I. laws, and Baker said that under the old code Reid probably would have received additional charges.Baker said she did not have direct evidence about whether or not Reid was drinking at the Chiefs offices, but she said the authorities do have evidence from when he left Arrowhead Stadium.“Mr. Reid voluntarily appeared before the court for his initial appearance and was released on conditions of bond,” Reid’s lawyer, J.R. Hobbs, said in a statement. “A status conference will be set in the future, as is customary. There will be no further comment at this time.”A spokesman for N.F.L. did not respond to a request for comment.In a statement, a spokesman for the Kansas City Chiefs said the organization “remains steadfast in our concern for all who have been impacted by this tragic accident.” The statement added that the Chiefs were “regularly” in contact with the representative of the family of the girl who was injured.The crash occurred on the Thursday night before Super Bowl LV, which the Chiefs lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Chiefs flew from Kansas City to Tampa, Fla., that Saturday, but Britt Reid did not join the team. The team put him on administrative leave, and shortly after the Super Bowl his contract with the Chiefs expired and was not renewed.Britt Reid was a Chiefs coach for eight years, starting when his father became the team’s head coach. He was also a graduate assistant coach with Temple University, and an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles while his father was the coach there.He has faced legal charges a number of times previously. In 2007, when he was 22, Reid pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges after he brandished a handgun at another driver in suburban Philadelphia. While out on bail before the case was decided, he was arrested after driving into a shopping cart in a parking lot and eventually pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and drug possession in that case. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Football

      What Led Phillip Adams, Former N.F.L. Player, to a Shooting Spree?

      by

      A small city that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is grappling with the shooting deaths of members of a prominent local family by Phillip Adams who, many say, had been adrift after his N.F.L. career ended.He struggled to find work. His last-ditch chance to make an N.F.L. team fizzled. He had a child to support and little apparent direction in a life freighted with high expectations. His behavior was increasingly erratic. Then on Wednesday, for reasons no one yet knows for sure, Phillip Adams, a former N.F.L. cornerback, went to the Rock Hill, S.C., home of a prominent doctor and shot everybody he saw before fatally turning the gun on himself.Now, the football-loving community of 65,000 that bills itself as Football City U.S.A. is struggling to contend with Adams’s suddenly violent turn and its aftermath.Before he killed five people, including two children, and critically wounded a sixth person, Adams, 32, who shot and killed himself several hours after his rampage, had seemed adrift since he last played N.F.L. football almost six years ago, friends and associates said. He remained close to home, caring for his mother, Phyllis, a former high school teacher who became a paraplegic after a car accident a decade ago.But for all the pressures on Adams — and family members are openly questioning whether football damaged his brain — the many people who rooted for him throughout his career are grappling with the loss of Dr. Robert Lesslie and his family at the hands of a local son.“He was the role model that all coaches hoped they could coach,” said Jim Montgomery, who coached Adams in football at Rock Hill High School, the alma mater of numerous N.F.L. players. Montgomery said he spent most of Thursday answering phone calls through tears.The authorities said that Adams fatally shot Dr. Lesslie; his wife, Barbara; and two of their grandchildren, Adah Lesslie, 9, and Noah Lesslie, 5. James Lewis, 38, had been working on their home when he was killed, and a sixth victim, Robert Shook, is in critical condition.The police have yet to explain why Adams, who was described by friends as “chill” and almost reclusive, singled out the doctor, or whether the two men had any relationship.But Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, told Charlotte’s WBTV Thursday that he had learned from law enforcement officials that Dr. Lesslie had seen Adams as a patient. Sheriff officials would not confirm the relationship.“He was treating him and stopped giving him medicine and that’s what triggered the killings from what I understand,” said Norman, whose district encompasses Rock Hill.Members of the Adams family have their own theories. They wonder whether football may have damaged his brain in the same way that has led other players to turn violent and, in a few cases, take their own lives.On Thursday, Alonzo Adams, Phillip’s father, told WCNC, a Charlotte television station, “I think the football messed him up.” His sister, Lauren Adams, told USA Today that he had recently become uncharacteristically aggressive.“His mental health degraded fast and terribly bad,” she said. “There was unusual behavior.”Adams’s brain will be studied to determine whether he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated hits to the head, according to Sabrina Gast, the coroner in York County. It can take months to receive a diagnosis for the disease, which has been linked to mood disorders, memory problems, impulsive behavior and other issues, and has been found in hundreds of former football players.Former coaches, colleagues, neighbors and associates who knew Adams described him in interviews as a hard-working athlete who never advanced beyond journeyman status in the N.F.L., but who remained a quiet, helpful presence in town.“In 43 years, if you would’ve told me that this would have happened with Phillip Adams, I would’ve put him in the last five of the thousands of kids I coached,” Montgomery said on Thursday. “It’s just a sad day.”Duane Belue, a longtime friend and neighbor of the Adams family, said Phillip was close to his mother. Though Phillip had bought a new truck, he did not appear to overspend, and he stayed with his parents for extended periods. Within the last year, the Belues said they noticed that Phillip’s behavior had changed. He was less approachable and would pace outside aimlessly.“We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue said. “You can’t judge somebody that far away, but he was always real friendly before then.”A star player in high school and in college at South Carolina State, Adams was picked by the San Francisco 49ers in the seventh round of the 2010 N.F.L. draft. He sustained a severe ankle injury his rookie season that may have derailed his career.“The bone went through the skin,” said Scott Casterline, Adams’s former agent. “Luckily, he had a good surgeon who helped him. But when a team sees a devastating injury like that, they move on.”After the 49ers released him, Adams bounced around the league with stops in New England, Seattle, Oakland (where he sustained two concussions), the Jets and Atlanta.He had one more shot at landing a roster spot, according to Casterline. During training camp in 2016, the Colts called and asked Adams to get to Indianapolis to participate in practice the following day. Casterline urged his client to jump on the next flight, but Adams — who was always gung ho for football — was suddenly hesitant.“He made it to the Charlotte airport, but the flight had left already,” Casterline said. “I could tell his head was not in it. He’d given up on it.”Casterline described Adams as a loner, not one to go to clubs or drink alcohol. He also hinted at financial troubles. Adams earned $3.6 million during his career and, at one point, wanted to invest in a smoothie shop. Casterline, who said he thought of Adams as a son, told his client it was a mistake because many retail businesses fail.Last fall, Adams called his former agent and asked for help finding employment. Casterline said he tried to persuade him to relocate to Dallas and work at one of his companies.“I said to just come out here to Texas,” Casterline said. “He just wouldn’t do it. He had a son. He was a good father and it was difficult with the baby’s mother.”On Wednesday, the day of the shootings, Adams’s father, Alonzo, called Casterline and said he wanted to talk about his son. Casterline did not find the message unusual. Occasionally, Adams’s parents called if they were unable to find Phillip.“I called Alonzo back and left a message, not realizing it had already happened,” Casterline said.In a news conference on Thursday, York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson said evidence recovered from the home of the Lesslies led them to suspect Adams of the killings. The authorities said they evacuated the Adamses’ home and tried to persuade Phillip to surrender. They found him inside, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot.A mourner adjusted items at a memorial outside of Riverview Family Medicine and Urgent Care, where Dr. Robert Lesslie practiced medicine.Sean Rayford/Getty ImagesIt is often difficult to assign motive to cases where a gunman has not left a note or spoken specifically of his or her intent, even more so in cases that end with the gunman’s death.But some of Adams’s friends said he never got over how his N.F.L. career ended. Rather than catching on with one team and landing a big contract worth tens of millions of dollars, he bounced from team to team, often playing for the league minimum salary. The calls for his services stopped coming, a common fate in the N.F.L., because colleges produce dozens of cheaper, healthier replacement players every year.The disappointment of washing out was particularly acute for Adams, friends said, because he came from Rock Hill, which has given rise to so many N.F.L. players that it is known as Football City U.S.A.To Adams, even a six-year career — twice as long as the average — may have been a letdown when compared to those of other local players like Jadeveon Clowney, who was picked first over all in the 2014 draft and is a three-time Pro Bowl selection; tight end Benjamin Watson, who played 13 seasons with the Patriots, Saints and other teams; and Stephon Gilmore, a defensive leader on the Patriots.“We have a saying around here: You could pay $6 on Friday night or you can wait a few years and pay $600 to see the kids around here play,” said Gene Knight, a broadcaster who has covered the city’s sports for decades.Charcandrick West, who played with the Kansas City Chiefs from 2014 to 2018 and shared an agent with Adams, said he and Adams worked out together during a couple of off-seasons. West said Adams was reserved and proud of his Rock Hill roots.“I never saw him get mad at anyone,” West said. “He was all about his business, washing and folding his clothes, real neat.”West added: “I feel like every athlete tries to keep high expectations. When you’re from Rock Hill, such a great football town, he didn’t want to be known as the guy who bounced around.”Neighbors noticed that Adams’s behavior had changed in the past year. He was less friendly and would pace outside his Rock Hill, S.C., home. “We noticed in the yard, he was out walking, kind of sad,” Anne Belue, a neighbor, said.Sam Wolfe/ReutersCasterline, who has worked as an N.F.L. agent for decades, also said Adams had trouble grasping why he didn’t catch on with a team.“Sometimes, these decisions are political,” Casterline said of teams’ cutting players. “Someone who’s drafted in the first round is going to get the most opportunities. That weighed on him a lot. The Patriots cut him three times in one season. They needed him, they didn’t, they’d cut him and re-sign him. It’s good for the paycheck, but not for the psyche.”Knight, the local sports broadcaster, remembered Adams as “a fierce competitor on the field, but he was a gentleman off the field all the times I encountered him.”Knight had also been treated once by Dr. Lesslie, a popular and well-known physician in Rock Hill, when he struggled with food poisoning. He said Dr. Lesslie worked on him at 2 a.m., easing his symptoms with intravenous therapy.“It’s not two people whose paths I thought would cross in this manner,” he said. “And I think that’s what a lot of people are wrestling with in the whole craziness of this situation.”John Jeter More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Two of Deshaun Watson’s Accusers Take Their Claims Public

      by

      Over 20 women have filed civil assault lawsuits against the quarterback anonymously, but Tuesday two of the complainants gave emotional statements describing sexual abuse.Ashley Solis became a massage therapist to heal people’s minds and bodies, but after what she said happened to her in March 2020, she can no longer do what she loves without shaking. Her hands tremble when she places them on clients, forcing her to cut sessions short. She suffers from panic attacks, anxiety and depression.Until Tuesday, Solis had been known as Jane Doe, the first of 22 women who have accused the Houston Texans’ star quarterback Deshaun Watson of assault and sexual misconduct in civil lawsuits. She became the first of the women to identify herself, stifling back tears as she accused Watson of behavior during a session on March 30, 2020 — moving his body to expose his penis, then touching her hand with it — that mortified and embarrassed her, sending her into a “tailspin” from which she said she has yet to recover.“I was afraid,” said Solis, who took several long pauses to compose herself as she read from a statement at a news conference Tuesday at the office of her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, who is representing all 22 women. “I’m not afraid anymore. I’m here to take back the power and take back control. I’m a survivor of assault and harassment. Deshaun Watson is my assaulter and my harasser.”She added, “People say that I’m doing this just for money. That is false. I come forward so that Deshaun Watson does not assault another woman.”Watson has not commented publicly since the night of March 16, when the first lawsuit was filed. He said in a post on Twitter that he had “never treated any woman with anything other than the utmost respect” and that he had rejected “a baseless six-figure settlement demand” made by Buzbee before the first suit was filed.Another of the 22 women who have filed lawsuits, Lauren Baxley, also came forward Tuesday but did not attend the news conference held at Buzbee’s office in downtown Houston. She instead provided a letter she addressed to Watson that was read by one of Buzbee’s associates. Baxley echoed, in graphic terms, the pattern of lewd and coercive conduct he has been accused of and condemned him for being “nothing more than a predator with power.”“Every boundary from professional and therapeutic to sexual and degrading, you crossed or attempted to cross,” Baxley said.In her letter, which she said she wrote at the suggestion of her trauma therapist, Baxley said she was motivated not only to forgive herself for not speaking up sooner or for not being braver, but so that “you can know without excuse or justification that you have deeply and irreversibly brought terror to me and others.”Taken together, the two statements provided the most emotional declarations yet in the case against one of the N.F.L.’s best and most prominent players, who had become a fixture in the Houston community since he joined the Texans in 2017. By attaching faces and names to the flurry of civil court filings, the women appeared to counter some of the arguments made by Watson’s defense lawyers, who have pushed back against the legitimacy of the allegations made against Watson because they had been done so anonymously.After Tuesday’s news conference, Rusty Hardin, a lawyer representing Watson, took aim at the claims by Buzbee and Solis. Hardin released a series of emails that suggested that Buzbee “sought $100,000 in hush money on behalf of Ms. Solis to quietly settle the allegations the month before he filed the first lawsuit.” All of the accusers, according to the lawsuits, have filed claims seeking “minimal compensatory damages.”In one email from February, Scott Gaffield, general counsel at Athletes First, the agency that represents Watson, rebuffed Buzbee’s demand on behalf of Solis for $100,000 because “we don’t believe that the alleged facts show that Deshaun did anything wrong …”In addition to the 22 civil claims, the case against Watson widened last week when the Houston Police Department acknowledged that it had begun investigating Watson after a complaint was filed against him. Buzbee said Tuesday that at least one other person had also filed a complaint against Watson with the police. It is unclear whether either person is also a plaintiff in the lawsuits filed against Watson in Harris County, Texas.While nearly two dozen claims have been filed against Watson in less than one month, the legal machinations are only beginning. The cases are now assigned to several judges for review, but it is unclear when or if they will be consolidated, something that would streamline decisions on the anonymity of the accusers, any motions to dismiss, potential discovery and myriad other steps that might lead to trial.Other factors may shape the contours of the case, including any potential developments in the investigations by the police and the N.F.L., which began its own inquiry and can suspend Watson while it looks into the allegations against him. Though the accusations have mounted in a short span of time, the legal proceedings are in very early stages, according to Stephanie Stradley, a lawyer in Houston who writes frequently about legal matters concerning the Texans and the N.F.L.“If you were making a football analogy, the ball’s been kicked off and people are running down the field, but no one’s caught the ball yet,” she said. “These cases are hard enough as it is when the world isn’t watching. They can be kind of messy sorting out what the full facts are.” More