Jamal Adams has been called everything from young and dumb to insensitive after telling a New York Jets fan forum that “if I had a perfect place to die, I would die on the field” and now he’d like to explain just what he meant.
His comment, taken in its entirety, says more about his passion for the game than anything, but it created a stir, with, among others, the ex-wife of a player who was diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy after his death in a car crash. Adams is only a rookie, but his comments, with Commissioner Roger Goodell seated next to him, sparked a firestorm in media and social media.
“Honestly, I really didn’t see it getting that far,” Adams said Tuesday after practice (via ESPN.com). “I was speaking about being passionate about the game that I love. I understand that some families were affected by this disease. I definitely didn’t mean it in any type of way.”
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Adams said he had a long talk with his father, former NFL player George Adams, about his unintended message and Jets Coach Todd Bowles told him to clear things up after his comments were hotly debated across media platforms.
“When you see something that’s blown up, that’s on [ESPN’s] ‘First Take’ and ESPN, I think it should be addressed,” Adams said. “My words were simply that I’m very passionate about what I do. … I said at the beginning [of the fan forum] … I’m all about making the game safer. I understand CTE and the symptoms and whatnot, and how families are affected by it, but it’s simply about passion.”
Adams, a 21-year-old rookie safety out of LSU who was the sixth overall pick in the draft, had been asked about the NFL’s efforts to make the game safer. “I’m all about making the game safer, but as a defensive player, I’m not a big fan of it. But I get it. I can speak for a lot of guys that play the game. We live and breathe. This is what we’re so passionate about,” he said (via NJ.com). “Literally, if I had a perfect place to die, I would die on the field and that’s not a lie. There’s so much sacrifice that we go through as a team, and just connecting as one and winning ballgames. There’s nothing like playing the game of football. But again, I’m all about making the game safer.”
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Jets cornerback Morris Claiborne had backed up Adams’s comments and former NFL offensive lineman LeCharles Bentley said he understood where they were coming from.
“When you’re young, you don’t understand your mortality,” Bentley said on New Orleans’ “Dunc and Holder” radio show (via Nola.com), via Jeff Duncan of New Orleans’ Dunc & Holder radio show. “You don’t see it. You feel invincible, and you feel that football is all you have, because it’s all you’ve ever done. When you’re 26 years old, that’s all you know. You’ve spent 26 years of your life working toward a goal, and you really feel in your heart that this is all that there is left in life. And so for these young guys to make these comments, I understand where it’s coming from because I’ve been there. I’ve been young and dumb before. We’ve all been young and dumb before.”
Keana McMahon, the ex-wife of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ late offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk, was appalled. Strzelczyk died in a fiery crash in 2004. “I don’t even know what to say,” McMahon told the New York Daily News. ” … He has no idea what dealing with someone who has CTE is like.” McMahon went on to say: “I bet my kids would want their father here. I know in my heart of hearts that Justin would have wanted to see his daughter get married someday or see his son graduate from college, not dying on a football field.”
Martellus Bennett, the Green Bay Packers tight end, tweeted: “I hope all these young cats that are willing to die for the game of football find a higher purpose in life.”
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Other Jets teammates said Adams was just young and naive. One unnamed Jet told ESPN’s Rich Cimini that Goodell could have “guided or corrected him in that situation. To say nothing was a slap in the face to the people suffering from it.”
Goodell tried to interpret for Adams. “I think fans understood the emotion of what he was saying,” Goodell said, “which is: We love the game. I think they love the game. But I don’t think anyone took it [literally].”
Maybe not, but Detroit Lions wide receiver Chuck Hughes did die on the field of a heart attack in a 1971 game and a 2013 ESPN report quotes an unnamed source saying that the idea that it could happen again frightens Goodell, a report that the NFL disputed.
“Goodell has told friends privately that he believes if the game’s hard-knocks culture doesn’t change, it could happen again,” ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. wrote. “’He’s terrified of it,’” says a Hall of Fame player who speaks regularly with Goodell. “’It wouldn’t just be a tragedy. It would be awfully bad for business.’”
More on the NFL:
The latest brain study examined 111 former NFL players and only one didn’t have CTE
How it feels to be an NFL legend’s daughter in the era of concussion awareness
Can the Cowboys get by early if Ezekiel Elliott is suspended?
Ray Lewis advises Colin Kaepernick to play football and play down social activism
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