IS TAKING DOC TO SEE THE DOC
Wednesday's New York Times interview with Shawn Andrews was more for people who were unaware of the Eagles offensive lineman's battle with depression than for plugged-in Eagles fans. (The news, by the way, that depression was causoing Andrews to miss the start of training camp last year was broken on this site, by the Daily News.) But some interesting points were touched upon by Times writer Jere Longman, formerly of the Inquirer.
Lurking the in the background of Andrews' struggles has been the question of whether he really loves playing football the way, say, Brian Dawkins or Jon Runyan does. Longman explores that theme:
Perhaps most revealingly, Andrews said he believed that, to some extent, he was forced into football as a sixth grader because he was big, not because he particularly loved the sport. He said he had not watched a complete professional football game unless he was playing in it.
Having broken his right fibula in his rookie season and having missed most of last season with a back injury, Andrews said he worried that physical impairment from football might restrict him in the future from playing with his son. He will discourage JaShawn from participating in the sport, he said.
He said he understood that some people had little sympathy for a highly paid professional athlete, that even some of his teammates might feel he was exaggerating, or using depression as an excuse for an indifference to football. “That’s fine,” he said. “I don’t work for them. They don’t pay my bills. They don’t take care of my family."
Later in the story, Andrews returns to the theme of fearing disability:
“All the physical anguish I’ve been through, the thought of not being able to get up and play with my son, that really keeps my mind going every day,” Andrews said.
He sees some of his teammates dropping items and struggling to bend and pick them up.
“I don’t want to live like that,” Andrews said.
Andrews also recounts a very strange tale of how he came to believe a former friend, turned down when he requested money, was going to try to kill him, before his 2004 rookie season.
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To read our previous post on DeSean Jackson's visit to a Delaware County middle school, click here.
Les
Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News
since 2002.
Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les
only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no
penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite
what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News
from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much
lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their
two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
E-mail Les at bowenl@phillynews.com
and follow
him on Twitter.
Paul
Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982.
He has spent most of his nearly 3 decades with the paper covering the
Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a
selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre
and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo started his career in Texas,
working first for the Midland Reporter-Telegram (1976-78), and then for
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas
Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually was
boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose 2 sports coats to
blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley,
a University of Oklahoma grad who still hasn’t gotten over
that Fiesta Bowl loss to Boise State 5 years ago, have 2 terrific
daughters -- Allison, 28, who is an attorney in South Jersey, and Amy,
25, who works in administration for a professional baseball team.
E-mail Domo at PDomo@aol.com and follow
him on Twitter.
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