There comes a point when using painkillers “like candy” isn’t worth it anymore, even for an NFL player at the peak of his career.
Former Lions receiver Calvin Johnson shocked the NFL when he decided to retire in March after an exceptional career. Despite Lions fans imploring him to stay, Johnson said he realized he no longer wanted to suffer from the NFL mentality of doing whatever it takes to stay on the field.
“I guess my first half of my career before they really, you know, before they were like started looking over the whole industry, or the whole NFL, the doctors, the team doctors and trainers they were giving them out like candy, you know?” Johnson said in an interview on ESPN’s E:60 segment that will run Thursday night.
“If you were hurting, then you could get them. It was nothing. I mean, if you needed Vicodin, call out, ‘My ankle hurt,’ you know. ‘I need, I need it. I can’t, I can’t play without it,’ or something like that. It was simple. That’s how easy it was to get them. So if you were dependent on them, they were readily available.”
Johnson, 30, has made it clear he wants a life after football, and after undergoing knee, ankle, and finger surgeries throughout his nine-year career, he said his health outweighs another stab at football glory.
“I know where my body’s at, know how it feels, you know,” he said. “I know how it felt to one, get it to go every day. And to be out there actually doing it every day, you know — the pain to do it. So I’m just like — and you can’t take Toradol and pain medicine every day, you know. You gotta give that stuff a rest, and that was one thing I wasn’t willing to do.”
Johnson called the team doctors and trainers “good people” who “want to see you do good,” but he acknowledged their obligation “to do whatever they can to get you back on the field and make your team look good.”
Over 1,500 ex-players showed they felt cheated by the league’s medical staffers when they teamed up in March 2015 to file a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and all 32 of its teams. The suit alleges doctors and trainers treated players with painkillers while withholding examinations, prescriptions and information on harmful side effects.
This lawsuit comes after thousands of players filed one against the NFL for the concussions and brain damage they incurred from football. Johnson admitted he understands their plight as he reflected on the ease with which concussions occur in this “bone-crushing game.”
“Concussions happen,” he said. “If not on every play, then they happen like every other, every third play, you know. With all the helmet contact, guys hitting the ground, heads hitting ground. It’s simply when your brain touches your skull from the movement or the inertia, man. It’s simple to get a concussion, you know. I don’t know how many I’ve had over my career, you know, but I’ve definitely had my fair share.”
Johnson has no regrets about his playing days — “you’re playing the greatest game against some of the best athletes in the world” — but he’s getting out before a more disastrous injury happens.