Jonathan Martin opens up about not fitting in, NFL problems, suicide attempts
For an offensive lineman who played three NFL seasons and then retired, Jonathan Martin will be remembered for a long time.
Martin was in the middle of the Miami Dolphins’ bullying scandal in 2013. His name was in headlines everywhere, and the details of his experiences in the locker room were publicly available for consumption and criticism. But whatever your opinion of what happened with Martin in Miami, it’s clear that his NFL experience wasn’t pleasant.
It was bad enough that, he says, his job caused him to attempt to kill himself on “multiple occasions.” Martin opened up in a long Facebook post about his experiences growing up and in football, explaining the many difficulties he had in the game.
The line that will get the most attention will be about his suicide attempts, but the entire post is revealing. He talks about how he was perceived as not “black enough” growing up and how that led to him becoming an introvert.
“Neither black nor white people accept you because they don’t understand you,” he wrote. “It takes away your self-confidence, your self-worth, your sanity.”
He said football was what he was good at, and he tried to use that to feel “cool.” But football eventually became a negative in his life. He said while others might have been able to brush off the locker-room situation he found himself in, he had always been different and “more sensitive.”
Martin said he was petrified of going to work, would sleep 12-16 hours when he could “or not at all,” and would drink and “smoke weed constantly.” Then he wrote that he realized family, a few close friends and his personal happiness were all that mattered. After another year and a half in the NFL and a bad back injury, Martin retired.
NFL players aren’t really different than any cross section of society; they just have more athletic gifts and higher-profile jobs than most of us. Not every player should or does react the same to what happens in the locker room. They grew up in different backgrounds and don’t all have the same mindset about life just because they have the same job.
Martin’s Facebook post tells a tale about NFL life we don’t hear about very often. It’s too bad his time in what many consider a dream job was such a nightmare.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
