[GridIron26]

Originally Posted by Giantone

First , this is a great post . With that said I will disagree with your last paragraph. Yes we always hope we can catch and help anyone in trouble but I am(personally) just getting tired of everyone blaming the NFL and blaming the game in general for all the problems they endure while playing this game. Did he have any sort of mental health issues before or in college, does anything like this run in his family and as the story says many of his teammates tried to talk to him and help him . Sorry but to say you are 95% certain this could have been avoided ...no ,not sold on that.

Cravens says Gruden again told him to fight through it. Cravens says the coach asked him, “What are you going to do outside of football to make money? Your family depends on you, you need to take care of your family financially right now.”

Both times he met with Gruden, Cravens ended up agreeing with his coach, and left the meetings determined to keep going. “I would just bottle all those feelings up again until they would build up” he says. In an attempt to make things better, his family moved out to the East coast to alleviate his homesickness. It wasn’t enough.

This screams ignorant & classic "men do not cry" stereotype on Gruden's part; to me, this shows me that coaches did not go through any training to detect any kind of mental health issues. All it takes is a simple and basic training for anyone to detect something is going on and then he could refer Cravens to appropriate person for futher analysis.

Because he was not allowed in the building, he was cut off from continuing his meniscus rehab with team trainers. Cravens and Peter Schaffer say that because he was on the left squad list, he was also cut off from accessing his NFL insurance and had to file through worker’s comp coverage. Cravens paid out of his own pocket for his flights and hotels when he went to see Collins. Per the CBA, players are permitted to seek second opinions and teams will cover the expenses for those second opinions, but the specific rules on whether that coverage remains in effect while a player is on the left squad list could not be determined. (An NFL spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for clarification.)

No safeguard for players with mental health issues

A source familiar with the situation says the team believed they were not allowed to contact Cravens because of his left squad designation, but that they made sure to provide him with contact info for the team doctors if he ever needed help. (An NFL spokesperson did not reply to multiple messages requesting clarification on whether the team was allowed to make contact with Cravens.)

This tells me NFL did not consider mental health issues when creating this policy. Team doctors are not adequate for mental health disorders; without doing research on NFL team doctors, I'm assuming that they specialize in sports injuries, nothing more.

The NFL constitution adequately covers how to handle a player who left training camp without permission, or quit the team, and it outlines what to do with a player who has a serious football injury, but it doesn’t address the middle ground in which Cravens found himself. Further complicating matters, Cravens is adamant that his battle with post-concussion syndrome paired with his family issue made him snap and impulsively tell his teammates he was retiring. When viewed in light of Collins’s diagnosis, Cravens’s threats or eventual proclamation of retirement can’t be taken at face value.

Nothing futher needs to be said.


I find it comical how NFL always switch back and forth when it comes to business - NFL always said that NFL is all about business and acts like it when it comes to money & players' contracts, and cutting & trading players, and, and yet NFL always try skirt around other aspects of business such as taking care of its employees (players) and corporate social responsibilities.