Brian Dawkins spent 13 seasons with the Eagles and finished his career playing for the Broncos.
The Hall of Famer retired from the game as one of the best safeties to ever do it.
Dawkins was feared around the league as a certified tough guy. It was well understood that this safety was not anybody to play with whenever he put on the shoulder pads.
Yesterday, in an interview with NBC Sports Philadelphia, we got to see a softer side of the safety.
Dawkins opened up about his struggles with depression and when the pressure almost got to him:
I had troubles channeling that anger in the right direction. They would come out in outbursts, and because I’m a quiet individual, and as men, we don’t talk … anyway, I talked even less, and so all that stuff was bounding up. When you don’t have answers, it comes out in different ways. During that first year, I had a lot of pressures from family members, being a newlywed, my son, Brian, was born.
Overall, I didn’t have any outlets, and so I began to drink a little more than I needed to, and that quickly spiraled down into depression. I went through a real dark, deep depression. Alcohol was a tremendous crutch. There were times I didn’t even want to be around my family, didn’t want to be around my son.
I just wanted to be in a dark room by myself with nobody. My room, I won’t say was a frequent occurrence, but it was something I would do. My faith back then wasn’t that strong, so I listened to the other voice in my head, and that’s where suicidal thoughts came in, and then actually planning out how I would go about it in such a way that Connie (his wife) and my son would get the money from my insurance policy.
The pain I was feeling was tremendous,” Dawkins said. “But then, I found a way to control it. I rededicated my life. Being able to deal with that through my renewed faith. Going to more and more bible studies. Giving my life over to the Lord, completely helped me go on to become the athlete I became and the person I became.
Dawkins even admits that he still struggles with his depression till this very day:
That feeling is always there to this day…It’s just waiting for you to feel so sorry for yourself that you can come back down and start having those same feelings again. My faith is strong enough now that I can tell that part of me to shut up and that’s now who I am.
Eventually, Dawkins’s wife and coach convinced him to get some help, and Brian started taking medicine for his mental diseases.
Brian Dawkins will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, this Sunday. This is definitely going to be a speech that you’re not going to want to miss.