Football and the Illusion of Immortality

On June 29, Chris Johnson disclosed his ALS diagnosis to Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. Johnson was less than a decade removed from running for 2,006 yards with the Tennessee Titans in 2009 — from blazing a then-record 4.24 40-yard dash in 2008 — when his body began withering. At 39, he learned his body would be ravaged by the 100-percent-fatal neurological disease, and less than a year later, he could only speak by using his eyes to control a speech-generating device.

Former Around the Horn host Tony Reali was one of thousands to publicly grieve Johnson’s mortality and, by extension, grapple with how Johnson’s vulnerability offered a portal into the mortality awaiting all of us, even if not in the form of ALS.  

“I know we all came to find our favorite athletes in any number of ways, but I can bet you this: It’s because they did something so beautifully athletic, so gorgeously athletic,” Reali said in a video posted to Twitter. “Those 90-yard runs. I mean, I’m walking by a kid’s park right now. What’s the first thing you do when you’re a kid? You run as fast as you can. It’s your superpower. Who’s fastest? It was Chris, I’m sure. 

“I love sports for this. This is what sports does. It freezes people in time. And what’s so sad is now you’re recognizing that, because in highlights, everybody is frozen in time. Walter Payton still hurdles. Rice is always gonna glide the way he did. Moss is always gonna Moss. Chris is always gonna 4.24. And my brain is having a hard time updating here, but life doesn’t stay in the highlights. It moves forward. People slow down, and then people stop.” 

Technically, the 2026 NFL season began with the annual Hall of Fame Game on Aug. 6. The NBC pregame broadcast aired a tribute to Johnson. Maria Taylor, Mike Tomlin, Devin McCourty, and Jason Garrett donned Johnson’s No. 28 Titans jersey while partaking in the revived ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

It was a touching moment, and the widespread outpouring of support for Johnson and funding ALS research represented the best of humanity. It should have brought human fragility and empathy to the forefront before we all watch NFL players rattle their brains and obliterate their bodies in the name of our entertainment and perceived glory for the next six months.

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But for the most part, it underscored the cognitive dissonance inherent to football fandom. It’s football! Guys get hurt! As soon as the Hall of Fame Game kicked off, amnesia set in as to what all this could possibly mean for them down the road.

Football players proudly sacrifice for the team.

“Every one of these guys comes in here, and this is a violent sport,” Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft said in response to why he’s participating in training camp after tearing his ACL last November. “We risk life and limb. Guys have to medically retire from this shit. They bang heads, messed up necks, backs. How many times can you blow a knee out? Guys keep fighting and clawing to come back into this locker room, and that’s the reason I do it.

“There’s other attributes,” Kraft added. “I want to leave a legacy on this sport as a whole. I want my children to see the lengths that I would go to to fight for something I love.”

That is admirable. To feel so passionately about trying. What good are our bodies if we don’t use them while we can?

Chris Johnson may be viewed as an anomaly in that he has ALS, a very rare, cruel disease. But he is not an anomaly in that nobody walks away from football unscathed.

Just this summer, Ahman Green, the Packers all-time leading rusher, revealed his early-onset Parkinson’s diagnosis, and Roger Craig used his taped Hall of Fame acceptance speech to share his vascular dementia diagnosis. Those are the headliners, while more common suffering like a lifetime of back and knee pain, long-term effects from concussions, and a reduced quality of life are relegated to the footnotes. 

The trick, however, is to avoid conflating the acknowledgment of the risks players knowingly accept with a free pass to blame players for bodily betrayal. Because, even if they never picked up a football, they would still hurt. They would still suffer. Their bodies would fail, inexplicably and unfairly. It just wouldn’t be televised theater every August through February. Life, like football, is a war of attrition.

And what do fans do with that front-row seat? Look inward? Marvel at their athletic brilliance, while worrying for their overall well-being? No, they scream at the television when players crumple to the ground. They harass players for ruining a fantasy football season — spoiling a bet or parlay — and scoff at someone’s body suddenly changing in confusing, terrifying ways. 

Before they are football players, they are humans. There is a psychological and emotional component to every televised injury that the world never sees. The mental and emotional anguish remains cloaked, unless someone is slapped with the “yips” label or spoken about in the past tense. He was just never the same after that. Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr. recently pulled back that curtain.