How AJ Brown Is Leading The Charge For Mental Health Awareness In The NFL!

Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver AJ Brown talks a lot about mental health and he's very open about his struggles with depression. He has gone viral for reading Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life, and more recently he partnered with clothing brand Peace Collective on October 10, World Mental Health Day.  This line of clothing, including pieces with the slogan "Check On Your Teammates", plays a slightly different note than what we and many others have been used to seeing in the National Football League.

Football, after all, is a sport where padding, helmets, and penalties such as "unnecessary roughness" are required in order to keep players safe. In recent years, movies such as Concussion starring Will Smith, and most recently Him starring Marlon Wayans, have been asking many questions about the sport. And now, when the sport is seen stenciling slogans into endzones such as "Stop Hate" and "Choose Love", maybe AJ Brown is not only adding to but leading this mental health/love charge in the NFL.

It’s not easy for many athletes to talk about their mental health struggles, but AJ has seemingly found a way to do so. (And for myself, being a life-long Eagles fan, and a fan of the sport in general, I think everything that AJ is doing is great for the sport.)  Other people have come out as well to talk about their own mental health struggles, such as Dak Prescott, Bobby Wagner, and Carl Nassib, to name a few; however, given AJ’s recent partnership, and given how he’s been in the news for being upset about how this season has gone this far, it seems like he is the prime player to be leading this charge.

It’s this moment of "how do you respond?" which we find interesting. In high school, when I got cut from the basketball team in 9th grade, and they only cut my friend and me from the line up, it was pretty devastating. Granted, I wasn’t getting paid millions of dollars, and granted I was 12; however, the feeling in sports when you feel like you’re not wanted is real. And the obvious next move is to feel wanted, right? So how do we do that? Well, we do well in the sport. That’s the control aspect that sport allows for, right? However, in AJ Brown’s case, as he and many other WRs have described, it’s difficult. Wide receivers often are the last option in an offense. You have giant men trying to attack the quarterback, it can be risky to throw the ball at all, there are often 2-4 other players running routes, and close to half of the time, the quarterback just gives the running back the ball. On top of all of this, all of the throws that a receiver even has a chance of catching are dependent on how good the quarterback is in the first place. You could be wide open, but mistakes can happen. It’s all a giant mental game for someone who has worked so hard in so many ways to try to be at the top of their game.

When so many things are working against the final stat line, it must help to remember that it is a team sport. However, this team sport rewards individual achievements with things such as contract extensions, roster spots, and happy fantasy football players. In the acting world, there is a term used to describe actors being difficult to work with: "Diva". And this word has even loosely been tossed around about players including AJ Brown. It’s important that we think about why a top WR such as AJ Brown could be upset, especially someone as vocal as him saying things like, "If you’re feeling something, say something."

As he navigates a difficult start to the year, he has a monumental opportunity to stay true to his messaging. Inner Excellence, the aforementioned book that AJ was seen reading during a game, talks about how to overcome self-centeredness to achieve extraordinary performance, and according to his critics, he should re-read that chapter. It’s how we respond when things aren’t going our way once we’ve established our desire and voice to talk about something difficult like mental health. Now he has that chance, and he will get many more opportunities to do it for the rest of the season. As he said in commencement speech at Ole Miss last year, "Be that person you needed when you were younger." 

We believe he truly meant that, and we're excited to see more of what his voice will have to say as he leads the mental health charge in the NFL.