MIAMI — I was at a friend’s house and I walked past a mirror. The person I saw, I didn’t recognize. Dark eyes. Looking bad. I realized I had to do something different. Everybody has their moment when they say, ‘Man, I have to do something different.’
For Anthony Hargrove, that moment came on April 4, 2008. A promising but troubled defensive end in St. Louis and Buffalo from 2004-07, he had been suspended from the NFL for multiple violations of its substance abuse program. It was time to get help.
What happened between that moment and today is one of the most compelling storylines of Super Bowl XLIV. Hargrove is now an important part of the New Orleans Saints, only team willing to sign him last summer. He’s a havoc-wreaking defensive tackle and a 300-pound cover man on special teams. He has spoken openly and eloquently about his journey, and so it seems appropriate to let him tell most of this story himself.
When you have the kinds of problems I did, you feel like you’re locked in a closet. You’re hoping someone will come by and let you out. Finally, somebody did.
Hargrove lost his mother to AIDS at age 9 and spent his childhood bouncing between family members and foster care. He believes God compelled him to see the ravages of drugs and alcohol when he looked in the mirror on that day almost two years ago. It directed him toward the Miami-based Transitions Recovery center for what turned out to be 10 months of rehabilitation.
When you go through a period like that in treatment, you see so much. I saw a lot of different things. I saw death. I saw people just giving up on life.
So you switch. You turn over. You say to yourself, I don’t want to get to that point where I just give up on life, or I just throw in my cards and say, ‘I’m done with this.’ I’m always telling people, we can always do stuff with time. It’s not over until we see 0:00 on the clock.
He watched the Super Bowl last year from Transitions.
It’s quieter, I can tell you that. It’s a lot quieter to watch a Super Bowl from rehab.
It was hard to watch the game because I wanted to be there. I was coming in and out of the room, doing laundry and whatever else. I really didn’t want to watch it because I hadn’t played that season. You get caught up thinking about all the stuff I did wrong to keep me out of the game.
While that game was going on, it was a reminder of all the stuff I did wrong to keep me out of the season and a reminder that I might not get back to it.
Days later, he met with NFL officials about reinstatement. His indefinite suspension was lifted after one year.
But now the hard part: How to convince a team to sign him? Playmaking defensive linemen are rare and valuable commodities. But who would want a player that two organizations already had given up on?
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