What happened to Bengal John Ross? Inside his year of pain and self-discovery

Jim Owczarski | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption What happened to John Ross? Inside his first year Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver John Ross' rookie year broke him, physically and emotionally. Once he realized it, he was able to pick up the pieces.

Rain peppered the slate outside the AC Hotel in downtown Cincinnati. Dressed in a black T-shirt, shorts, socks and flip flops, occupying a single chair in a shaded conference room, John Ross bled out.

“I’ve never talked about this.”

John found out last year there’s only so much a person can stack inside. At some point, their mind and their heart don’t just ache, but break.

He was broken in 2017. We watched him crumble.

“I got hit with so much last year, physically, emotionally. I was literally losing it,” he said.

“I felt, at times, I was like … who am I? I used to wake up and I felt like everything was wrong.”

When it was over, he stood and stretched. The rain had cleared, he closed the wound and walked out of the first floor sliding glass doors with a smile. The sun was shining.

•

By the time John Ross drifted into the orbit of the National Football League, he was already on empty.

He had spent January through July training while injured, becoming a father, having surgery, rehabbing, finishing classes at the University of Washington, graduating and flying around the country interviewing for jobs. Once his job found him – the Cincinnati Bengals used the No. 9 overall pick of the 2017 draft on him – life really began.

“I was so … tired. I remember being exhausted.”

If the fans and media felt like the start of his career an excruciating practice in patience, John’s recollection of his August through September adds the speed to which he lived it.

He flies through those months in seconds: Starting training camp late due to rehab, being thrown into the third preseason game in Washington, tweaking a knee in the preseason finale and missing the first week of the season and then fumbling on his first touch as a pro against Houston in Week 2.

“It just started to go downhill from there,” John recalled. “I would run, like, across the field and be gassed. Oh my God. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t hold myself together.”

•

John almost quit this.

It’s a well-known story, oft retold. At 16 he wanted to leave football because he had seen people start to gravitate to him, like mosquitos to the bulb. He stayed with it, going on to high school and college stardom and became a top 10 NFL pick. It’s the stuff dreams – and easy narratives – are made of.

Buried deep under all that was the truth of that thought. Think of the weight of it. Here was this child wondering about the motivations of those around him. What did they want? What did they stand to gain by his choice to play football?

Fast forward. He’s a multi-millionaire.

Google it. John knows everybody has.

There’s freedom in finance. For him, however, it came with more weight, more uncertainty.

John’s whole life is public. He was born into the internet. The top college football recruiting site began tracking the exploits of teenagers the year he was born. Facebook was invented when he was nine. Twitter, 12.

In a span of eight years, he went from being coached by Snoop Dogg in a youth league in Long Beach to hosting high school team sleepovers to having Sports Illustrated profiles and network aired to becoming one of the most recognizable names in the NFL after a record-setting 40-yard dash at the combine.

“My little brother (Gregory) told me ‘It’s hard for me talk to you now because you’ve gotten so big,’” John said. “I got mad at him. I was like, I’ve never told you that. He’s like, it’s not you, it’s how everyone else treats you.”

There’s pain in his face as he recounts that conversation.

But John was the newest, speediest commodity for an NFL team. A top 10 pick. Entertainment and football’s biggest names are a FaceTime connection away. He may not have been on the field, but the clutching and grabbing every time he tried to get off the line was there.

How do you even begin to navigate that?

How do you talk about it?

Who do you talk about it to?

“I definitely felt lonely,” John said. “My friends will tell you and my family will tell you, I have a problem with, when I get into a tank, I shut people out completely. In my mind you can’t help me. You really don’t understand what I’m going through because you’re not in my shoes. So, I don’t talk about it and I just try to correct things myself.”

•

The clouds were blowing in over him, yet there was a beam of light John followed through the year.

Julian.

“The day he was born was definitely the happiest I’ve ever been in life,” John said of May 15, 2017, with the widest of his wide smiles.

“I was scared beforehand – but once I saw him I was like, ‘I’m his father.’ It kind of was the best thing I’ve ever experienced. It was good and bad I wasn’t here playing football because of school, because I got to spend time with him.”

Unfortunately – and fortunately – that last sentence proved to be a very important thread John held as tight as he could last year.

“The fear of me not letting my son know who I was, was really big,” John said. “I got to go home after surgery for a little bit. Then we got a break. So I actually spent a lot of time with my son. He was so happy. He started to realize ‘that’s my dad.’ When you asked was there a parallel (to his knee injury in 2015), I think that was the parallel of me being slowed down. That was the reason.”

John looks forward to the random moments now when Julian will grab his mother’s phone and hit the FaceTime button. Seeing dad’s face is enough, and Julian will leave the screen broadcasting the ceiling.

Over the phone or in person, his son offered clarity in a season encroached upon by shadow.

•

The rain continued to pepper the ground outside the windows. The lights in the conference room eventually turn off because of the lack of motion. John was supposed to be sitting on the hotel rooftop, under the sun, for this.

As the lights get flipped on again, John takes the moment for a breath.

As the 2017 regular season wore on for the Bengals, it slowly ground him down. The smile disappeared. He punched in, punched out. Once home, he went to his room and locked himself inside. His brother and friends would knock.

You OK?

The door would open a little. I’m good.

But he wasn’t.

“It never stopped,” John said. “I’m like OK, I’m already physically beat up. Let me go in and do what I have to do. Then I did that and I went lower. It got worse. Then towards the end of the season, physically, I started lifting, I still had some restrictions but I felt better. My routes got better. I started performing better. They’re like ‘he’s going hard.’ I’m like ‘OK, I’m fine.’

“But emotionally I was dealing with not playing, I’m letting people down, I’m putting so much weight on myself. I just felt so low.”

Brandon LaFell saw this. Every day.

“Don’t let them take your joy,” Brandon told him heading into meetings.

How does he know?

You didn’t need to look hard. In the locker room, John’s smile was gone. His shoulders were rounded, head down, in his locker.

“When they steal your joy, it’s over,” Brandon said. “I said ‘You’re going to go from doing something you love to man, I gotta do this.’ And I said that’s the wrong thing. That’s the wrong thing, to feel like you’re forcing yourself. I said you can’t let them steal your joy. You got to find something that make you happy.

“Once you go in the tank around here, in the NFL, ain’t nobody going to get you out that tank but yourself.”

This was advice his grandmother once gave to him heading out to school in Long Beach: Don’t let anyone take away your happiness. But now, John was too deep in it. It had all gone to hell and everyone asked why. Family. Teammates. Media. Fans.

Every. Day.

October turned to November to December. The questions don’t stop: Does the head coach have his back? Is he just not getting it? Is he hurt? John didn’t hide from it. He talked about what he thought was happening.

He was searching for the why in all of it.

“I felt like my life isn’t supposed to be the way it is,” John said of 2017. “Being hurt is really tough because it was so much. Not being able to play. Then, you don’t try to listen to outside, but it’s in your face. It’s hard to close it out because you get to the games and some of your teammates are like, why are you not playing? You always have to explain it. Your little cousins don’t know what’s going on and they’re like, why you not playing? You’re letting so many people down without trying.

“And sometimes when it’s out of your hands, you have no answers. And whenever you feel like you have no answers, sometimes you’ll feel less of a person.

“And I felt like, well, do I suck?”

•

The fact John is talking about this is monumental.

With an arm in a sling at the end of 2017 – just as it began – he slowly came to understand something had to change. Communication is a weak spot for him, especially when things sour, and he would lock himself up. By the end of the last season, he could see how such a decision affected everything and he set himself a new course.

“You have to let people know the situation,” John said. “My problem is I don’t like talking about anything negative. So, I don’t like confrontation, I don’t like drama, I don’t like yelling, I don’t like arguments. The only thing I’ll argue over is LeBron being the best. Honestly, that’s the only thing I’ll argue about. But that’s always fun and games. In terms of serious things, it’s always better ways to handle things.

“I just have to communicate and let people know this isn’t right. I need you guys to help me. You guys ask for me help, this is all I need from you, is to relax, everything is going to be OK. If things go how they’re supposed to go and I do what I’m supposed to do, we will all be OK. I promise.”

•

It was an OK day.

John was full speed. Open. Andy Dalton kept feeding him the ball in this June mini-camp session, but some wound up on the turf. William Jackson III gave it to him after one drop, turning away from John and bellowing “Catch the goddamn ball!”

In the locker room after, John was quiet. Lessons could be learned from the drops, but there were positives, too. Sharp routes left teammates stuttering through air while he caught a touchdown. Julian was ill, which was clearly on his mind, and he was trying to get an earlier flight to California.

In other words, it was a day of real life – his life.

But, in many ways, it’s a better life.

“I had to stop being down on myself and be around positive energy,” John said. “I let the injury get the best of me and it tore me down as a person. I’m a really happy person. I’m always happy. People love being around me, I love being around people. That’s just who I am. That’s just how I was built. So now I look at things differently. Like during OTAs, I’ll have a bad practice, I’m going to go home and I’m going to tell myself that wasn’t good enough, I’m going to look at the film and I’m going to go out and work on something that I shouldn’t let happen the day before. That’s how I look at it. Instead of going home, woe is me, well, you didn’t do good enough.

“It’s so much. But I just take my time now, one day at a time, continue to smile and be happy and be thankful that I’m here.”

•

This self-discovery doesn’t mean John is going to have a Pro Bowl season 2018. Or stay healthy. Or even that he won’t sink back into himself if his season slips a bit.

But it gives John a plan for pulling himself out much quicker.

“Everyone realizes what I went through last year can’t happen again,” he admits.

So here we are. He’s healthy. Stronger. Confident. He hauled in a 50-yard touchdown from Andy Dalton in front of nearly 1,000 fans on the opening day of training camp, eliciting the gasps and an exuberant leap from Joe Mixon into his arms.

The kilowatt smile is back. The laugh is back.

John is back.

“There are so many things that I’ve learned over time and I’m still learning that I’m so excited about. I feel like I’m growing up. It’s scary.”

He finishes the second syllable on a smile and laughs.

“But it’s also fun.”

After nearly two hours, John is ready to go. He looks and sounds happy. The wound of 2017 isn’t fully healed, but this bloodletting sounded and felt cathartic. Instead of waiting inside for his car to be swung around by the valet, John stepped into the sunlight. The rain has moved on.