Sports Illustrated caught up with former Oakland Raiders first overall pick JaMarcus Russell for a feature in this week’s issue. From a barbershop in Mobile, Ala., the former quarterback recalls his failed career in Oakland, his betrayal by former Raiders coach Tom Cable, his battle with sleep apnea, the lack of support from his teammates, among other topics.
The feature is quite lengthy. Read the full version here. I’ve provided some notable passages below for those more in favor of some “cliff notes.”
About reports that he fell asleep during team meetings:
“In the NFL, my first year, I had to be there at 6:30 before practice and be on the treadmill for an hour,” he says. “Then meetings come, I sit down, eat my fruit. We watch film, and maybe I got tired. Coach Flip [quarterback coach John DeFilippo] pulled me aside and said, ‘What are you doing for night life?’ I said, ‘Coach, I’m just chilling.’ He said, ‘I need to get you checked out.’ I did the sleep test, and they said I had apnea.”
About his weight:
“I put weight on easy, and I can take it off easy. Do I look fat now?” If Russell were a steak, you might say he’s heavily marbled. But fat? No. He’s not in NFL shape, but he’s doesn’t look far off.
About trying the drug “Purple Drank,” a drink laced with the opiate codeine, a common ingredient in prescription-strength cough syrup:
Though Russell admits he failed a drug test for codeine while he was in the NFL, he says he was taking cough syrup at the time to combat his sleep apnea. As for the Mobile arrest, a friend of Russell’s who was in the house at the time of the raid claimed the drink was his. The charge against Russell was dropped. “I don’t have a drug problem,” he says. “What I do have is police trailing every car I got like I’m some dope dealer.”
On reports that he’s currently broke:
“Football isn’t paying me now,” he says. “You make $1 million a game and you can do whatever. It’s not like that anymore; I need to put myself in a place where those zeroes in the bank last for a long time. But I’m not broke. Far from it.”
On reports Russell was fired by his life coach, John Lucas:
“I felt like I was overtraining, running my body into the ground, so I left Houston,” Russell says. “But fired? Me and Coach Lucas, we’re cool. We still talk. I texted him just the other day.” (Says Lucas, “I don’t know where that [report] came from. JaMarcus is a good kid, I’m telling you, who just needs to find his motivation. But we still talk. Have him tell you about his sleep apnea. A lot [of his issues] come from that. And no one knows it.”)
On 11 of his friends and family members dying during his tenure in Oakland:
“I went through so much no one knew about,” he says. “Go to a funeral on Saturday, fly into the game on Sunday. Then I hear, ‘He doesn’t lead by example.’ Really?”
About the lack of support he received from his teammates:
The teammates who complained of his leadership but didn’t accept his offer to come to Mobile, all expenses paid, and work out with him in the off-season. “Things weren’t going right, and it felt sometimes like everything fell back on me,” he says. “I take some responsibility, but I was one guy… . I may have missed a throw, but I didn’t give up 42 points, I didn’t miss a block.”
About feeling betrayed by former Raiders head coach Tom Cable:
“All of a sudden,” says Russell, “he flipped the script. I stuck my neck out for him. Didn’t complain when he benched me as the starter. Didn’t complain when he called the same plays five damn times. Didn’t [badmouth] him to other coaches. When the [media] asks me, I say, ‘He’s a good coach, a good guy.’ Then I hear he says I was the worst thing ever happened to the Raiders, if it weren’t for him we’d be in the playoffs? … It just got to where the game wasn’t fun for me.”
On being told by Al Davis he was released from the Raiders:
“He wished me the best and apologized that it came out this way. He said, ‘I’m getting older, and things are getting out of my hands. I know you’re going to go to another team and make me look like an ass.'”
About what Russell did once he signed his contract:
[H]e bought items that had once seemed abstractions: jewelry, a fleet of cars and a gated waterfront estate that looks like something out of Gone with the Wind. For this Russell is unapologetic. “What am I supposed to do?” he says. “Not get nicer clothes to wear and nicer cars to drive?”
About being charitable around Mobile, such as providing Thanksgiving turkeys to families, buying supplies for local schools and equipment for sports teams, among other donations:
“If I do go broke,” says Russell, who is unmarried and has no children, “it’s going to be from providing for my neighborhood and my family.”
On his future:
“I’ll keep moving, man,” he says. “But what if I don’t make it back to the NFL? I’ll be O.K. Being a competitor, I feel like I have unfinished business. Like, ‘It can’t end like this.'”
The gallery nods, ignoring the apparent contradictions. Russell leans in, practically whispering. “But want to know the truth?” he says. “I know that the game don’t owe me a damn thing.”
So what do I think about all that Russell shared? It sounds like a PR move. It sounds like he’s making up excuses for why his career never panned out. But ultimately, he needs to take responsibility. He can blame other people for not having his back. He can talk all he wants about stuff not working out in his personal life. But life isn’t supposed to be easy. His disappointing career comes back to only him. He’s the one who barely completed half of his passes. He’s the one who threw five more interceptions than touchdowns in his career. He’s the one who had a career passer rating of 65.2. It was up to him to improve his game, and he never did.
The Daily Rival 