Retired 23-year-old NFL veteran Rolando McClain said he walked away from the game because "I felt like Aaron Hernandez, like I just wanted to kill somebody."
McClain told ESPN he felt so much rage and anger he feared he would do something he would regret. Before allowing that he happen, he returned to his hometown of Tuscaloosa, Ala. "to get his life together and finish his degree."
ESPN reports a peaceful life in a college town stood in stark contrast to the fast and loose lifestyle McClain had started to live, leading to the Oakland Raiders cutting him after making him a first-round draft pick and signing him to a guaranteed $23 million contract.
McClain told ESPN after getting the money he became an easy target of friends and relatives, at one point spending almost $600,000 on cars for them. Soon after, he started to "lose his love for the game."
In December of 2011, he was arrested in connection with a shooting and less than two years later was again jailed for having his car windows tinted too dark and providing false identity to police.
In 2013, McClain was signed by the Ravens, only to be arrested 10 days later on disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges.
"If I would have stayed on the same path, I would have ended up locked in a cage like an animal," he told ESPN. "That has to be the only outcome."
Raised in a single-parent home, McClain told ESPN guns, violence and drugs were all around him. He said he ran away at 15 and lived on friends couches, adding "football was my mask."
McClain told ESPN for now he has found some peace away from the game, though he hopes to return as perhaps as early as next season.
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