The root of madness

I don't know what it is that compels a man to pick up a gun and shoot a doctor and the doctor's wife and the doctor's two grandchildren and two other people, and finally himself. I hope I never do.

All I know is where the mind goes when you find out the man who did all that used to play professional football.

Phillip Adams was a knockabout defensive back who got shuffled around to six teams in six seasons and played a total of 78 NFL games between 2010 and 2015. He tore up his ankle as a rookie in San Francisco and later had two concussions in three games with the Raiders in 2012. 

That's about all we know about him, other than he played his college ball at South Carolina State. And that yesterday, in Rock Hill, S.C., he picked up a .45 and a 9-millimeter and killed Dr. Robert Lesslie, Lesslie's wife and their two grandchildren, ages 9 and 5.

He also killed a 38-year-old man named James Lewis, and left another 38-year-old man named Robert Shook fighting for his life in a Charlotte, N.C., hospital. Then he went to his parents house and shot himself in his bedroom.

And so another day of madness in an increasingly mad nation, and the fresh realization that there are dark corners of the human soul that bring only ruin if explored. And the sort of questions that lead only to speculation, which is unfair and ghoulish and also unavoidable.

Especially if, again, a man spent a good many of his 32 years bashing his head against other men.

No one knows if that had anything to do with Phillip Adams becoming a spree killer yesterday, but, yes, you can't avoid wondering. When the investigating authorities say "There's nothing right now that makes sense to any of us," your mind goes there. Because there was nothing that made any sense about Dave Duerson or Junior Seau or Andre Waters or Justin Strzelczyk, the former Steelers lineman who climbed in his pickup truck one day and drove 90 mph into oncoming traffic until he hit a tanker truck head-on and died.

All of the aforementioned were driven mad, a lot of smart folks now believe, by a condition called CTE. And that CTE was a product of their profession, which dictated they fling themselves into other men with foot-pounds of force unimagined by those who played their game four or five decades ago.

I don't know if that affected Phillip Adams. His father thinks so, but that doesn't mean anything. Truth is, it's impossible to know at this point. 

But the mind goes there nonetheless, and keeping it from happening is just as impossible. It's the price football pays for its years of denial about repetitive head trauma and its cumulative effect.

Now they are forever linked. And we will forever be unable not to wonder when a Phillip Adams picks up a gun.