The toll

 Saw a news item this morning about former Colts standout Darius Leonard, and you can cancel the all-points bulletin. His whereabouts are no longer unknown. 

It seems Darius Leonard is in Florida.

Coaching a high school football team.

At the still-tender age of 29.

And if you're thinking now, "Wow, he's only 29?", join the club. Because it seems like eons since you heard his name. 

Amazingly, though, it's only been three years since he was a wrecking-ball linebacker for the Horseshoes, blowing up plays and forcing fumbles and recovering same.  Man planned, and Darius Leonard laughed. It was the fall of 2021, and he was a four-time All-Pro, and he was all of 26 years old.

And then ...

And then Jerry Glanville's home truth -- the NFL means Not For Long -- fell on Leonard like the sky itself.

What happened was, he got hurt. Back. Nerve damage. Surgery.

Done.

 The injury, and the surgery, robbed him of the explosiveness that made him special. That made him a player, and not just another example of the awful toll pro football takes on its employees -- another example, if you will, of someone who's no longer invincible in the way every stickout player feels he is, and that allows him to do wondrous things.

Just five days ago, for instance, I saw Saquon Barkley of the Eagles execute an open-field spin and then hurdle an oncoming tackler backward. It was one of the most amazing things any of us ever saw, and we all grabbed our heads and yelped "Whaaaaat!" almost in unison. And I'll wager none of us (Saquon, too, I'm guessing) ever considered for a nanosecond how easily it could have landed him in traction.

And it could have. In a dozen, fifty, a hundred ways.

But in the NFL everything comes at you so fast and from so many angles it's instinct that enables you to thrive, and without it you're lucky to survive. Without it, you start to think too much. And if you think too much -- even if it's only for an eyeblink of an eyeblink --  the game becomes too fast. 

And then you're no longer a wrecking ball. You're just a wrecked one.

Saquon Barkley is still the former, because his amazing feat Sunday was clearly pure instinct. Darius Leonard, on the other hand, is now the latter, because injury robbed him of what made him great, and maybe robbed him of the instinct that was its meat and drink, too.

I can't say for sure if that was the case for him. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. Everyone's different, and outsiders like me know what we're talking about less often than we think.

All I know is, Leonard's 29 years old and coaching high school kids in Florida, and his cell ain't chirpin'. He's a free agent, but even though players drop like flies once the season gets into November, no one's calling.

 It's possible he didn't expect them to. It's possible, maybe even probable, that after three years he's moved on to whatever life has for him next.

If so, Godspeed to him.