Only five players in Bills history played more seasons or games than Talley. He’s on their Wall of Fame and was voted to their 50th anniversary team in 2009.
Trouble Sleeping
But for years he hasn’t been able to flip his shirt collar down or fashion a necktie. His arms can’t rise up and bend that way.
He rarely sleeps longer than 90 minutes, frequently climbing onto the floor with his legs propped on an ottoman for back relief.
He sometimes must use his knees to steer his pickup truck because of wrist pain from jamming linemen and tight ends.
“This is not what he signed up for,” Gabrielle Talley said. “My dad is one of the toughest people you’d ever meet. He’d walk through a wall for you.
“But nobody would sign up to put their brain and their body through that if they knew what the risks were.”
Janine Talley was asked what she felt the biggest points were to make about her husband’s story.
She looked up from her laptop and studied her husband. She thought for a few moments.
Janine: “What I want people to know is how much he loved being a Buffalo Bill and how difficult it was to leave the team.”
Darryl: “Oooooooo . . .”
Janine: “Darryl offered to play for the veteran minimum wage.”
Darryl: “Because I didn’t want to leave. The man is dead now, but [former Bills general manager] John Butler said he offered me a contract, and he didn’t.”
Janine: “The separation was awful for him and awful for me to watch.”
Darryl: “That sent me into a deep depression. There’s nothing in this world that I’ve seen or heard that will replace that void of playing in front of those fans.”
The Talleys agreed that it took him at least four years to get over his 1995 Bills departure.
Within that gloomy period, Janine Talley started to get frightened for her husband. One particular incident confused and scared her.
She woke up at about 3:00 a.m., and Darryl wasn’t in bed anymore. She searched the house yet couldn’t figure out where he was. She saw no lights on.
Eventually, she opened the door to their recreation room. In pitch blackness, Darryl sat cross-legged in front of the pool table, a glass of Jack Daniel’s in his hand, staring at the framed jerseys of his former teammates: Andre Reed, Hull, Smith, Thomas, Bennett.
She asked what he was doing. He didn’t answer.
Upon hearing his wife recount that story, Darryl Talley muttered, “I’ve felt that way a number of times: ‘I’m just lost.’”
He never was diagnosed with a concussion, but he’s no fool. Seau and Strzelczyk didn’t have documented concussions either.
So how many concussions would Darryl Talley guess he suffered? He emitted that warbling laugh again.
“Too many to count,” Talley replied. “I’ve hit people, got up, felt like my eyes were bouncing back and forth, or I’d see mini lights. I’d have to say at least 75 times I saw little lights. I’d have to say it’s got to be more than 100 concussions.”
Dr. Julian Bailes is the former neurology department chair at the Talleys’ alma mater. They have not met, but Bailes knows those flashbulbs Talley described.
Bailes is codirector of the NorthShore Neurological Institute in Evanston, Illinois. He has conducted brain autopsies on NFL players, oversaw DeLamielleure’s living CTE exams, examined Strzelczyk’s brain, and sits on several sports safety boards. Bailes is chairman of the Pop Warner medical advisory committee.
“Every time you get hit and see flashing lights and you feel it in your head,” Bailes said, “that’s probably a significant subconcussion blow.”
Subconcussions are brain injuries that might not rise to the level of a diagnosed concussion. Players don’t necessarily wobble off the field or experience memory loss with a subconcussion. But the damage from repeated subconcussions can accumulate exponentially and may contribute to CTE.
The Talleys have lived in the same area for the past 17 years, but Darryl cannot remember the garbage is collected every Monday and Thursday. He cannot remember their ATM identification number, which hasn’t changed since his rookie year.
On a visit to Gabrielle Talley’s home in Birmingham, Alabama, he tried to make repairs to her SUV. Each time he needed a tool, he went to her second-floor apartment to retrieve it rather than get the toolbox.
“He just doesn’t make the simple connections that come easily for the rest of us,” Gabrielle Talley said.
Depression and suicidal thoughts are common CTE characteristics.
“It’s horrible, and it has to be taken seriously,” Bailes said. “Junior Seau played football for 30 years. You think of his style of football and how he played his position. He drove off a cliff two years before he shot himself in the chest.
“It’s an extremely terrible and poignant part of the emerging CTE profile. We always worry that prior brain injury can be associated with an increased incidence of suicide later in life.”
Seau shot himself in the chest two years ago, preserving his brain for examination. A year earlier, Dave Duerson killed himself the same way and left directions in a suicide note for his family to donate his brain.
Seau and Duerson had experienced failed businesses, memory loss, abrupt mood swings, angry outbursts, and other issues the Talleys can identify.
Darryl Talley admitted an especially dark moment while a guest at the 2002 Pro Bowl. Miserable over how much he missed football, he considered jumping off the balcony at the Hilton Hawaiian Village hotel.
In explaining why he wouldn’t kill himself now, Talley emphasized over and again that he’s not a “coward.” Upon reflection, he regretted using that word and took it back. He didn’t want to disparage anyone’s memory or offend their families.
“I think he needs to look at suicide prevention,” Duerson’s widow, Alicia Duerson, said from her home in the Chicago area. “If he’s ever done some study on that or dealt with anybody who’s lost a loved one, it’s not about being a coward.
“It’s someone who’s in agony and pain and can’t deal with it anymore. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to take your own life.”
Alicia Duerson paused for a moment before rushing off the phone.
“People who commit suicide are not cowards,” she said. “I just . . . I don’t know. I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now. I have to go.”
Failure and Denial
Darryl and Janine Talley tried to prepare for NFL retirement the prudent way. They saved money while he played. Their goal merely was to keep working, make enough money to exist, send their daughters to private school, and then pay for their college educations.
“I didn’t play golf every day, chase hos up and down the street, or do drugs,” Darryl Talley said.
What he initially wanted to do was serve as a Bills assistant coach. He said he called owner Ralph Wilson to inquire about an entry-level job but was told the Bills don’t hire former players. Alex Van Pelt and Pete Metzelaars later became Bills assistants while Wilson was alive.
Darryl Talley in August 1999 purchased Sentry Barricades, a business that handled traffic signage and detour control for emergencies, construction sites, road closures, and the like.
Even though Talley was coping with depression and physical decline, Sentry Barricades grew to 17 employees.
The economy ravaged Sentry Barricades in 2008. Some clients went bankrupt. Not only did those contracts evaporate, but so too did the money they owed Talley’s company.
Janine Talley said he tapped his 401(k) and bought out his NFL pension at 25 percent value to salvage Sentry Barricades, but they still couldn’t honor their vendors or make payroll.
“My dad’s work ethic and perseverance is what you see in children’s books and people tell myths about,” Gabrielle Talley said. “But he couldn’t do anything to save the business even though he kept trying.
“He couldn’t get it to work and feels that he’s let everyone down.”
> Most heartbreaking to Darryl and Janine was cashing in their daughters’ college funds.
“Do you know how humbling that was?” Janine Talley said. “At this point in our lives, we thought we probably would be retired, golfing, and have enough financial security to travel, visit our girls, be able to buy a vehicle when one broke down.
“That’s not the way it’s played out. I don’t see at our age where things are going to get any better.”
The Talleys couldn’t afford to attend Reed’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last August. Just as Smith, Thomas, and Bennett helped with the rent and some of Gabrielle’s college, they picked up the tab to get the Talleys there.
Smith is paying for the Talleys’ health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
The NFL’s all-time sacks leader has reached out to the Bills to get Talley some help but came away disillusioned with the team’s indifference.
“I’ve had a conversation or two, and I’ll just leave it at that,” Smith said. “I was somewhat optimistic, but there was no follow-up. That was the disappointment.”
Smith declined to divulge names or specifics about the Bills’ lack of response.
“For someone to be so loyal to his previous employer,” Smith said, “for someone who gave his all to their organization, to see the lack of support is just very concerning. It’s sad.
“There should have been a lot more help than is being presented to him. It’s imperative we do whatever we can to make sure this does not end up as a tragic story of someone who was beloved by players, coaches, fans.”
The Bills declined to comment on Smith’s frustrations. Smith conceded the Bills could be in an awkward spot by assisting one former player but not all of them.
Then Smith rattled off a handful of times when Talley played hurt or came back from surgery seemingly faster than possible for the Bills.
“If that doesn’t show your allegiance and commitment to the organization, I don’t know what does,” Smith said. “Darryl wanted to help the team win.
“Once a player is done playing, the team pretty much washes their hands clean so they don’t have issues with retired players. From my standpoint, though, there’s something that should be done in this circumstance.”
Darryl Talley isn’t a fan of all this sympathy and charity.
He doesn’t want it, but he knows his family needs it.
“To rely on somebody else to help you? It hurts like you don’t want to believe,” Darryl Talley said. “You can lay in the bed and cry thinking about it. It drives at you. It eats at you.
“Not to be able to do whatever you want to do mentally or physically, you have a dignity . . . It’s very disheartening. But I want to see my kids get old. That’s the only reason I’m here. Other than that, there’s nothing.”
His hands cradled his forehead then slumped hard onto the wicker chair’s armrests. Janine Talley watched from the couch across from him.
“I’ve used up most of my useful life,” he continued. “The part that hasn’t been used up doesn’t look like it can be too useful.
“It’s going to be a pain in the ass. Getting old is not for sissies, but what drives me nuts is the NFL doesn’t think it has anything to do with it.”
GREG HANLON
Sins of the Preacher
FROM SPORTSONEARTH
I. Kayla
“I’m uncomfortable but I don’t say anything, ’cause in my head I’m going through all the talks he gave in class about how he was such a Christian guy, and so I was like don’t—you know—don’t think there’s something happening here that’s not. You know, don’t offend him.”
ADRIAN, MICH.—Chad Curtis didn’t tell his lawyer that he’s doing this interview, he admits with a sly smile. Obviously, she’d be angry, because he’s appealing his conviction, and talking to a reporter is likely not in his best interests. But Curtis is still upset that he didn’t get to take the stand at his trial. He sees himself as a man for whom telling the truth trumps calculated self-interest.
That’s why, he believes, he has sat in prison since October on a seven-to-15-year conviction for molesting three teenage girls at the rural Michigan high school where he volunteered. Curtis, 45, says he could have taken a misdemeanor plea, served a year and a half in county, and been home with his wife and six kids by now. But he’s an innocent man in his own mind, so he couldn’t bring himself to swear on the Bible—which he quotes frequently and encyclopedically during our two-hour interview at the Harrison Correctional Facility—and admit to a crime he didn’t commit.
As a major league baseball player, he wore a bracelet that said, WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? Now that he’s a prisoner, he tells me, “Jesus lived the perfect life, and that got him crucified.” By this, he means there’s historical precedent for the harsh judgments of human beings to be 180 degrees wrong, and that he’s in good company.
He asks if I’m familiar with the show Pretty Little Liars. He says he prays daily for his teenage accusers, all of whom had similar athletic builds and All-American good looks. He says all he was doing in that locked, windowless, dungeon-like training room was helping those girls recover from sports injuries. He says he took the same all-out approach to treating sports injuries as he did to playing baseball—“whether it was running into an outfield wall or breaking up a double play.”
As for why the girls thought otherwise, and accused him of touching their rear ends, breasts, and, in one case, genitals, he doesn’t want to speculate: “I’ve been really discouraged by how often and how wrong people have assumed my motivations, so I’ll extend them that same courtesy,” he says.
He doesn’t mention that not a single boy testified to having gone down to the trainer’s room for similar treatment.
We’re sitting in a side room off the main visitors’ room of Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Michigan, which is roughly equidistant between Ann Arbor and Toledo. Curtis’s hair is a graying version of the same 1950s-style flattop buzz cut he wore as a player, and his broad shoulders fill out his prison uniform perfectly. He cuts a similarly classic figure in state blues as he did in Yankees pinstripes. His job now is to administer sports games (setting up cones, etc.) and he says he’s made a lot of good friends. Despite the stories about child sex offenders in prison, he says he hasn’t been attacked. He keeps busy by reading the Bible and by “work[ing] out like crazy,” even though the weight pit is outside and the Michigan winter has been brutal.
Yes, religion and discipline have always been his calling cards: he told his students at one high school that he went years in the majors without once eating dessert or drinking soda. He never drinks alcohol, and he never swears: “Rid yourselves of . . . filthy language from your lips,” Colossians 3:8 says.
He also says he has never cheated on his wife, walking the straight and narrow path of a Godly man while countless teammates acted like kids in a candy store. (He considers himself a “Bible-believing Christian” and eschews denominational titles.) If his teammates were doing the wrong things—missing chapel, not playing the game the right way, or even listening to explicit rap or watching Jerry Springer—Curtis would call them out, for their own good. He was the ultimate God Squadder, noble to some but insufferably pushy to others, which might help explain why he played for six teams in his 10-year career. But no matter to Curtis: “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?” states James 4:4.
Now, however, his bearing—the burdened gestures, the heavy sighs—bespeaks a martyr’s pained awareness of the fallibility of others. People have let him down.
Like Andy Pettitte. The two were good friends, regulars at Bible study with the Yankees. When Pettitte was waffling back and forth on whether or not to retire several years ago, Curtis was on the phone with him at 5:30 in the morning giving him spiritual guidance. But since the allegations? Crickets.
And Kayla. Of all his accusers, this one hurts him most. The two were close, so
close that Curtis approached her one day and said they were getting too close: “We could have a relationship within the bounds of the law if we chose to do that. But that wouldn’t be good for you and that wouldn’t be good for me,” he says he told her.
But he is not bitter, he says. He has faith that God will use this tragedy for good. He believes that one day, Kayla will admit to falsely accusing him, that “she’ll wake up, throw up her hands and just say, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’
“And when that happens, I have every intention of forgiving her.”
The western part of Michigan, in the area around Grand Rapids, doesn’t conform to the popular notion that the state is firmly in the blue column. The airport is named after Gerald Ford, and Barry County, where Lakewood High School is located, went heavily for Romney. It’s across the state from Detroit and Ann Arbor and much further away culturally, its religious conservatism dating back to the 19th century, when Dutch Calvinist separatists settled in the area so they could freely practice their strict brand of Protestantism. Several people described the area to me as “The Bible Belt of the Midwest.”
At Lakewood, a consolidated public school drawing its students from four tiny towns, roughly 35 minutes east of Grand Rapids, religion and sports are pillars of identity. And no teacher could validate such an identity quite like Mr. Curtis, who had grown up in the area. He was clean-cut, handsome, and charismatic, his eyes framed by a perpetual furrow that conveyed his moral seriousness. He was happily married to his college sweetheart. They and their six children all had first and last names starting with the letter “C.”
Discipline and undeviating faith in God had led him all the way to a 10-year career in the majors, to Yankee Stadium. In 1999, he hit a game-winning home run in the World Series against the Braves, then, in the next game, caught the last out of the last World Series of the 20th century. He gave away half of his earnings to nonprofit organizations—groups like Focus on the Family and anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, he tells me. After he retired, instead of going someplace warm or exotic, he decided to come back to western Michigan, the area that made him who he was, the area perfectly aligned with his sensibilities.
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