NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As Tennessee Titans wide receiver Calvin Ridley heads into Year 2 with the franchise, he said he’s in a better headspace in his life after injuries and a mental health journey, which included a gambling suspension, derailed his career.
In a detailed interview with ESPN, he discussed what losing football meant to him, as well as playing through a broken foot in 2020, what he has learned along the way and a detailed look at the gambling situation that led to him missing the 2022 season.
Ridley is entering his second season with the Titans and is the team’s No. 1 receiver. He is one of five captains voted upon by his teammates. Ridley has come full circle since hitting what some would consider to be rock bottom.
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“The suspension gave me time to rest, get physically better, and mentally stronger,” Ridley told ESPN. “After that year, I was ready to come back.”
At Ridley’s request, the Falcons gave him time away from football. He was able to rehab his foot and take care of his mental health. It also gave him time to connect with family.
But on this one particular trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, things took a turn. Ridley spent time with his younger brothers, Riley and Clayton, and that’s when his gambling incident took place. He watched basketball on a Friday night with his brother and some friends who were placing bets on games via an app.
Ridley joined them and made wagers, and it rolled over to college football games the next day. Then Sunday rolled around, and Ridley placed wagers on the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Falcons.
“I downloaded the app sitting there not knowing that I was breaking a rule or anything,” Ridley said. “Those were the only two NFL games I bet.”
He would go on to miss the rest of the season, and in March 2022, the suspension for gambling would come down.
Ahead of the trade deadline in the 2022 season, Atlanta would trade the suspended Ridley to the Jacksonville Jaguars for conditional 2023 sixth-round and 2024 fourth-round picks.
“Football has been my job since I was a kid,” Ridley said. “That’s all I ever did, man. I never worked a job.”
Time away allowed Ridley to learn how to cope with his emotions, and when he finally got back to the playing field, he caught eight passes for 111 yards and a touchdown in his first game. He finished the season with 76 receptions for 1,016 yards and eight touchdowns.
The Jaguars tried to bring him back, offering him a contract that averaged around $20 million annually. But Ridley decided to test the free agent market — signing a four-year, $92 million deal with the Titans. A grueling 3-14 season yielded some frustrating moments for Tennessee, but Ridley finished the season with 1,017 yards and four touchdowns on 64 receptions.
“I learned a lot of tools during that process,” Ridley said of those years of tumult. “I still use those things today when it gets hard. I don’t let myself go too far down. I’ll flush out the bad thoughts, refresh my mind every time I go home.”
Ridley returned to Atlanta earlier this month when the Titans had joint practices with the Falcons. Returning to the Falcons’ facility in Flowery Branch evoked a lot of emotions for Ridley, heightened by returning to the place where it started.
“It was like, ‘Dang, how could I be working so hard for [Falcons] and they just flicked me without even trying to protect me or anything?'” Ridley said.
Atlanta selected Ridley after a stellar career at Alabama with the 26th pick in the 2018 draft. After two solid seasons, he exploded for a career-high 1,374 yards in 2020. It was the ninth-highest single-season total in Falcons franchise history. And Ridley did it while playing with what would later be diagnosed as a broken left foot.
The Falcons’ training staff initially diagnosed the injury as a bone bruise during the season, so Ridley resorted to painkillers to remain on the football field. It’s what he had done the previous two seasons when he was dealing with bone spurs on the same foot. Ridley ended up playing 15 games that season.
Heading into OTAs in 2021, Ridley knew something wasn’t right because he couldn’t run, and it felt like something was stabbing his foot.
“My foot was messed up,” Ridley said. “But, I’ve always been that guy — ‘Nah, I’m all right, I’m going to play. I’m going to keep playing on it.'”
After the previous staff was fired after a 4-12 record, the new head trainer sent Ridley to a specialist in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where it was immediately determined that he had a broken foot. Ridley had surgery that June and rushed back, eager to take on his new role as the No. 1 receiver after the new regime had traded Jones to the Titans.
Ridley has excelled at the sport since he was 8, but for the first time, he began to have second thoughts about being able to “kick DBs’ asses” because of the injured foot.
“If your mental ain’t good, your confidence isn’t there anymore,” Ridley said. “That’s what I was trying to tell them.”
To make things worse, Ridley’s home was burglarized during the Falcons’ season opener against the Philadelphia Eagles. The game was in Atlanta, so Ridley’s wife, Dominique, and their then-1-year-old daughter weren’t at the house. Security footage revealed several armed intruders ransacking the home.
Dominique struggled to sleep at night and couldn’t stand it when Ridley wasn’t with her in the house. Ridley started to feel the “weight of the world on his chest.”
After two away games and a home game, the foot clearly wasn’t getting any better. Ridley asked for time to heal both mentally and physically. His “mind was messed up” from wanting to be home to protect his family and not being the same caliber of player.
The team allowed him to miss the Week 5 game, a 27-20 win over the New York Jets in London. That game was followed by the bye week, giving Ridley two weeks to stay off the foot. Ridley returned in Week 7 only to catch four passes for 26 yards. After five games, Ridley stepped away from football to focus on his mental health.
“I never felt like that before,” Ridley said. “Mental health is real.”
The version of Ridley that takes the field now for the Titans is in a different place — football is fun for him again. A big part of his excitement stems from rookie quarterback Cam Ward’s arrival after being the No. 1 pick in the draft.
“I could feel something in me,” Ridley said. “It was like, this kid’s good and I got to be good. I can’t fall behind. I got to be a help. I got to be a big help cause it’s time to dominate.”
The duo shined in OTAs, minicamp and then training camp. Fittingly, Ward’s first completion of the preseason was a 27-yard strike to Ridley on a dig route against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“That boy right there is different,” Ward said. “I ain’t never thrown to no receiver that moves and cuts like him. He’s one of the top-five receivers in the NFL. I’m blessed to play with him because he’s going to make me look good.”
It wasn’t easy for Ridley, 30, to turn things around the way he did, but Titans coach Brian Callahan chimed in about where he’s at today.
“There’s probably not a guy that practices as hard as [Ridley] on a snap-to-snap basis,” Callahan said Thursday on why Ridley was chosen to be one of the team captains. “He’s really grown in his leadership. I’m actually really proud of Rid and the things that he’s accomplished in that realm over the course of the offseason. He’s deserving of it, he has earned it, and I’m glad his teammates see it the same way.”
