Super Bowl XXXIX week was winding down, a turbo-charged five days in Jacksonville, Fla. churning out stories in the backdrop of the Sunday title game between the defending champion Patriots and the Eagles, who had finally slayed the NFC Championship Game hex after three previous tries.
An interview with iconic Eagle Chuck Bednarik — “Concrete Charlie” — about his flattening of Frank Gifford in a 1960 game; a feature on nearby William Raines High School, where current Eagles Brian Dawkins and Lito Sheppard were alumni; chasing mouthy Eagles wideout Freddie Mitchell around Alltel Stadium on media day and documenting his boasts.
But in the middle of the media blitz, Barret Robbins dropped into my assignment box. The mammoth former Oakland Raiders center — who had gone AWOL twenty-four hours before the start of Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego two years earlier, when Robbins’ Raiders played Tampa Bay — was in a life-threatening situation about 350 miles south in Miami Beach.
Only a few weeks before the start of the Super Bowl between the Pats and Eagles, three Miami Beach officers had responded to a possible burglary in a commercial building on Washington Avenue, but instead found the 31-year-old Robbins barefoot and disoriented in a women’s restroom.
According to an arrest report and testimonials, a violent altercation ensued between police and the 6’3” Robbins, whose playing weight was 320 pounds. All three officers were injured during the melee, and one of them, Mike Muley, fired five shots, two of which hit Robbins in his mid-section. One bullet pierced Robbins’ heart, but he miraculously survived the shooting and ended up at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, hooked up to a ventilator and in a semi-comatose state. He was later charged with three felony counts of attempted murder.
The Story Behind the Headlines
By the time I co-wrote the story on Robbins with my Daily News colleague Mike O’Keeffe (which ran Super Bowl Sunday), Robbins was still hospitalized. The details of his troubled past — bipolar disorder, past concerning incidents and behavior, divorce from his wife Marisa (the mother of their two daughters, Madison and Marley), cut from the Raiders after a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs, and, of course, the Super Bowl disappearance — became public again or surfaced for the first time.
I scrambled to cull together interviews for the story, and talked to Robbins’ family members (although not Marisa, who declined an interview request), Ed O’Donnell, a veteran Miami defense attorney who along with his son, Ed IV, were representing Robbins, some of Robbins’ former teammates and opponents who were in Jacksonville, and the late Peter Whybrow, a renowned psychiatrist who was an expert on bipolar disorder.
It was several years before the concussion-football-head trauma link engulfed the headlines and the NFL, and years before pro athletes like NFL quarterback Dak Prescott, NBA player Kevin Love or women’s tennis star Naomi Osaka spoke publicly about mental health challenges, and how to access the tools and resources necessary to fight depression, anxiety and other mood disorders.
When Robbins’ name surfaced in a news story in the early 2000s, it was usually accompanied by troubling details about some type of setback. Not until Robbins — and his ex, Marisa — agreed to be interviewed by HBO “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” reporter Andrea Kremer in 2009, did the depth of Barret’s mental illness come to light.
“I was out of my mind, out of control,” Robbins told Kremer when she asked why he had left San Diego before the Super Bowl to party in Mexico. “My life was unmanageable. I was completely living in a fantasy world. In my mind, we had already won the Super Bowl, and we were celebrating. That’s how delusional I was.”
Remembering Barret Robbins
Kremer was one of scores of voices who expressed their sadness after Robbins’ death was announced by the Raiders late last month. He was 52, but no cause was given in the team’s statement that paid tribute to their former center.
“The Raiders Family is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Barret Robbins. Oakland’s second-round draft pick out of TCU (Texas Christian University) in 1995, he was among the league’s top centers over nine seasons with the Raiders, earning first-team All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors in 2002,” read part of the Raiders statement.
Virtually every obituary on Robbins revisited the 2003 Super Bowl disappearance, and many clips mentioned the 2005 Miami incident. Robbins’ ex, Marisa, however, chose to honor the father to their two daughters with deep empathy, and she alluded to what seemed to be Barret’s years-long struggle with mental anguish and demons.
“Our hearts are broken… Barret, you were so loved by so many. Our lives won’t ever be the same with you gone. I pray you are pain free now and will smile down on us.”
“He was a really good fella. Loved his little girls,” said Ed O’Donnell Sr., Robbins’ former attorney, in a phone interview.
O’Donnell said that he had not kept in regular contact with Robbins over the years, but on the occasions when they spoke, O’Donnell braced himself for bad news.
“Barret would call me, out of the blue, every once in a while. It was never when he wasn’t manic,” said O’Donnell. “That’s when they want to talk, when they’re in the black hole. It’s so hard to try and understand it.”
The Super Bowl Incident
When Robbins disappeared before the biggest game of his professional football life in 2003, he crossed the border to Mexico and ended up on a binge-drinking bender. He didn’t play in the title game, which the Buccaneers won in a rout.
Amy Trask, the former Raiders’ chief executive officer, said in an interview that she was up early for a jog the day of the Super Bowl and saw Robbins outside the team hotel lobby.
“As I was leaving the lobby, Barret gets out of the taxi. I was heading out on a run. We had a great conversation, and it didn’t strike me that there was any issue,” said Trask.
Trask said the Raiders’ offensive line that season was one of the best, and removing a key cog in the title game was crushing. But, she added, the broader and more concerning issue was Barret Robbins’ health.
Trask said she never “bore any ill will toward Barret,” and she called Robbins’ mental health journey a “very, very sad story.”
Mental Health in Sports
Years later, when Trask became CEO of the Big3 basketball league — founded by rapper/actor Ice Cube and entertainment exec Jeff Kwatinetz — Trask said Barret Robbins was the inspiration behind her helping to implement the “Big3 Be Well” mental health policy within the league.
“When we put in place the ‘Big3 Be Well’ program, I shared with Cube and Jeff that it was particularly meaningful to me because of what happened to Barret,” said Trask.
“My hope is that a wellness program like this will be adopted by all sports leagues. If it can help even one person, that can make a difference.”
A Gentle Side
Robbins did recover from the gunshot wounds and a bout of pneumonia after the 2005 altercation with Miami police. He later received probation and was ordered to enter a treatment program.
O’Donnell and his son, Ed IV, said that despite all of the negative headlines over the years concerning their one-time client, Robbins had a softness to him, too, a gentle side that the father-son lawyers remembered with fondness.
After a court hearing on the Miami matter, Ed O’Donnell Jr. said he had to drive Robbins home. But first, there was a pitstop at O’Donnell’s daughter’s Christmas show.
“Here were all these parents seated at their kids’ show, and then there was this giant football player towering over everyone in the back row,” said O’Donnell. “But he sat quietly, watched the whole show intently. That’s the Barret I’ll always remember.”