The Colts’ complete to their 2021 season has driven a narrative of examining their collapse and figuring out what is following for extra than 3 months.
It despatched Darius Leonard to an critical second of realization amid the most bodily and mentally complicated season of his career. The Colts’ All-Professional linebacker exposed Wednesday he was fighting a substantial psychological overall health fight while also attempting to participate in by means of the pain of a nagging ankle damage, hindering his general performance and negatively influencing his mental state in a profound fashion.
“In this profession, often you feel like you don’t have a say so in your private life just mainly because it really is all football, all soccer,” Leonard said, by means of the Indianapolis Star. “When you come to feel like you have to hold a shade up on your individual existence due to the fact of your soccer lifestyle, it eats you up.
“I fell out of enjoy with the match. I wasn’t making the most of it any longer.”
Leonard’s satisfaction of soccer was additional hindered by a bout with COVID-19 at a very important stage of the 2021 common season, as perfectly as the seemingly consistent pull of fret about a pair of unwell household members back house. Right after the Colts hit rock bottom with their 7 days 18 decline to Jacksonville, Leonard said he needed time away from the activity.
He took two months to rest and get better — both of those physically and mentally.
Now he believes he’s in a better spot and suggests he is on the suitable keep track of with the ankle injury, in spite of declining to endure a different surgical procedure on it in the offseason.
“It truly is hooked up, it is there,” Leonard mentioned. “It feels a total ton greater than what it did, coming from the end of the period. A great deal of time to rest, striving to make it more robust. I experience greater coming into this period than I did last calendar year, I can say that.”
He is doing the job toward avoiding a potential procedure on the ankle, which did not reduce him from an additional All-Professional selection in his stellar vocation but did keep him from currently being ready to complete at his best capability in Indianapolis’ essential, two-week collapse to near 2021.
“I hope not,”