Stephen A. Smith’s tone-deaf comment on Lane Johnson’s retirement highlights ongoing stigma surrounding mental health in sports
Philadelphia Eagles' Lane Johnson in action during an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Lane Johnson‘s retirement came at an unusual time.
Just four games into the 2026 season, Johnson stepped away from football after already announcing that this would be his final year. Days earlier, he had been a late inactive against the Los Angeles Rams.
But the timing should not overshadow the reason behind it.
Johnson’s struggles with mental health are well documented. He has become an advocate in recent years. Johnson gave it his all for 14 years, but there are things that become larger than football.
“I deeply wanted to gut it out for one more year; to take the field with my brothers for one last season,” Johnson said in a statement on Tuesday. “But after a lot of reflection, l’ve realized that my personal and family priorities in my life have changed. Right now, it is critical that I focus on my mental health. I owe it to my teammates, coaches, the organization and the fans to have my head and heart 100 percent in the game. And right now my heart is telling me that it’s time to say goodbye to football.”
The response from the tumultuous timing has been mixed. Perhaps the most disheartening, though, came from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith Wednesday morning on his show, First Take.
“Now he calls it quits, not before the season. Not in the offseason… four games into the 2026 season, a dude that has been in the league forever, sits back and says I need to focus on my mental health,” Smith said while laughing. “As an offensive tackle, lord you know [the Eagles’ situation] is bad. There’s no way [if the Eagles are] undefeated, winning football games, you’re thriving, everybody’s got the Super Bowl in their sights you walk away.
“You walk away because it’s a very very bad situation, and it doesn’t look to be getting any better. And this brother said, ‘hey, my life matters, it’s time. I’m gonna call it quits. My mental health, my mental.'”
Nothing about what Smith said is meritorious or proper. His comments miss the point entirely. Smith, who is paid $21 million annually, is not only dismissive of Johnson’s decision, but emblematic of a larger problem in sports media. While he is the high profile personality who goes on the worldwide leader of sports and says nonsensical stuff like this, he is not the first person to throw out the narrative that Johnson is “quitting on the team.”
Johnson, 36, has put his body on the line for the Eagles for 14 years. He was selected No. 4 overall in 2013, and lived up to his draft-hype and then some. He became a figure in Philadelphia, from his infamous dog-mask celebration after the Eagles’ Super Bowl victory to his 14 seasons as perhaps the best right tackle in the NFL.
But he has also struggled mightily with mental health. In 2021, Johnson missed three games while dealing with depression and anxiety.
“I would like to thank everyone for their understanding and support over the last two weeks,” Johnson said in a social media post on Oct. 18, 2021. “I appreciate the positive notes and messages as I’ve worked hard to restore my personal life. Depression and anxiety are things I’ve dealt with for a long time and have kept hidden from my friends and family. If you’re reading this and struggling, please know that you are not alone.”
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Johnson is now five years removed from that experience. Priorities change. His children are getting older. His parents are getting older. Those are his priorities, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Family and mental health always comes first before everything, no matter the situation.
But apparently not in this society, and it is something that needs to change. There are so many athletes who are going through the same things Johnson has who are afraid to come out and say it publicly.
These athletes are people before they are athletes. They have families. They have fears. They have problems that do not disappear when they walk onto the field. The only difference between Johnson and the person sitting at home watching him is that Johnson happens to be extraordinarily talented at football.
If the Eagles were undefeated, would Johnson suddenly no longer have anxiety? Would his family priorities disappear? Would the issues he has openly discussed for years vanish? Of course not. So why does the team’s record matter? Why does the calendar matter?
This is where sports media goes wrong. An athlete’s decision is filtered through the lens of the team. If a player plays through pain, he is praised for his toughness. If he steps away to protect himself, he is quitting on his teammates. He is letting his teammates down. Now he should have waited until the offseason. That is not toughness. That is a double standard.
It is an aspect of life and sports we do not discuss enough. Often, when it is brought up, it is through insensitive comments like Smith’s.
“Trying to describe that to people who have no clue or what it’s like is very difficult,” Johnson said in an interview with FOX’s Jay Glazer, who also struggles with mental health, in 2021. “You lose touch of your sense of self. You lose touch of what’s really going on around you. And what we really tend to do is lock up, not want to say anything.”
Mental health is a serious thing. When you spend 17-plus weeks in the spotlight while grinding through the other 350 or so days to stay on the gridiron, it piles up. Or even if you are not a football player and you are working in any profession, or a student in school. It can affect anyone. It is scary, and people do not understand it.
“It just feels like doom,” Johnson said. “I just want to run away and not come back kind of thing.”
Johnson said in 2021, after being diagnosed with anxiety in college at Oklahoma, he had nausea and would throw up every day. It got so bad he was starting to throw up blood.
Medications exist. Some have the ability to just keep pushing forward. Others do not. There is only so much you can mask.
When one of the industry’s most prominent voices responds to a player’s mental-health decision by questioning why he did not wait until the offseason, it reinforces the very stigma athletes like Johnson have spent years trying to break.
“In this league, the NFL, where it’s, you know, gladiator type sport, [mental health] is not often talked about, but it is often felt throughout the league,” Johnson said. “I thought achievements, how I’ve done on the field was gonna make it feel better. It only amplified the situation.”
Mental health affects so many more athletes than we know. It affects so many more people than we know. Perhaps Johnson will inspire more to come out and speak about their struggles. That was his goal in 2021. Maybe if personalities like Smith did some research and had a grip, we would not have to have these types of discussions.
We cannot continue telling athletes that it is brave to play through physical pain while treating it as weakness when they finally admit that they are struggling mentally. We cannot glorify athletes for sacrificing everything for the game and then shame them when they decide that their life outside of the game matters more. That is not balanced nor fair.
Johnson did not quit on the Eagles. He chose himself. And maybe sports media needs to learn that those two things are not the same.
“Find your most closest friend, family member. Tell a loved one,” Johnson said. “And if it’s to a degree of seriousness, there’s always help around the corner. It’s not far. It’s never out of reach. Whenever you do this, you realize that you have a lot more in common with everybody else around you then you think. So, that’s the best part about all of this.”
Benjamin Goldstein
Benjamin is a Sports Media major at Temple University and an aspiring sportscaster and journalist. Since 2017, he has covered Philadelphia sports as the founder, editor, writer, and podcast host of Philly Sports Reports. In addition, Benjamin is a freelance sports writer for The Temple News, a broadcaster and radio host on WHIP Radio. He previously interned with the WBCB Sports Network on 1490 AM for four years. Through his coverage and media work, he has had the opportunity to meet Phillies owner John Middleton in his suite and has been recognized as KYW Newsradio’s Philadelphia Sports Fan of the Week.
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