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| New England Patriots' head coach Bill Belichick and Aaron Hernandez |
To compound that tragedy, today, Hernandez, now 27-years old, was found dead. He committed suicide in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
It’s a sad day for Hernandez family, his finance, and all those who are involved.
Newsweek’s John Walterson, in an article he wrote in April 2015, described his sentence to life in prison as “He threw that one away.”
“You hear this every Sunday in autumn, from the mouths of both NFL announcers and bar stool analysts. In football parlance, it refers to a quarterback intentionally spiraling a pass out of bounds, far over the heads and beyond the grasps of any players on the field. The passer is wasting a down, but only to avoid a potentially more dire outcome, such as a sack or an interception. He threw that one away refers to having no desirable options and thus choosing the least undesirable.
“On Wednesday morning, former New England Patriot tight end Aaron Hernandez was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Odin Lloyd. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that verdict carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole. Hernandez threw that one away. He launched his life far beyond the field of play and into, as long as he lives, the inside of a jail cell. Why?
“The tragedy of Hernandez’s is a wasted life is that there were no metaphorical pass rushers in his face. No imminent sacks or turnovers in his future. In the gridiron vernacular, he was running in the open field."
By Ben Volin
