Ryan O’Callaghan, an offensive tackle who played three seasons with the New England Patriots, joined a very small group of former NFL players Monday, publicly revealing for the first time that he is gay.
In an interview with SB Nation’s Outsports, O’Callaghan came out for the first time publicly and said that he contemplated suicide following the end of his NFL career.
“Football was kind of the cover for my life,” O’Callaghan said in a video accompanying the article. “Football was the most masculine thing I could do, so I decided to dedicate myself to football.