NASHVILLE, Tn. \u2013 The Tennessee Titans were hard at work at mandatory minicamp this week, but they still made time to speak on an important issue impacting the sport they love.<\/p>\n
June is men\u2019s mental health awareness month.<\/p>\n
This past season, the NFL tragically lost two players to suicide in Marshawn Kneeland and Rondale Moore.<\/p>\n
A couple of guys in Nashville worked directly alongside those athletes, one of them being defensive lines coach Aaron Whitecotton.<\/p>\n
He coached Kneeland in Dallas and still carries the weight of his loss.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI\u2019m really thankful that we have his baby boy here, um, to carry on his legacy because Marshawn was a special guy, man,\u201d Whitecotton said. \u201cHe was a special guy to me, and I\u2019ll leave it at that. I miss him every day. I know his family misses him every day. This world misses him every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kneeland and Moore\u2019s deaths prompted the league to provide more mental health resources for their players but\u00a0help and resources only go so far without bringing awareness.<\/p>\n
Enter Solomon Thomas, who has emerged as one of the biggest mental health voices on the Titans.<\/p>\n
The defensive tackle from Dallas was also impacted by Kneeland and is speaking up for his late teammate.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIf we don\u2019t start talking about it, these things will keep happening,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cSo we have to have the conversation. We have to let men know it\u2019s okay to cry, it\u2019s okay to be emotional, it\u2019s okay to go to therapy because it\u2019s the most preventable death, but we refuse to talk about it because we think this masculinity thing keeps us away from being emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, men are emotional human beings. It takes way more strength to be vulnerable and go get help and tell someone how you\u2019re really feeling than it takes to be quiet and be like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m a tough guy because I\u2019m quiet.\u2019 silence does not equal strong,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tn. \u2013 The Tennessee Titans were hard at work at mandatory minicamp this week, but they still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061],"tags":[32462,7,123173,123174,123175,6,123176,11009,526,394,2411,527,123177],"class_list":["post-923552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennessee-titans","tag-aaron-whitecotton","tag-football","tag-football-mental-health","tag-mens-mental-health-awareness-month","tag-mental-health-in-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-mental-health","tag-solomon-thomas","tag-tennessee","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-tennesseetitans","tag-titans","tag-titans-minicamp"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116779733680037481","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}