METAIRIE, La. — New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Tom Benson was recently hospitalized with flu symptoms, but he is now resting comfortably, according to a statement released by the teams.
Benson, 90, was admitted to Ochsner Medical Center’s intensive care unit. According to the statement, he “requests and sincerely appreciates your thoughts and prayers.”
Benson has battled some health issues in recent years, including a similar brief hospital stay in October. He also endured complications from multiple knee surgeries, beginning in 2014, that left him heavily medicated and were highly publicized during a prolonged legal battle with his estranged heirs. However, Benson’s health improved after those surgeries, according to those close to him.
Team owner Shad Khan likely is waiting to see if the Jaguars can build upon their surprising 2017 season before he gives extensions to the trio.
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The team announced Tuesday afternoon that it picked up tight end Marcedes Lewis’ one-year, $3.5 million option. The 2018 season will be his 13th with the team that selected him 28th overall in the 2006 draft.
The 33-year-old Lewis, who caught 24 passes for 318 yards and five touchdowns in 2017, ranks second in franchise history in receiving touchdowns (33) and third in receptions (375) and receiving yards (4,502). The next game he plays will tie him with receiver Jimmy Smith for second place on the franchise’s list of most games played (171), behind center Brad Meester (209 games in 14 seasons).
Lewis played in all 16 games in 2017 for just the second time since 2012.
The team also announced it was picking up options on reserve offensive linemen Josh Wells and Tyler Shatley. Wells has played in 32 games with three starts, all in 2017. Shatley has played in 46 games with eight starts.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, who has spent the last 17 years in a North Carolina prison for conspiracy to murder his pregnant girlfriend, opened up for the first time in a hand-written letter to the victim’s mother.
Carruth wrote a 15-page letter to Saundra Adams, the mother of Cherica Adams, that was sent to Charlotte television station WBTV. He also spoke at length by phone with the station about the letter, accepting responsibility for the 1999 conspiracy to murder Cherica and expressing interest in gaining custody of his son.
“I’m apologizing for the loss of her daughter. I’m apologizing for the impairment of my son,” Carruth told WBTV. “I feel responsible for everything that happened. And I just want her to know that truly I am sorry for everything.”
Carruth is scheduled to be released from Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, North Carolina, on Oct. 22. He was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in 2001 after being found guilty of hiring Van Brett Watkins and Michael Kennedy to murder Cherica. Watkins, who shot Adams multiple times, was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years. Kennedy, who drove the car, was released in 2011.
Adams died a month after the shooting. Her son, Chancellor Lee Adams, was born prematurely and has battled the challenges that come from Cerebral Palsy, which was the result of his traumatic birth after the shooting.
Saundra Adams has raised Chancellor, now 18. In past interviews with the Charlotte Observer, she has expressed that she would like to be present the day Carruth is released.
Carruth, who did not testify at his trial, said he wants custody of Chancellor when he is released.
“I should be raising my son. His mother should be raising her son,” Carruth said. “Ms. Adams should not be doing this and I want that responsibility back.
Rae Carruth is scheduled to be released from prison in October after serving a 17-year sentence for conspiracy to murder his pregnant girlfriend. AP Photo/Jeff Siner
“I feel like he might not ever have his mother in his life but he could still have me and I could still make a difference and I don’t think that’s anyone’s responsibility when I’m still here.”
“I’ve forgiven Rae already, but to have any type of relationship with him, there does have to be some repentance,” Adams told the newspaper. “And I think this opens the door. But I can say definitively he’s not ever going to have custody of Chancellor.
“Chancellor will be raised either by me or, after I’m gone, by someone else who loves him and who knows him. He will never be raised by a stranger — someone he doesn’t know and who tried to kill him.”
In the letter, Carruth opened that he has “long accepted my lot as a social pariah.” He said in an introduction to the letter, which he began with “To whom it may concern,” that the purpose of the letter was to challenge allegations made by Saundra on the “truthfulness of the statements she’s made about me.”
Carruth referred to several “lies” he claimed Saundra made, beginning with saying he never apologized for what happened. He noted that he apologized on several occasions in correspondence from prison.
Carruth also accused Saundra of creating a false impression of his relationship with Cherica. He said outside of a physical relationship with Cherica, “me and your daughter were practically strangers.”
Carruth also challenged that his motive for having Cherica killed was to avoid having to pay child support, noting child support never was mentioned as motive during the trial. He said the motive was more to do with Cherica being unwilling to get an abortion.
In the letter, Carruth said he wishes he could go back to 1999 and do things differently.
“If I could change anything, I’d change the whole situation,” he wrote. “His mother would still be here and I wouldn’t be where I’m at. So that’s what I’d want to change. I want the incident to never have happened at all.”
Carruth, 44, told WBTV that he has changed a lot since the Panthers drafted him in the first round of the 1998 draft out of Colorado. He noted back then he was very “self-centered” and immature.
He talked about finding a relationship with God.
“I feel like I owe Chancellor,” Carruth said. “I let him down as he came into this world and the only way that I can make that right, the only way I can work out my relationship with my son, is to be there for him and to be a father and a dad to him going forward.”
TAMPA, Fla. — The words in Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Peyton Barber’s playbook are sometimes jumbled, and they don’t make sense, so he has to read them over and over. He has to draw the plays up, too, and then he has to walk through them to fully understand.
“Some people can get things with classroom only, but he’s certainly gotta be in it, see it and let it happen,” said Bucs running backs coach Tim Spencer, who has worked with Barber the past two seasons.
Barber has dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects 10 to 15 percent of the U.S. population. It results in difficulty with word recognition, spelling, reading comprehension, language and visual processing.
“I do read a lot slower, and there will be times when I’m reading something and I’ll read it backwards or the words will come off the page,” said Barber, 23. “[But] I don’t really see it as a challenge, to be honest.”
Peyton Barber showed promise during an extended look as the Bucs’ primary back, including a 102-yard rushing game against the Packers. Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire
Barber also has attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition characterized by difficulty concentrating, hyperactivity and impulsivity.
Neither has held him back on the football field, even when he must learn hundreds of plays and identify where the pressure is coming from in a matter of seconds. In fact, despite starting only four games last season, Barber finished with a team-high 423 rushing yards, 114 receiving yards and three touchdowns, becoming a candidate for the starting role in 2018.
“I think he will be right there,” Bucs coach Dirk Koetter said at the end of the season. “I think that will definitely be a consideration. Peyton did a good job with his opportunities this year.”
‘I learned a lot slower’
Growing up in Alpharetta, Georgia, Barber was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarten and took mostly remedial courses until his junior year of high school.
“I learned a lot slower. I struggled a little bit in high school. [My grades] weren’t terrible, but I mean, I’d say I was kind of all over the place: C’s, B’s, occasionally an A in college,” said Barber, whose father also has dyslexia and ADHD.
He wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until his freshman year at Auburn. There, Barber had tutors, received extra time on tests and took his exams in a different room with a proctor, all of which are allowed by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA).
Barber tried the medication Vyvanse for about a week and a half, but he didn’t like the way it made him feel, so he stopped taking it.
He also got help from then-offensive analyst Bobby Bentley, now the running backs coach at South Carolina. Bentley understood that the traditional classroom setting and long meetings didn’t always cater to people like Barber, a kinesthetic learner, who needs movement to learn.
“A good athlete has to be someone who does well under pressure, who actually has clarity under pressure and can respond and react almost impulsively. … On the field, being impulsive is good because it means you’re acting quick and fast.”
Dr. Roberto Olivardia
“I was the same way. I have ADHD,” Bentley said. “Nobody really knows this, but we would meet in the indoor facility and walk through plays from hash to hash. … He became very knowledgeable about what to do based on our step-throughs and our walk-throughs. … What was great about Peyton is that he absorbed it all. He was a sponge. I was able to pour myself into him because he wanted it.”
After Roc Thomas and Jovon Robinson left the 2015 Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic against Louisville with injuries, Barber stepped in to rush for 116 yards, becoming the starter.
“It’s been like that pretty much wherever I’ve gone. Like, I’ve always been that guy that was sort of overlooked in a way,” said Barber, who credits Bentley with teaching him patience. “Just remembering your process and everything — what you’ve been through in the past, knowing that the cream always rises to the top.”
Barber rushed for 1,017 yards and 13 touchdowns that year. He also excelled in the classroom, earning SEC Academic Honor Roll for three years.
Barber has developed some of his own coping mechanisms. He chews gum when studying because he feels the chewing motion helps him lock in. He keeps multiple packs in his locker.
He also fidgets with his goatee, which can stimulate the frontal lobe of the brain to improve concentration, and he takes breaks to give his mind a rest.
When Spencer gives quizzes, he gives Barber additional time, if needed. Barber always sits in the front of the room and is called on frequently.
“I just really direct everything to him, and he’s OK with that because he wants to learn. And there’s nobody in there making him feel like he doesn’t know or making him feel like he’s any less than anybody else,” said Spencer, who is an advocate of multisensory ways of teaching.
“The coaching staff really helps me. They’ll always ask me, ‘Do you completely understand?’ If I don’t, I’ll tell them straight up, ‘I don’t,'” Barber said.
Peyton Barber doesn’t view his dyslexia and ADHD as a disability. “I see it as something special and unique in many ways,” he said. Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire)
Said Spencer: “He can definitely run the football, and he’s a lot better than when he first got here with protections and being able to see the field and not just looking at the line of scrimmage. He needs to be able to see down the field and analyze things before they actually happen so he can play a lot faster. That’s what I’m trying to get him to see.
“Also, because he has ADHD and dyslexia, it’s imperative for him to focus when he comes out on the practice field. He can’t be messing around with the guys and joking and all that other stuff. He has to focus so he can be on point.”
Dr. Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School who specializes in the treatment of ADHD and learning disabilities, believes Barber’s makeup can actually be advantageous in sports. Dr. Olivardia mentioned other athletes who have ADHD, dyslexia or both, including Greg Louganis, Michael Phelps and Magic Johnson, as did the late Muhammad Ali.
“There’s something in the ADHD brain that thrives on urgency,” Olivardia said. “A good athlete has to be someone who does well under pressure, who actually has clarity under pressure and can respond and react almost impulsively. … On the field, being impulsive is good because it means you’re acting quick and fast.”
Barber has never met anyone in the NFL with dyslexia, but some of the sport’s biggest personalities — Rex Ryan, Tim Tebow, Mark Schlereth and Frank Gore — have been diagnosed with it.
“When you’ve had to work at succeeding in a way that might have come easy for other people, by virtue of having ADHD or dyslexia, there is a certain perseverance and a certain toughness that comes along with that,” Olivardia said. “There’s a certain sense of power in, ‘Maybe I did it in an unconventional way, but I was able to figure it out and do it.'”
Olivardia said that some of the most highly successful entrepreneurs have dyslexia because they think outside the box and are avid problem solvers. That’s exactly what Barber wants to do. The past two offseasons, he has returned to Auburn to work toward finishing his degree in interdisciplinary studies.
“I kind of want to do a little bit of everything,” said Barber, who believes that the patience he learned through coping with dyslexia and ADHD has helped him excel in all areas of his life.
“I don’t see it as a disability — I see it as an ability. I see it as something special and unique in many ways. Yeah, I may learn differently, but at the same time, I’m thriving.”
