10/06/2026
Then he came back and said it to everyone.
Anxiety and depression. Diagnosed in college. Hidden from his friends and his family for years.
"I was living in hell for a long time."
"I was ashamed, to be honest. In this league, the NFL, where it's gladiator type sport, it's something that's not often talked about but is often felt throughout the league. We need to talk about it."
And he meant it. He became the first athlete ambassador for Kooth, a free mental health service for kids in Philadelphia. He spent five years telling men in that league to say it out loud.
Before games, Lane Johnson threw up.
Not in big moments. Not as a nervous kid. Every game, going back to the first football he ever played in Groveton, Texas.
"Ever since I started playing football, I'd get up in the morning and be so on edge that I'd go throw up," he said. "But I didn't have anything to throw up, so it was just, like, dry heaving."
Every Saturday at Oklahoma. Every Sunday in Philadelphia. For most of his life, in a bathroom, alone, hours before anybody saw him.
Nobody knew.
The first person who found out did not find out because Johnson told him. His roommate at Oklahoma heard him through the wall.
"My roommate and teammate, who was going through similar things, heard me on game day."
He did not have a word for it then.
"I didn't know what it was. I just knew that it affected my eating, and I felt I was on edge all the time."
"Your body is in a constant state of high alertness and can never decompress. I could never turn the off switch from football."
"I kept it to myself because I wasn't educated on it."
Now hold that next to what the rest of us were watching.
Fourth overall pick. Six Pro Bowls. Five All-Pro selections. Two Super Bowl rings. Twenty six consecutive games without allowing a sack, which no offensive lineman in the history of the National Football League had ever done.
He was the best right tackle alive, and he was throwing up before he went to work.
At one point it got bad enough that he was throwing up blood and his hands were shaking.
In 2021, in the middle of a season, he finally stopped. He left the team for three weeks and the Eagles said only that it was personal.
His own teammates did not know until that week. Jason Kelce said Johnson told them what was happening after he was already gone.
Then he came back and said it to everyone.
Anxiety and depression. Diagnosed in college. Hidden from his friends and his family for years.
"I was living in hell for a long time."
"I was ashamed, to be honest. In this league, the NFL, where it's gladiator type sport, it's something that's not often talked about but is often felt throughout the league. We need to talk about it."
And he meant it. He became the first athlete ambassador for Kooth, a free mental health service for kids in Philadelphia. He spent five years telling men in that league to say it out loud.
Today he took his own advice.
He is 36, still playing at an All-Pro level, and he walked away mid season.
"I deeply wanted to gut it out for one more year. To take the field with my brothers for one last season."
"Right now, it is critical that I focus on my mental health."
He signed the letter with two hashtags. Fly Eagles Fly, and Pave The Lane, which is what he named his mental health work years ago.
The man threw up before games his entire life.
He is done throwing up.
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