Shawn Andrews Will Not Hunt With You

Eagles offensive lineman Shawn Andrews suffers from depression, a condition affecting his play last year before he sought help, got a mohawk, and regained perspective for what appears to be a much happier 2009. He has also lowered his stress levels significantly by not hanging around with certain people who knew him before he became rich and famous, and who then began acting very differently toward him. I don't mean things like, "got weird and stopped calling." Try something like "asked you for money, and then tried to set up your murder."

Before his rookie season, he said that one longtime Arkansas friend asked him, "How much are you worth?" Then the friend asked for help in paying child support, rent and a car loan. After he declined, Andrews said, the friend invited him to a deer-hunting camp. Another friend later warned that he was being set up to be shot in what would look like a hunting accident, Andrews said.

There's no greeting card for "Sorry I Was Plotting Your Covert Murder in a Deer Stand," though if there was a place to find it, it would be Arkansas. Andrews also dealt with depression by self-medicating with alcohol, but found that it only worked for him in the short run. He's right: drinking doesn't exactly work out in the long run for athletes, though Kyle Orton's going to test the science out in the laboratory we call real life and see if all this theory is actually correct. (For the record, it works just fine for blogging, but you knew that already.)

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.