NASHVILLE — The message on the whiteboard in the bathroom is simple.
Walk, talk and thrive.
Tim Shaw, 32, has been writing his goals down for as long as he can remember. He revealed in Blitz Your Life, his new book, that after he was drafted by the Carolina Panthers in 2007 his goals were to seek God, make the team, lead the special teams unit in tackles and make the All-Rookie team. He made the team and went onto a 7-year career in the NFL before being cut in 2013 when his body suddenly wouldn’t allow him to run without tripping.
Scouting reports had described him as a player with classic, blue-collar work ethic and at the peak of his career, as he writes in his book, he was a “238-pound missile fueled by adrenaline.”
In all, he played in 80 games, made 96 tackles and lasted in the league far beyond the average career span.
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“I always thought he was the glue of our team,” said Matt Hasselbeck, his former teammate who wrote the foreword to his book . “In Tennessee I always thought he was that guy on the verge of making the team or not making the team … but yet he was such an important part of our team, the team wouldn’t have been the team without him. My first year there he was the captain of our special teams. He just was a leader by example.”
Now, three years after being diagnosed with ALS, Shaw’s goals are simple — but even more meaningful, he says.
The bathroom with Shaw’s whiteboard sits next to his bedroom on the first floor of the house he moved into with his parents shortly after his diagnosis. His bed is unmade, to the horror of his mom, who didn’t realize that there were going to be visitors.
“The whiteboard is where I always used to have goals written so that whiteboard is right now where I’m at,” Shaw said. “I’m really struggling with walking. I’m struggling with talking, so those two things I want to be at the forefront of my mind every day. If I’m walking, it’s a good day. I’ve been falling a lot. I tell people if I’m falling, I’m still walking so really simple goals, really simple mindset. So that’s where I am in my life right now.
Tim’s father, John, helps him get dressed.(Christopher Hanewinckel, USA TODAY Sports Images)
“I joke with people sometimes when they say, ‘What are you are you pursuing right now?’ I tell them, ‘Today, I’m just living not to fall over.’ It’s a joke, but not really.”
Shaw was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2014. ALS systematically kills motor neurons that go from the brain to the spinal cord to muscles throughout the body. The more the neurons die, the less patients can control the muscles in their body.
His diagnosis came the year the ice bucket challenge was popular and that’s how he announced it to the world – by dumping a bucket of cold water over his head and vowing to fight. A number of Titans players joined him, promising to stand by his side. Shaw, at the time, seemed hopeful about what he could do to impact the fight against the disease.
By the end of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the ALS Association had raised over $100 million, which according to Calaneet Balas, the association’s executive vice president of strategy, has resulted in promising breakthroughs that could one day help people like Shaw. “We’ve invested $77 million in research and that’s where we’re going to see big effects,” she said. “We’ve identified four genetic mutations that are indicated in ALS, so that gives a lot of targets that we’ve never had before.”
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The Challenge also did a lot for awareness about the disease. But there remains no cure, and even the most significant breakthroughs are unlikely to lead to changes in how ALS is treated anytime soon. Shaw has not lost hope, but he now wakes up each day wondering what challenge he’ll be facing from his slowly deteriorating body.
Compared to many patients, Shaw has a lot of resources, but that hasn’t meant much for slowing the progression of the disease. His speech has become more slurred and it seems exhausting for him to talk. His hands can’t grip a golf club without help. His walking is also affected. There’s an elevator that goes from the garage of his house to the first floor and a wheelchair that he resisted getting in the first place waits there for when his legs stop working. There are days when his mom has to brush his teeth for him, and he drinks water out of a Penn State cup with a lid and straw to ensure he does not choke.
“One of the hardest things for me was hearing him start to lose the function of his regular voice,” said Hasselbeck. “It hit me pretty hard actually. Just because I’ve known him as such a tough guy. We used to do this CrossFit-type workout thing … it was basically a 2,000 meter row with a partner. It would be, like, you two against another two. I would always want Tim as my partner because he was so so good at it and just so strong and just when it was your turn to row your 1000 meters he was basically like a coxswain, just screaming at you, ‘You got it. Let’s go.’ And he was so strong. And hearing him start to lose his regular voice, it hurt a little bit.”
But that doesn’t mean Shaw’s giving up — or even slowing down much.
* * *
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It’s 9:30 on a Wednesday morning and Shaw is ecstatic.
He’s already had a breakthrough just 20 minutes into his lesson at a Nashville-area golf facility, GolfTEC, where he’s been working with an instructor on his swing. The instructor, Andrew Braley, has been watching video replays of each swing Shaw takes. After a few, Braley advises him to try getting his arms a little higher up on the backswing. And it’s working.
Shaw has to think carefully about how he wants his body to move, and the swing requires more effort, but he finally gets his arms up and hits the ball with his 7-iron perfectly. He watches as the ball thuds against the screen in front of him, then as an electric version of it slides across the simulation on the TV’s putting green for a total of 75 hard-earned yards – a new record that shattered his recent best by 10 yards.
“I don’t know if you know this about me, Andrew,” Shaw said as a photographer shot the lesson, “but when the cameras are on, I’m at my best.”
Christopher Hanewinckel/ USA TODAY Sports Images
Braley laughed. “You got a little more spunk today,” he said.
Shaw’s been playing golf since he was 13 but started going to Braley after his swing deteriorated last year. “My game started declining and I thought, ‘Oh, there’s probably some things I could do differently,” he said. It was an important time to get his game at its peak: In 2016, he went on a tour of some of the world’s best golf courses, including Augusta National, Cypress Point Club, Spyglass, Shinnecock Hills and Pebble Beach.
His favorite, he said was Shinnecock Hills. “It’s just different than any other course I’ve ever played,” he said. “It’s beautiful. Very little amount of trees but it had 3-foot tall hazards around every hole. There were a lot of great views on that course, it was just a cool, unique place.”
On a post on Instagram of the trip, which was in July, he wrote in the caption “Some days are tough but some days are easy,” adding the hashtags “#swingeasy, #golf, #latergram.”
(Christopher Hanewinckel USA TODAY Sports Images)
In a caption from his trip to Cypress Point, he called it paradise. “I don’t call it a bucket list but CP should be in every golfers bucket,” he wrote. “Worth every second.”
He loves golf and tries to hit the links as much as he can and Braley works with him to use the muscles that are still functioning to improve his swing.
“I like being coached,” he explains, a sentiment that makes sense for a guy who spent 7 years in the NFL and played three sports as a kid growing up in Michigan. “It’s cool to have someone say, ‘Hey, can you bring your arms here like that?’ and you do it and it’s like, ‘Oh, look at that.’”
Later, we’re sitting around his house and Shaw’s financial adviser calls. After a brief conversation about medical and business expenses Shaw dives into the important news of the day: His golf game.
ALS will eventually hinder Shaw’s muscles to the point that a guy who could take down the toughest, biggest, strongest players in the NFL will no longer be able to swing a club. His game is already diminished, but he’s not about to stop trash talking just about everyone he might have a future date with on the golf course.
He’ll brag about a 75-yard hit on a computerized screen because, to him, it is an achievement worth shouting about.
“Every day is a good day because Tim makes it one,” his dad, John Shaw, says.
* * *
The concepts of hope, setting goals and achieving success are things that Shaw discusses often in Blitz Your Life, which took him about two years to complete and was released earlier this year. He knows that it’s likely people will read it because he was once a professional football player — after all, that’s why I flew out to Nashville to speak to him about it — but other than how his tricks for life helped him achieve his goals in that sport and in business, it’s not really about that at all. It’s about following your dreams, being an individual and inspiring others.
Shaw wanted to continue inspiring. He’s unable to do many of the things that he used to do, like travel to Haiti to help kids in need there.
“I want to focus on the positives,” he said. “I could have written a book about all of the things I’ve seen in the NFL, the scandalous things, injuries and all that but to me that wouldn’t have helped anyone. The book is to uplift, the book is to motivate, the book is to propel someone forward.”
Shaw’s relationship with football — which is everywhere in house, from game balls proudly displayed on the shelf, to the books about the game on the bookshelf in the living room — is complicated. He’s incredibly grateful to the Titans, who have supported him since his diagnosis.
Three years after playing his last game, he went back to help out the team last season after their special teams coordinator was fired after a few games. He watched tape and compiled weekly reports. He also, as he wrote in his book, supplied a bit of inspiration. Before the season began he was invited to the team’s facility to talk to the players. The speech was so inspirational that one player began writing Shaw’s name on the top of his notebook every day.
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“Tim Shaw had a huge impact for this football team,” Titans coach Mike Mularkey said at the end of the season. “When I brought him in here in training camp and he spoke to this team, I thought that day, ‘This season was going to be different.’ I thought that day that something special was going to happen with this football team. I know he had a huge impact on my life. He made me different.”
Hasselbeck pointed out that the Titans welcomed Shaw back despite having a totally different front office than when he played there.
“New president, new GM, new head coach — none of those people were even there when he was a player,” Hasselbeck said. “Yet they still honored him and invited him back to the team in such an incredible way. I’ve experienced itself, when you leave a place, no matter how long you were there if the team president, the GM, the coach weren’t there when you were putting your body on the line, they don’t really know you … but (the Titans) have absolutely embraced him.”
His relationship with the league front office though, is different. He wanted to speak to the NFL about how it uses its vast resources now, hoping to make sure the league focused on player safety and helping players after they’re retired.
In 2015, he reached out to the NFL front office to see if he could set up a meeting with Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner. He hoped to talk about his experience and what more could be done. Goodell didn’t return his calls. At the time, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told For The Win “The Commissioner has been tied up with the league meeting and the (Tom) Brady hearing. He has not had a chance to respond.”
When contacted last week after I visited Shaw, McCarthy took the blame for failing to connect Shaw and Goodell, and said the NFL had reached out to the Titans to facilitate a discussion (a Titans spokesperson confirmed that).
Before the league reached out, Shaw said he had already moved on.
“I don’t know if it’s important for me talk to [Goodell] anymore because I don’t have hope that he will do much or anything about the business of football,” he said. “I’m not blaming him for anything, either, but I do think a lot of people are blind about what football is and how the game affects its players. I think more and more research needs to be done for the players so that more and more players can make educated decisions for their own lives.”
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When asked what he would say to the Commissioner, Shaw said he just wanted him to know about the struggles of his players and former players. It’s not just him, he said. Many players are retiring early out of fear that they’ll end up like many retired players who are struggling with things like mental health issues.
“I think that they need a personal dose of reality to be able to separate from the big picture of, ‘This is business, this is football,’ ” he said. “How about, ‘This is life, and we can do better.’ ”
The NFL has done things aimed at making the game safer – including updating the concussion protocol and changing tackle rules to eliminate head-first hits. It has given many millions for neuroscience research and has worked closely with another former player with ALS, New Orleans Saints hero Steve Gleason. There’s no direct evidence linking ALS to playing football, though a 2012 article in Neurology found that NFL veterans were four times as likely to get ALS than the general population (besides Gleason, the other well known case is former fullback Kevin Turner, the lead plaintiff in the concussion lawsuit who died last November at age 46).
But Shaw thinks they can do more, even though he acknowledges there is not proof ALS is caused directly by playing football. He and his family do think that the disease was possibly brought on by a combination of genetics and his football career, though they have no proof.
When asked about this theory, Balas, from the ALS Association, said there’s only anecdotal evidence linking contact sports and neuromuscular diseases, but work is being done to figure out what the specific triggers that cause diseases like ALS are. In the NFL’s settlement with former players in the concussion lawsuit, some former players were awarded up to $5 million if they had ALS.
Shaw has no regrets. He would take nothing back.
“To be able to play the game as long as I did was a gift,” he said.
* * *
It’s been a long day already — by Shaw’s current standards — between the golf, a photoshoot for an initiative he’s lending his face to and hosting a reporter in his house. Around 1 p.m. his eyes start to flutter as he fights to keep the conversation going while he’s waiting for his lunch to finish cooking. It’s a stark reminder of the strength that the disease swipes out of him on a daily basis.
.
But he’s determined to finish talking about list of places he has plans to visit this year. Michigan and Penn State to promote his book. California. South Africa with a friend.
They’re not the only things he’s looking forward to.
He’s looking forward to improving his golf swing, even as it leaves him. He’s determined to accomplish the goals he sets on his whiteboard, no matter how simple they are. He’s determined to save the next generation from ALS, even if it might be too late to save himself. He wants to make the game he loves safer, even if it has taken too long for the NFL to acknowledge his request. He wants the Titans to make it into the playoffs, because he never did as a player. He wants people to read his book, even if they mostly care about him as a football player, because he’s sure they’ll relate to the life lessons he tucked into those pages.
He wants to squeeze everything into the days his body has left, even if he acknowledges the disease has forced him to slow down, just a bit.
“We can have these big elaborate plans and we want all these great things in life, but sometimes it’s simple,” he said. “Sometimes what’s most important is, ‘Today I just want to do the right thing.’ So that’s what I mean. My life can be very complicated but it can be very simple. I just want to not fall over today. I’m so thankful, I’m in a really cool stage of life where I’m teetering to where I’m not so fun but right now I have an awesome life. I travel, I play amazing golf. I have money, I have freedom.
“I have the ability and I recognize that most people with ALS do not. First of all they decline a lot more rapidly and so physically they can’t do much. So I just recognize the position I’m in. My life is great. Except for this one little thing that so happens to affect everything else. But I also say if I can just stay right where I am, I could figure it out. But I’m teetering on this point where I’m going to need a lot more help and things are going to get a lot harder. It’s just a very interesting and very difficult place to be. Life is so good. Can I live in the moment enough to enjoy it or am I looking forward to what is probably going to happen?”
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Last month, Shaw flew to Israel to get bone marrow extracted as part of an experimental treatment.
The stem cells were removed from his bone marrow and then cultivated in a lab. Last week, he flew back to Israel to have them injected into his spinal canal.
The procedure, Shaw and his family believe, is the best hope for some sort of relief from the disease – nothing else has really been effective so far. Shaw has allowed himself to get his hopes up, but not too much.
“I think there’s not a lot of hope out there,” he said. “So when you hear, when you see something that has good results and could be potentially really good, you have to cling to that. But I’ve been struggling with how much hope do you allow yourself to have. Do you hope for a little bit of relief or do you hope for the miracle of life?
“Even, what do I pray for? Do I ask God to take it away or do I say, ‘Let me use my hands a little more.’ So that’s a very real debate. But hope is a funny thing.
“Because we need to have hope, even if you look at us as a nation there’s things you don’t like, you need to believe in the possibility for change or the possibility for better. Because if you don’t have that hope, you fall into despair.
“But if you allow yourself to hope it can drive you to great things. But then that hope is squandered. So I put my hope in these stem cells and if nothing happens, what will that do to me? But yeah I do have a lot of hope. And I’m choosing to allow myself to have hope because if it doesn’t work, I mean I’m right back to where I am now. And yeah, that will be disappointing, but the whole thing is disappointing.”
(Click here to buy Shaw’s book)
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Ex-NFL player Tim Shaw is using the Ice Bucket Challenge in the fight of his life