CINCINNATI -- Devon Still is no longer a member of the Cincinnati Bengals.
It's a sentence I knew I would eventually have to write. But it feels strange actually watching the letters pop up on the screen as I type.
It feels strange because of the deep and sincere connection the defensive tackle had not only to the Bengals organization but also to the city of Cincinnati and members of the media -- such as myself -- he allowed to enter into his life. Connections like those will live on even as Still no longer calls Paul Brown Stadium his football home.
Last September, about two weeks after the Bengals released Still only to re-sign him to their practice squad, I had the fortune of spending a couple of hours in Still's in-season Northern Kentucky home. My visit was part of ESPN's once-weekly NFL Nation TV Web show. On the broadcast, Still took me, thousands of live viewers and our other show hosts into what his life had been like in the three months his then-4-year-old girl was dealing with a very serious disease that had deadly implications.
Neuroblastoma, Stage 4.
Leah Still had been given a 50-50 chance at living through the pediatric cancer.
As of this posting, she has been in remission for 163 days.
Since then, the omnipresent smile he had before June 4, 2014, the day Leah was diagnosed, returned.
It was there the day Still had me in his home, but it was more muted. Back then, he was in the middle of some of his darkest moments. A cloud of uncertainty loomed above him and family. Hope for Leah's survival had Still scared and nervous. His future as a football player was somewhat shaky, too.
The plane rides were just beginning at that time. Each Sunday night after a Bengals afternoon home game, he would race to the airport to fly to Philadelphia to spend the next 2½ days with Leah and other family members. Every Wednesday morning, bleary-eyed and bloated from the airport and hospital junk food he had been consuming, Still would be back at Paul Brown Stadium attending meetings as the Bengals prepared for their next opponent.
It was the kind of lifestyle that ultimately led Still into a deep depression. During a powerful acceptance speech at the ESPYS in July, Still told stories of how so many nights he contemplated drinking handles of alcohol just to numb the feelings of anxiety and fear that constantly raced through his head while Leah lay on a hospital bed some 570 miles away.
When Still told that story and several others as he accepted the Jimmy V. Perseverance Award on his and Leah's behalf that night, I paused. It was the first time I had heard the detailed version of the story. Again, that mid-September day last fall when I was in his home, there was little evidence he was feeling that pain. There was little evidence he had any other pressing issue on his mind, other than the fact that he spoke about it so eloquently.
He continues to speak that way about pediatric cancer and the very real ways it affects the families who experience all of its effects every day. Had it not been for the Bengals' drafting him in 2012 and deciding to keep him last season, he wouldn't have had such a wide-reaching platform to shine a light on such an important issue.
It's for that reason his connection to the Bengals will live on, even if he isn't wearing their stripes.
