What Happened to That Guy? Greg Montgomery (Part 1)

The first punter in Ravens history battled bipolar disorder, which led him to both dark and amazing places before he took his own life in August.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Greetings and welcome to What Happened to That Guy, a
Raven's podcast about former players and life after football. I'm
your host, John Eisenberg. I've come across a lot of
great stories in doing this podcast, but I'll tell you
upfront the story in this episode brought me to my
knees like no other. It moved me so much that

(00:27):
I'm going to devote two episodes to it, the last
two episodes of the season. Once you listen, I'm sure
you'll see why. What happened to this guy, this former
Raven during and after his time in Baltimore is both
heartwarming and heartbreaking. I've written ten books, more than five

(00:49):
thousand columns and articles. I was pretty sure I'd heard
and seen everything, but this story. Greg Montgomery's story is
poignant and powerful in a unique way. I'm not gonna lie.
I can't stop thinking about it. It starts a full

(01:12):
quarter of a century ago in the Ravens inaugural season
in Baltimore. As you may know, they won just four
of sixteen games, and they finished last in the old
AFC Central. But they were boring. To the contrary, their
locker room was full of big names and big personalities.
There were two future Pro Football Hall of Famers, Ray

(01:36):
Lewis and Jonathan Ogden, both rookies. There was Benny Thompson,
a special team's ace, still regarded as one of the
brashest trash talkers in NFL history. Nobody riled up the
other side like Benny Thompson. The center on the ninety
six team, Steve Everett, had a long mane of blonde

(01:59):
hair tumbling down his back, and he also possessed a
wicked rebellious streak. It was no secret he hated the
fact that the team had moved from Cleveland. Did you
know that on the first offensive play in Ravens history,
the guy who snapped the ball was wearing a Brown's

(02:20):
bandana under his helmet. Yep, that was Steve Everett. But
the biggest character in the Ravens locker room in nineteen
ninety six was wait for it, the punter. That's right,
the punter. Tom Toopa had held that job for the
Browns in their last year in Cleveland in nineteen ninety five,

(02:43):
but he signed with the Patriots during the offseason, leaving
Ozzie Newsome the Ravens rookie general manager, with an opening
to phill Ozzie looked around and he signed Greg Montgomery.
It seemed like an easy call. Montgomery was a thirty
two year old veteran who'd kick for the Houston Oilers
and Detroit Lions. He'd been a pro bowler, even All

(03:05):
Pro one year, and he led the league in yards
per punt three times. He'd sat out the nineteen ninety
five season, which was odd, but he was available and
very qualified. YEP, easy solution. But while the Ravens had
a pretty good idea of what they were getting with
Montgomery on the field, they didn't realize what they were

(03:27):
getting off the field. When the team's inaugural training camp
opened in the long hot summer of nineteen ninety six
in Baltimore, in walked a larger than live figure. Kevin Byrne,
the ravens long time head of media and public relations,
remembers being pretty shocked. First of all, he's big. He's

(03:49):
six foot four, two hundred and fifteen pounds, so we
were really scrambling at the time. We had played against
him when he was in Houston, but I didn't know
what he looked like. And I see this guy in
the locker him, I think it's the tight end. He
is different. You know, he walked in with you know,
dyed hair and multiple piercings in his ears, and then
when he started talking, he had a pierced tongue, and

(04:12):
he had tattoos before a lot of people had tattoos,
so he clearly looked different. Montgomery also was an extrovert.
He'd sing in the locker room, sing so loud in fact,
that teammates who didn't know him would steal glances at
each other saying like, Okay, what's up with that dude.

(04:33):
Kevin Burns's initial thought was, Wow, what polar opposites we
have with our two kicking specialists. That's over as Tim
Stripes in Wall Street and Greg Montgomery walks in, he's
rock and roll in Studio fifty four, and he's going
to be the hold of them, and that that dynamic.

(04:54):
As you know, John, they have to be sympatical, they
has to be one. There has to be trust with
those two. And as it turns out, Matt and Greg
got along well, and Greig not only was an outstanding punter,
he was also an outstanding holder. Here's what Stover recalls,
He's a little eccentric. You know with his painted fingernails

(05:15):
and was dipping his mouth when he's playing in a game,
and his blonde hair. But I'm never, as a teammate
or as a friend, distrusted him. I always had a
deep trust and a fond love for him. That's how
it went with people meeting and getting to know Montgomery.
His appearance and some of his conduct may have raised eyebrows,
but any initial concerns dissipated once you spend time with him.

(05:39):
Here's Kevin Byrne again. My son Tim at the time
was a junior in high school and he was a
ball boy, and Tim was an artist. And Tim was
the first to really tell me about Greg Montgomery because
Greg befriended Tim, and I wasn't sure that was a
good thing for Tim or the family. I'm old fashioned,
and here's a guy who's painted his fingernails and toenails black.

(06:04):
And my impressionable son from Calvert Hall says, this guy's
really cool. Dad, you should get to know him. I
remember Tim saying this. He's really a kind hearted guy.
He's very inquisitive. And I say, you know, Tim, you're
here to be a ball boy. Just be a ball boy.
You're not here to be planned players, and so I
didn't encourage him, but my son Tim was impressed with him.

(06:26):
Montgomery performed well for the Ravens in nineteen ninety six,
punting nearly seventy times and averaging nearly forty four yards
per punt. It was not a surprise. He'd been an
All American at Michigan State, such a beast as a
punter that the Oilers drafted him in the third round
in nineteen eighty eight, the number seventy two overall pick

(06:49):
a punter, Montgomery was something special, a huge guy who
crushed the ball. As a punner, he was outstanding. I mean,
he was very consistent his form, punting the ball with
an you know, he was everything he'd warner in a punter.
That's Sean Landetta talking. He punted in the NFL in

(07:11):
the same era. And for those who don't know, Lndetta
is a Baltimore native who went to Locker Raven High
School and then punted for thousand State That's what they
called it then before embarking on an amazing journey more
than two decades in the NFL, starting in the eighties
and continuing well into the two thousands. Landetta and Montgomery

(07:31):
were contemporaries and they were pretty friendly. You know, his
rookie year, he didn't have such a good year, but
the next seven were very consistent and really really good. Thinking,
here's a guy that should have played every bit of
ten to fifteen years physically, but you know, unfortunately the
other part wasn't there. The nineteen ninety six Ravens had
plenty of problems, but their special teams were stellar, with

(07:55):
stoverdoing the kicking and Montgomery handling the punting. Ted Marcha Broda,
the Ravens head coach, figured that was one area of
the team he didn't have to worry about going forward.
But when training camp opened the next year in the
summer of nineteen ninety seven, Montgomery was not the same
guy back to the locker room and was stuck his

(08:16):
head in with lockers, like, you know, this is a
day to leave me alone. So I didn't understand it
at the time. It would all come tumbling out later
that year. Montgomery had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a
mental illness marked by dramatic mood shifts, heat swing back
and forth between an extremely elevated mood called mania and

(08:37):
bouts of severe depression. He also had acute performance anxiety
panic attacks so severe that sometimes his hands went numb.
You'd think an NFL player might prefer to keep a
battle like that private, but Montgomery didn't mind. What was impressive,
especially for the time, the fact that Greg went out

(08:59):
and spoke publicly to the media and to private groups
about being bipolar and having depression and taking medication and
how his life is filled with manic periods up and
down and trying to live in a buttoned up NFL
world was difficult, and he talked about that, and I'm

(09:21):
sure he helped a lot of people out there because
of the celebrity of the pro athlete, to say, Okay,
he's dealing with it, I can deal with it too.
So I give him great credits to doing that. It's
become more common now, but back in nineteen ninety six
and ninety seven, it was very uncommon, and Greg was

(09:42):
a pioneer that way. And talking publicly at celebrity, talking
publicly about his mental issue. I think he gave people hope,
and that's a good thing. A few years later, when
he was out of football, he went on ESPN and
talked with unnerving frankness about what he dealt with throughout
his career, culminating with that nineteen ninety seven training camp

(10:03):
with the Ravens. He appeared on Outside the Lines, ESPN's
Sunday morning news show, on an episode devoted to how
major sports were dealing with athletes with mental illness. Montgomery
said his entire career had been an emotional roller coaster.
Remember when I said he'd sat out the entire nineteen

(10:24):
ninety five season. That was due to a severe bout
of depression. He said. At the time he thought his
career was over, but he snapped back in time to
catch on with the Ravens in nineteen ninety six. That
he said was quite an accomplishment. But just before the
start of training camp in nineteen ninety seven, his depression

(10:45):
overwhelmed him again. As he explained of viewers on ESPN,
there wasn't a day in that training camp that he
didn't think about suicide. At a preseason game in Philadelphia,
he had a panic attack and his hands went numb.
He figured he was going to get cut, and actually
that was fine. I wanted to get cut, greg Montgomery said.

(11:13):
The episode of Outside the Lines ran on the morning
of the last Sunday of the two thousand and one
NFL season, Sean Lendetta watched it. He was in a
hotel room getting ready to go to a stadium and
punt for the Philadelphia Eagles. Some of what Montgomery said
was familiar to Lendetta. They talked before about Montgomery's issues,

(11:34):
he telling me that he was just a straight pass sea.
Remember I went into a game one time, went back
to punt, and I'm standing there. I said to myself,
you know what do I do? And I said, what
do you mean? He said, I didn't know what to
do back there, but I didn't know I was supposed
to punt the ball. I said, in a game this
happened to you? He said yes. I said, well, what

(11:57):
did you do? He said, well, I guess you know
the muscle man Ramen. The ball came back. I caught
it and punted it, and I just I said wow.
I said, I'm so sorry to hear that you had
to deal with that, because I can't imagine being in
an NFL game. They're not sure what to do after
He'd done this thousands of times for years and years.

(12:17):
But even Landetta, his friend, was stunned by the depth
of the struggle that Montgomery revealed on outside the lines.
You know, I remember sitting down on the bed before
I left, you know, watching the interviewer. I just thought, wow,
you know, I know he had some things going on,
but I didn't know it was that much. And it
made me feel even more for him when I thought

(12:38):
of you, all these years that he played, he had
to deal with that stuff, And what a shame a
guy who could have been one of the all times
great NFL punters physically, talent wise, if he didn't have
to deal with that situation going on instead. Montgomery didn't
get cut in nineteen ninety seven. He got through training camp,
made the Ravens roster, and performed solidly during the season,

(13:02):
averaging nearly forty three yards per punt. He was managing
his illness well, it seemed. But the next year the
team brought in another punter to compete for the job,
and that other punter, Kyle Richardson, beat out Montgomery. It
was a good competition. Montgomery could still punt, but no
other team picked him up. At age thirty four, he

(13:23):
was done playing football. In some ways, he was prepared
for it. He was a bright guy with a ton
of interests. Right away he began working in music production
in Baltimore, but in other ways, the absence of football
and that structure in his life started a ball rolling downhill,
and that ball picked up speed, taking Montgomery down faster

(13:46):
and faster. In his playing days, he'd used alcohol and
drugs to help combat the effects of his illness, self
medicating it's called Now that he wasn't playing, his use
of those substances increased. Bad things started happening. He fell
in with the wrong crowd, He got mugged, suffering a
broken jaw on a trip to Las Vegas. Whenever he

(14:08):
spoke to his family, he was all over the map
with ideas about what he wanted to do next, host
an electronic music festival, write a book. His parents, brother,
and sister became increasingly alarmed. Finally, in nineteen ninety nine,
they staged an intervention. Here's his kid's sister, Margot. He

(14:30):
went through a stage where he just thought he could
do anything, and he had all these huge ideas. But
he was brilliant. He was very smart. So a lot
of times he'd have these ideas and it's like, yoh, yeah,
that makes sense. Oh cool, you know, And then he
would just keep going and he'd go for weeks without sleeping,

(14:51):
and he would self medicate himself, and he was not
being healthy by forms of you, drinking and whatever else
he was doing, and that was kind of scary. And
he was diagnosed with being bipolar, I believe when he
was with the Ravens, And I don't know how he
did it, like, I don't know how he played and did,

(15:14):
you know, pretty decent, but it's kind of hard when
a family, you know, learns of something when somebody has
been on their own. And he was in his thirties,
so he was kind of in charge of his own treatment.
But as a family, we wanted to help them too.
So I do remember him putting himself in Turkey spots

(15:35):
and we just had a family intervention with him and
told him he had to really think about the choices
he was making, and he was totally on board. Now
that you've heard Margot, Reg's younger sister talking about him,

(15:58):
let me back up and give you a little background.
Montgomery had an all American upbringing as part of a loving,
close family. His father played quarterback at Michigan State and
married the love of his life. They settled in New
Jersey and raised three kids. Montgomery was the oldest, and
he inherited every ounce of his father's athletic jeans. He

(16:19):
was a magnificent, just natural athlete. Hockey was his first love.
He loved hockey, and football and baseball were probably tied.
He was a really good pitcher. He was an excellent golfer. So, yeah,
he was very gifted. And it was an injury that
sort of got him into punting. Yes, I believe it

(16:39):
was a sophomore year. He was lifting and slipped some
discs in his back and the doctor told him he
couldn't play contact sports anymore. So he concentrated on kicking
and punning. And actually he'd wake up at like five
in the morning and my mom would drive him to
the local why so he could swim before school to

(17:00):
keep in shape, because you know, he was a linebacker
before that injury. Basically, when the doctor told him no
contact sports, he just thought, well, I want to play football.
So that's when he concentrated on learning how to kick
and punt. He would have played another position if he
hadn't gotten heard right. I mean, he was a big
look like a linebacker or a tied end or something.

(17:20):
Oh yeah, he was six to four. He was a
big dude or a punter. He was a beast on
the hockey rink, and he was a beast in any sport.
He played quite honestly. But even as a young person,
a handsome star athlete from a great family, Montgomery exhibited
unsettling signs. Greg was always really serious, a perfectionist, and

(17:44):
my parents they thought that he was too serious for
someone so young, and he was really hard on himself,
so it wasn't a shock to us that something was
going on with him later in life. He was an
excellent student in high school and college, an avid reader
with many interests music, art, fashion, not at landish in

(18:06):
the least. That's why his family found it alarming when
he showed up to play for the Ravens with tattoos
all over his torso and his dark hair dyed blonde
and piercings all over the place. There's nothing wrong with
any of that, but it wasn't the person they knew.
I looked at it like a teenage rebellion either, because
he was always if you were to look at him

(18:27):
and know him in high school and college, he was
more of that all American that did really well in
school and was really handsome, and you know what I'm saying.
And he just kind of broke the mold when he
was with the Ravens and that's and then he started
getting all these different piercings and tattoos, and that's when
I saw his mental state shift. And you know, Greg

(18:50):
and I were really really close, and I remember telling
him I really was concerned about him, and he'd call
me at all different hours and I'd always talked to him.
I appreciate him calling me, but I also felt like
I needed to take the calls, you know what I mean.
So when I think of Greg when he was with
the Ravens and he had that manic break, and that

(19:13):
was like a year or so of him being kind
of on this like mania. There's like different levels of mania,
and one is where I think people can function pretty well.
They have more energy, and they have a kind of
a feeling of enlightenment. I think that was easy for

(19:34):
reporters or anybody to do stories on him because he
was such a character and he still did well on
the field. I remember being at my parents' house at
Lake House and we're watching some interview they did on him,
and it was you know, they had like born to
be Wild in the background playing and my Dad's just like,

(19:55):
oh my gosh, what was that about? And I said, oh, no,
you know, but he was one of the funniest people
you would ever meet, So I can understand why people
let's get a kick out of them, and you know,
when that all was going on. But the downside, of course,
is after somebody's in the manic way and then they

(20:19):
go down, he would spend a long time being depressed.
Kevin Byrne did his best to understand it. I remember
talking to the team psychiatrists about it, and I remember
him telling me at times that he'll have moments if
he's like others who will have moments of why am
I here? What am I doing here? So I never
heard or I never witnessed that frozen moment, but our

(20:42):
team psychiatrist told me that, you know, he will wander
away mentally, So that was part of it. And I
think Matt Stover helped keep Greg focused on game day
as happens with kicking specialist teammates. Montgomery and Stover spent
a lot of time together on the practice field in
the locker room on road trips. At that point, I

(21:04):
didn't really understand by polarism, and I had a friend
in college that dealt with it, and I did see it.
You know, it wasn't crazy per se, and EDA was Greg.
Greg was very well balanced, and I know that he's
a Christian guy. We talked spiritual issues all the time.
But I knew he had his struggles too. I mean,
I knew he had some dark times and we talked

(21:25):
about those personally. You know, he struggled with relationships with women,
and he had a wonderful girlfriend at the time, but
I was hoping he was going to marry and she
loved him dearly, but that didn't maturate into marriage. But
I was hoping for him. And then when I had
the little kids at the time, I had a little
one year old and a newborn in nineteen ninety six,
and talking about an awesome friend. He just loved on

(21:47):
my family and my wife and just showed a gentleness
and a great spirit about him. When Montgomery's illness spiraled
out of control soon after his NFL career ended, his
parents and siblings stepped in and recommended that he go
to Hazelton, a renowned drug and alcohol rehab clinic in Minnesota.
Montgomery enthusiastically agreed to go, and I actually flew out

(22:11):
with him. I remember sitting on the airplane and him
holding my hand and looking at me and he said thanks.
This His time at Hazelton impacted him profoundly. The clinic
was full of young kids with serious drug problems. The
side of them broke Montgomery's heart. He was in there,
and obviously it lit a fire where he wanted to

(22:32):
be well, and he also wanted to help other people
because he just felt so sad. He was just like,
says these kids, I know. I said, well, the first
person we have to take care of your is yourself.
For many years he did really well, and especially not
drinking and taking care of themselves and eating well and

(22:52):
going to therapy and doing all those things and taking
care of yourself. Post Hazelton, things got better, a lot better.
Always a dapper dresser, Montgomery started his own clothing line.
He was a wonderful uncle to Margot's two kids. You know,
the kind of uncle who got down on the floor
and conversed earnestly with him instead of treating them like

(23:14):
little kids. He traveled a lot in Europe, and then
he was in that music production and he was always
like a really great dresser and in the art and
the music. His kind of a renaissance man, to tell
you the truth. He also got back into football, not
as a player, but as a punting coach, actually kind
of a punting guru. This was in the early two

(23:36):
thousands and it was big for him. It all started
with Nick Saban, who'd been a young assistant coach at
Michigan State when Montgomery played there. They'd remained friends, and
now Saban had risen through the ranks and become the
head coach at LSU. He brought Montgomery to Baton Rouge
to work with the punters. It went well. Montgomery got
along with the younger guys, and he preached a unique

(23:58):
set of punting mechanics based in part on his golf swing,
which he drilled into the kids. A young LSU punter
named Donnie Jones had been struggling, but he got it
together and went on to a long career in the
NFL with the Seahawks, Dolphins, Rams, Texans, Eagles, and Chargers.
He always credited Montgomery with mentoring him and helping him

(24:20):
realize his potential. I owe my career to Greg Montgomery,
Donnie Jones said. Montgomery's work at LSU became an annual
gig that continued when Sabin moved on to Alabama and
built a championship dynasty. Montgomery worked with the Crimson Tide
punters almost every year in the spring and early summer,
and that led to other gigs with high schools and

(24:40):
colleges and with individual clients as well. He had formed
these clinics and he would work with kids to that
wanted to be recruited at the college level and also
college kids that wanted to be recruited at the NFL level.
He was a perfectionist and a lot of people turned
to him for his advice because he did so well
and he was good at what he did. He got

(25:02):
a lot of these jobs with people that recommended him,
like coaches with different teams and also former players kids
you know that he played for in college, knowing, oh,
I have a buddy who has a son. You know,
that kind of a thing, and every summer he'd come
in and help out. He helped out at Michigan State
of course, and then all the years in Alabama. Every summer,

(25:25):
Greg would go and help kids and he was really
good at it. Greg's coaching was i'd say ten percent
football technique like kicking technique, and ninety percent empowerment development
and building up the kids esteem. He would have the
boys number one thing is believe in themselves and trying

(25:47):
to help kids get in in tune with themselves to
take care of themselves because without that, nothing's going to work.
That spoke so much to me, and he learned that
from the times that he was going to a tough time.
You know. The Baltimore years, really, the early two thousands
were good years for Montgomery. His career as a punting

(26:09):
coach took off. His friendship with a former Michigan State
teammate led to a job in the mortgage industry, first
in Chicago and then in Michigan, not far from where
Margo and her two kids lived. I love those years.
He was doing so well and it was amazing because
he lived like twenty minutes from me and he was
such a part of my kids' lives. But whenever I

(26:30):
think of Greg and I would think of how successful
he is. He was a rock star athlete but also
just well liked in the financial industry. When he was
working in the mortgage business, they would say, Yeah, he
was like the top producer and everybody loved him. He
kept everybody on their toes and light and we laughed,
and you know, work was fun. And that doesn't surprise

(26:53):
me at all, you know about that. I mean, I
just was happy because he was a part of my
life and he'd come over a Sunday for dinner. And
you know, I have a son and a daughter and
who adored him, and so those years were really those
years were great years. Most importantly, Montgomery continued to publicly
advocate for better understanding and treatment a bipolar disorder. He

(27:17):
was very outspoken about his bipolar disorder, and he, like
I mentioned earlier, he talked on panels and he was
actually the NAMI National Alliance for Mental Illness Honorary Chair.
He did that a couple of years. We went we'd
hear him talk and he'd tell his story and then
he'd lead people in a walk to raise money for

(27:39):
awareness and to get the stigma. And it's to this
day we hear people talking about mental illness, and he
was more about talking about mental wellness. You know, it's
funny how just a couple of different words can make
all the difference in the world. But no matter how
much he faced it head on, his illness impacted him.

(28:00):
He would do really well for like at three to
five years, and then spin out and then be depressed.
The ebb and flow, unfortunately of bipolar disorders, when when
things start slipping, it can just spin out. And I
think it's hard to as far as for a family.
It's not like he was a child and this was

(28:22):
happening and you have more control over things because he
was a man, you know, and he made his own choices.
And the way this is such a tragedy is with
manic depression or bipolar disorder, things will be going great
for years at a time he was making all the
right decisions and making such a difference, and little by

(28:45):
little his choices would slip up and we'd be back
into him being depressed or being manic. So, yeah, that's
a difficult part of bipolar disorder truly. He turned fit
in twenty fourteen and moved on from the mortgage business.
A man of many talents, Montgomery went to work for

(29:07):
a Michigan company that sold organic skincare products. He handled
the marketing, the branding, and it was a labor of love.
He was passionate about wellness. He'd have all these years
where he was doing just incredibly well, and you can't
imagine him being down. You know, we lost our mother.

(29:29):
I just remember he was such a beautiful, loving son
to her, and he really was. It was just amazing
to see our mom. She was diagnosed with cancer January
of twenty nineteen, and they told her basically that she

(29:50):
had a couple of months to live and without treatment,
and then with treatment it was like ten. And she
really felt great. And you know, as a family, she
and my dad told us, you know what, I'm not
going to do that because I feel great. And so
Greg was really helpful with my dad when my mom
wasn't doing well. We lost her in October, and just

(30:14):
slowly but surely, I think that started taking a toll
on him. I think the shutdown and COVID really spun
him out. It was just the perfect storm. Unfortunately, you know,
we're all just still licking our wounds from losing my mom.
And you know, she was just amazing. You know, both

(30:36):
my parents they're very supportive, loving parents, and yeah, that's
a hard one huh. Between his mother's death and the
onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Montgomery's mood turned dark. He
was set to take his usual trip to Alabama in
the spring of twenty twenty to work with Nick Saban's Punters,

(30:58):
a great time always, but the trip was canceled. Months
went by, Montgomery struggled more and more with the bizarre
realities of life in a pandemic, living in a bubble,
interacting less and less with others. It's been hard on everyone.
But the sad truth, the tragic truth, is Montgomery reached

(31:18):
a point where he couldn't handle it. On August twenty third,
a couple months shy of his fifty sixth birthday, he
took his life. Years ago, I read a great book
by Dave Eggers, one of my favorite authors. The title
was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. It's a novel

(31:42):
about a college kid who loses both of his parents
within five weeks and takes on raising his eight year
old brother. The story is different from Greg Montgomery's, obviously,
but as I worked on this episode, the title kept
going around and around in my head. Montgomery's life story
is heart King, of course, and he was, in his

(32:02):
own way, a staggering genius. Think about what he did
in his fifty five years. Became an elite pro athlete,
produced music, started a clothing line, worked in finance, mentor
generations of young punders, worked in marketing, basically soared in
many directions despite a debilitating mental illness, which he met

(32:24):
head on until it crushed him. He was an original.
When a reporter from Sports Illustrated visited his home in
the nineties while working on a feature story, the reporter
noticed that Montgomery had hung a bunch of picture frames
on the walls, as people do, only there was nothing
in the frames on Montgomery's walls. They were blank. Montgomery

(32:45):
thought that was funny. Greg he was just a force.
And I think anybody you've talked to that have ever
spent any time with him would say that he was
a spiritual man. He had just had the hugest heart
and really cared so much about other people. And I
remember saying to my dad, said, I wish he would
have just been a little bit more time on him,

(33:07):
you know, because I think it's it's really important to
help others, but you got to you gotta stay in
yourself first. You gotta be well first before you can
help people. The news of his death hit Matt Stover hard.
Did you keep in touch with him at all? After
a couple of times during the first few years and

(33:27):
then off the map and then I guess about eight
years ago, right after I was in playing, he called
me about an opportunity he had to run the IMGs
kicking hunting service, you know, their peace there, and he
told me about the business model and how they're going
to integrate him in it and stuff. And then I

(33:49):
told him absolutely I'd be willing to help because I
did a lot of that too, want to help him
and whatever he needs to lean on. And never heard
back from him, and that was the last time I
talked to him. And you know, I felt really really
bad about not continuing to kindle the relationship and found
out that this happened and that that shame on me.

(34:10):
Heef struggle man, and I personally feel bad that I
didn't do a better job of the relationship before. He
always can look back with twenty twenty when something like
this happens, What could I have done right? Everyone who
knew him had the same thought. Here's Kevin Byrne, and
I had not contacted, not heard from him, probably in
ten years. Maybe we talked At one point. I told

(34:33):
him my son Tim always asked about him, and he
was inquiring about we were playing somewhere he was going
to be close and whether he could come by, and
we said we'd be delighted to have him come by,
and then, as it turned out, he couldn't make it.
It's the saddest story imaginable. A fine and generous person's

(34:54):
life cut short in the worst possible way. Montgomery had
so much more living to do and so much to give,
but as his illness and the realities of the COVID
nineteen pandemics swirled in his head, he couldn't take comfort
in what lay ahead. It's truly a tragedy. He was
the opposite of a self involved former star athlete. Greg

(35:16):
was all about helping people, and it was amazing how
many people he has helped. And that's what I mean,
Like after we lost him, these phone calls and letters
that we'd get just overwhelming. And that's definitely the impetus
of starting the foundation and wanting to make a difference

(35:37):
and to help. It's pretty incredible, you know, thinking about
how this could happen to someone like Greg. And you know,
when I was growing up, you know, you read stories
or you see after school specials and it's somebody else's family, right,
But in reality it's not. There's just so many people

(35:57):
that love people that suffer and just thought right to
do something about it. So that's what we're going. I'm
going to stop this episode here, and I can already
hear you. Come on, man, what a downer. Believe me,
I get it. But what convinced me to take on

(36:19):
this story at all is what's happening in the aftermath
of Greg Montgomery's suicide. Margot and her kids and brother
and father are can do people, and in their grief,
they've realized that they can't just sit around and let
something like this happen without trying to find something positive
in it. So the story continues, and it's amazing and

(36:41):
inspiring and yes, heartbreaking all at once. And I'll get
to it in two weeks on the next episode of
What Happened to That Guy. Meanwhile, you can find out
more about Montgomery's life and career at Baltimore Ravens dot
com slash What Happened to That guy. If you like
what you're hearing, please scribe and tell your Ravens friends

(37:02):
about it. This podcast is part of the Baltimore Ravens
podcast Network, which also includes The Lounge hosted by Ryan
make and Garrett Downey. We also have a new podcast
this year, Black in the NFL, hosted by my colleague
Clifton Brown. You can find them all wherever you get

(37:23):
your podcasts. It's all good stuff. This is John Eisenberg.
I'll talk to you in two weeks.