Padecky: Tony Moll wants NFL to understand his hurt

SONOMA

Stella takes a running start at her dad, ready to jump in his arms with a smack-thud, and doesn’t think for a moment she could hurt him. Why would she? Stella is three and half years old, maybe 40 pounds. Tony Moll, her dad, is 6-foot-5, 290 pounds and just 32 years old.

Stella jumps into his arms. Tony pulls back his head to avoid hers. The pain starts from the top of his left shoulder, travels like a speeding bullet down his left arm, into his left hand where it ends its malevolent journey, the tingling and numbness in his fingers reminding its host with brutal honesty that he played in the NFL for six years.

Stella looks for the smile. Tony squeezes out one, annoyed he can’t give his daughter his undivided affection. His annoyance doesn’t stop there. All Moll has to do is think of this coming March when he flies to Baltimore, to convince an insurance company he is not healthy.

“I’m not looking for the NFL’s money,” Moll said. “I’m filing a workman’s comp claim, that I was injured on the job and that I want health coverage if I should need it in the years ahead.”

Moll’s claims have been rebuffed to this point. It has caused as much distress for him as that pinched nerve in his neck. He’s healthy? One hundred percent healthy? And the NFL had nothing to do it with it anyway? Shoot, employing such blindness to that logic, why not call the NFL a video game with great sound effects.

With Moll in Baltimore will be an attorney who will present for the Moll health records from the Baltimore Ravens where Moll was an offensive lineman in 2009 and 2010. “They can pull all the film and see it for themselves,” Moll said.

Moll’s wife, Megan, will be there to testify, to give the insurance company examples of why her husband is not 100 percent healthy. Only a cold-hearted corporation could shrug off and claim inconsequential the following: memory loss, needing to leave a room quickly because it is too noisy or it has suddenly become too small. Megan will tell them Tony needs to wear sunglasses all the time when outdoors because of the headaches that will result if he doesn’t.

“I have come to recognize possible bouts of anger,” he said, “and understand how I need to keep calm about it.”

Megan wasn’t so calm when she sat with Tony when they saw the movie “Concussion.”

“She was terrified, emotional,” Moll said.

That was an understatement.

“I was bawling,” Megan said. “I was a lot more emotional than I thought. The first part of the movie, especially, was very hard to watch, when they showed the hitting. The clips they were showing, it was like: The harder they hit the more people watched.”

Her emotion changed as the movie portrayed the NFL as a cruel, heartless beast, obsessed with keeping its brand intact. Injuries? Brain damage? Nah.

“I started to become angry,” Megan said. “Tony was part of this. It was his life. I’m disappointed in the NFL.

The trigger points for her were multiple. Megan saw the brutality of the NFL, the lack of conscience of the NFL, the bottom line fixation of the NFL. Gosh, the NFL was acting like an insurance company. The NFL went out of its way to discredit Dr. Bennet Omalu, the county coroner in Pittsburgh who discovered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Law enforcement somehow found its way into the fray.

“For the NFL to know about this issue,” Moll said, “and to not want to do anything about it, it’s troubling to me to realize there was no way they wanted to help.”

The concepts of trust, honor and responsibility form a large part of Moll’s life. His grandfather and father formed Moll Construction more than 60 years ago. They built more than 3,500 homes in the North Bay. His dad became an educator as well at Sonoma Valley High School and two middle schools in Sonoma. His two brothers - one a realtor, one an engineer - have offices within walking distance of Moll’s mortgage office in downtown Sonoma.

The Molls of Sonoma have roots, a community influence, all with one intended purpose: We don’t duck responsibility. We don’t pass the buck. We own a mistake. That’s what drives Moll to distraction. He was honorable to the NFL. He wants the same consideration in return.

“When that lawsuit was filed against the NFL, I wasn’t one of the 5,000 former players in it,” Moll said of the class-action lawsuit that resulted in a $900 million settlement. “I knew when I entered the league there was a good chance I might have trouble walking later in life. It’s like signing up with the military. You know you are going to war. Sure, there was some mention of concussions but there wasn’t going to be any long-lasting effect. That was before the research came out.”

Moll believed it was the honorable thing to do, not to cry wolf after the fact.

“As a player you get graded on every play,” Moll said. “You are held accountable. You own it. You get better. I never had any problem with that. Now I want the NFL to own it.”

Moll knows of receiving two concussions, the second one a big, red flag for him. It was in his last training camp with the Ravens in 2010. On a pass rush a defensive end and a defensive tackle came at Moll, an offensive tackle.

“Their feet got tangled,” he said. “It was a total accident.”

A total accident when the defensive end fell into Moll, his helmet striking Moll above the right ear. Moll dropped like a sack of flour. Megan, back in Sonoma, received a phone call from her husband saying he suffered a concussion. She’ll never forget the chill she felt.

“Tony was saying his sentences backward,” Megan said.

Moll missed two preseason games in 2010. To those concussions Moll still was suffering from the pinched nerve in 2007 and had a balky left hip. Moll came to a conclusion he found distasteful but necessary.

“If you’re going to be in that much pain all the time,” Moll said, “you need to be compensated.”

That truth touched his very core. He wasn’t in the game for money. As he went through Sonoma Valley High School and the University of Nevada, Moll’s focus was clear: Realize the dream. Play in the NFL. Give up? Surrender to pain? Meh.

“Tony is as mentally tough,” said then Nevada coach Chris Ault, “as any athlete I have ever coached.”

Of course it is with great pride Moll can say he blocked for Brett Favre, Joe Flacco and Philip Rivers. The league knew the ultimate truism about Moll - the man could play with pain.

“I could have been the universal backup,” Moll said. “I could have played 15 years. The NFL scouts were surprised when I retired.”

But the Molls wanted a family. Stella came along and then two years later, Sam. Having a family in Sonoma is a driving force for Moll as his cousins and nephews and nieces and brothers and parents and friends can attest. The NFL was short-term. Sonoma was long-term. And his reputation around here was never going to be based on his NFL career - the only football-related item in his office is a small foam football a 5-year-old might possess, with the letters SVHS on it.

As if Moll could hide his NFL career.

“You should see what happens when I get in front of an audience and talk about the NFL,” Moll said. “It captivates the audience. They grow quiet. It’s like I’m reading from scripture.”

That’s what happens when people see Moll, 30 pounds lighter and looking fit. What they can’t see is what Molls feels. He can’t even remember how he got that pinched nerve in his neck in 2007 but Stella reminds him every time she comes hurtling at him. Moll spends far too much paying attention to light, sounds and headaches.

Football, amazingly, is not a regret for Moll. Rather he is totally OK with his son playing the game. “We can’t create a society in which we have buffers and cushions for our kids,” he said. “If that’s what we want, then we might as well have them play video games. No, life can be tough sometimes. Deal with it.”

Own it. Moll did. Now he wants the NFL and its insurance companies to do the same.

“Take care of the players who dedicated their life to you.”

If that can happen, if the NFL can accept responsibility and not look at its players as a profit margin, then the following sentence won’t seem so cold and harsh.

“The NFL,” Moll said, “is a well-paid, blue collar job.”

To contact Bob Padecky email him at bobpadecky@gmail.com.