Nothing sells product like a little skin, especially in a culture so repressed, sexually. So it’s hard to turn down a post of an athlete posing in the nude. The latest such athlete is Atlanta Falcons’ defensive end Ray Edwards. There’s nothing all that special about his pictures other than he poses eerily similar to media-whore darling Chad Ochocinco’s PETA “Ink Not Mink” campaign. So why is this news-worthy? Well, it isn’t, really, but there is something particularly noteworthy about this freak-of-nature. Edwards is listed at six-foot-five inches and 258 pounds, running a 4.8 second 40-yard dash while bench pressing 225 pounds thirty times. Clearly, he is a beast by all terms of the word, and this includes his play on the field (he is guy who seized upon Atlanta Housewives star Kim Zolciak’s husband Kroy Biermann’s starting spot!).

Interestingly, in 2007, Edwards was suspended from the NFL for violating the league’s substance abuse policy, which is probably the most lax of all of the world’s sports when it comes to steroids. Officially, at the time, Edwards claimed he ingested a supplement that contained anabolic material, a similar story to much more high profile NFL ballers, Brian Cushing and Shawne Merriman — both of whom received NFL hardware while juicing. To his credit, Edwards hasn’t been caught since that incident almost five years ago, but it speaks to the NFL’s culture of destruction. And you don’t even have to go back into the annals of NFL time, although it’s a fairly consistent pattern throughout, to see the absurd pressure placed on these athletes to perform. From the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal to the NFL’s kryptonite, concussions, we are not too far away from football being a sport where it is required to sign a waiver that relinquishes all rights to sue on behalf of your brain dying or body failing.

Whatever the case, it’s hard to knock what these men do to feed their families, so let’s all marvel at Edwards’ physique and ability to hustle.

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One Comment

  1. This is hella cliche but….dude look like an African King. What country..I dunno. But ummmmmm mmmmm good.

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