Jaire Alexander opens up about stepping away from the NFL

Former Packers All-Pro cornerback Jaire Alexander has continued to open up publicly about one of the most difficult decisions of his football career. After abruptly stepping away from the NFL last season, Alexander utilizedThe Players' Tribuneto explain that the choice was driven by mental health struggles and the emotional toll surrounding his injuries and recovery process.

“Deciding to step away from the game was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do,” Alexander admitted. “But I absolutely did have to do it.”

The comments provide important context surrounding what became one of the NFL's more unexpected storylines during the 2025 season. Alexander originally joined the Baltimore Ravens after being recruited heavily by Lamar Jackson following his June release from theGreen Bay Packers. Baltimore signed the talented cornerback to a one-year deal, hoping a fresh environment could help him rediscover the form that once made him one of the league's premier defensive stoppers.

Instead, injuries and inconsistency quickly complicated the situation.

Alexander played in only two games with Baltimore, totaling five tackles while struggling to stay healthy throughout much of training camp and the regular season. Following a difficult performance against the Buffalo Bills, Alexander spent extended stretches either injured or inactive as a healthy scratch.

Before the NFL trade deadline, the Philadelphia Eagles acquired Alexander and a 2027 seventh-round pick from Baltimore in exchange for a 2026 sixth-round selection. Eagles general manager Howie Roseman later admitted the organization fully understood the risk involved but believed the upside justified the move after researching Alexander's situation with Baltimore.

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The trade initially appeared to offer a potential homecoming opportunity for Alexander, who was born in Philadelphia before later moving to North Carolina as a child. However, injuries continued to prevent him from returning to the field consistently. Alexander never appeared in a game for Philadelphia following the trade. The Eagles eventually placed him on the reserve/retired list after he stepped away from football to focus on both his physical and mental health during his recovery from knee surgery.

According toESPN, Alexander later repaid approximately $889,000to Philadelphia, resulting in salary cap relief for the organization.

Despite how frustrating the situation became from a football perspective, Alexander's openness about mental health offers an important reminder about the personal challenges athletes often face behind the scenes. Injuries, expectations, roster uncertainty, and constant pressure can create emotional strain that isn't always visible to the public.

At only 29, Alexander's future in football remains uncertain as he contemplates retirement. What seems most important now, however, is that one of the NFL's most talented cornerbacks recognized the need to prioritize his well-being over trying to force his way back onto the field.

This article originally appeared on Eagles Wire:Jaire Alexander explains difficult decision to leave football

byLiam Oneel

in

May 13, 2026

Jaire Alexander opens up about stepping away from the NFL

Former Packers All-Pro cornerback Jaire Alexander has continued to open up publicly about one of the most difficult decisions of his fo...

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The Boys creator reacts to real-life gold Trump statue that mirrors scene from the show

The Boysshowrunner Eric Kripke has responded to the striking similarity between a scene from the superhero show andDonald Trump’s recently erected golden statue of himself.

Last week’s episode ofAmazon Prime Video’s superhero and political satire, titled “Though the Heavens Fall,” saw Homelander (Antony Starr), the sadistic and psychotic leader of the superhero team “The Seven,” place a golden statue of himself inside a church. Declaring himself the new messiah after being visited in a vision by “angel” Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) in an earlier episode, Homelander demands to be worshipped.

Then, just hours after the episode’s premiere, the president unveiled a15-foot gold statue of himselfwith a raised fist, nicknamed “Don Colossus,” atTrump National Doral Miami, one of his Florida golf clubs.

Sharing a split image on Instagram of Trump’s controversial statue and the golden statue of Homelander, Kripke wrote: “Seriously, what the f***?”

Not only do the statues share an eerie resemblance, but just last month,Trump similarly found himself in hot waterfor likening himself to God in an AI-generated image posted on Truth Social.

The image depicted Trump as Jesus in flowing robes, healing a sick man with beams of light emanating from his hands, while he’s surrounded by patriotic symbols, including an American flag, the Statue of Liberty and eagles.

It sparked outrage among Christians and across the political spectrum. Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene slammed the post and said she was “praying against it” while Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders described it as “deranged” and “egomaniacal behavior.”The Viewhosts condemned it as “blasphemous.”

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This is not the first timeThe Boysfeatured chilling parallels to political events. In the fourth season, the series was forced to adda disclaimer before its episode, originally titled “Assassination Run,”following the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump.

A plot in the season four finale showed Jack Quaid’s Hughie attempting to block an assassination attempt on President-Elect Robert Singer (Jim Beaver), orchestrated byHomelander.

At the start of the episode, a disclaimer now reads: “Viewer discretion advised. This episode contains scenes of fictional political violence. Any similarities to recent events are completely coincidental and unintentional. Prime Video, Amazon, MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Television and the producers ofThe Boysoppose, in the strongest terms, real-world violence of any kind.”

Starr previously rejected the “strange” comparisons viewers made between Homelander and Trump.

“Of course, people could make the comparison, and they did. So it was quite strange getting dragged into a conversation I didn’t necessarily sign on to be a part of,”the actor toldEntertainment Weeklyin 2024.“I didn’t want the character to be a mustache-twirling villain. It had to be a real person built from the ground up. The other thing is, I really don’t like using the word ‘psychopath.’ I think it’s such a reductive term.”

The Boysis currentlyairing its fifth and final season. The critically acclaimed series debuted in 2019 and centers on a group of superheroes who go rogue and start abusing their powers. Along with Starr and Quaid, it also features Karl Urban, Erin Moriarty and Jensen Ackles.

New episodes ofThe Boysare released Wednesdays on Amazon Prime Video.

byLiam Oneel

in

May 12, 2026

The Boys creator reacts to real-life gold Trump statue that mirrors scene from the show

The Boysshowrunner Eric Kripke has responded to the striking similarity between a scene from the superhero show andDonald Trump’s recen...

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Geoffrey Smith, much-loved Michigan-born presenter of Radio 3’s Jazz Record Requests

Geoffrey Smith, who has died aged 82, was a genial and extraordinarily knowledgeable Radio 3 presenter, primarily of jazz programmes; his scholarly embrace of the genre and his roots in the Midwest made him one of the network’s most cherished voices, and his distinctive “hel-low” became as established a vocal signature as Alistair Cooke’s “Good morning”.

For more than 20 years, until 2012, Smith was the presenter of Jazz Record Requests, a weekly show which handed the content over to listeners, but which was also very much a vehicle for his own taste.

Smith regarded jazz as “America’s classical music”, and he was steeped in its pantheon. Jazz Record Requests, broadcast late on a Saturday afternoon before moving to a Sunday slot in 2019, was where the listener went in the pleasurable certainty of hearing the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Sidney Bechet, Thelonious Monk and Lester Young, and of having their understanding of the music deepened by Smith’s lightly worn expertise. The show had been launched in 1964 by Humphrey Lyttelton, whose undogmatic, friendly style helped to establish a sense of a community of like-minded people which was nurtured by his successors.

The pleasure of Jazz Record Requests lay as much in Smith’s voice and delivery as it did in the music. Born and brought up in Michigan, he was possessed of an ease and an erudition that added up to its own kind of music. He honed his scripts so that they acquired a rhythm appropriate to the show. His great gift was somehow to transport the listener back to the 1950s and to a low-lit table at a club like Birdland in midtown Manhattan just as Count Basie was striking up.

“I used to get such a pleasure out of shaping it, and the sense it created of ‘we’re all in this together’, ” he told The Daily Telegraph’s Ivan Hewett in 2014. “It may have been this person’s birthday or that person’s anniversary that prompted the request, but that was really just an excuse to share their love of this great music.”

Nicholas Kenyon, Radio 3 controller during the 1990s, said of Smith that “he could give anyone a lesson in presentation skills”, and for all that he had come to the network via an unusual route, he was the supreme embodiment of its civilised values.

Although the jazz genre stems ultimately from pain, one critic observed, it was hard to listen to Smith’s Jazz Record Requests without feeling happy.

After ceding the JRR presenter’s chair to Alyn Shipton, Smith ended his Radio 3 career with his own, more personal, show, Geoffrey Smith’s Jazz, which ran from 2012 to 2019, albeit in the graveyard slot of midnight on a Saturday, with each edition focusing on a different artist and introduced, as ever, with his familiar “ Hel-low…” He viewed the eventual axing of the programme with equanimity, saying: “I’ve had a fine time.”

Though synonymous with the US tradition, Smith was a champion of other greats, among them the British pianist Stan Tracey and the French-born violinist Stephane Grappelli, whose biography he wrote. The essence of jazz, Smith believed, lay in its having no borders. It was the sound of freedom.

He also presented classical music programmes on Radio 3 – including Building a Library and Record Review – and in the clearest expression of his enthusiasm for the musical culture of his adopted homeland, he became an authority on Gilbert and Sullivan. His book The Savoy Operas: A New Guide to Gilbert and Sullivan was published in 1985.

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Geoffrey John Smith was born on August 23 1943 to Earl Willard Smith and Marian Kay Smith, née Eisele. Music ran deep in the family: “My father played stride piano but he also played Schubert,” he recalled. The atmosphere young Geoffrey grew up in “resembled a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical”, and at the age of 12 he discovered jazz.

After leaving Bay City’s Central High School he played drums with “groups ranging from Dixieland to big bands to a very free New York quartet” while attending the University of Michigan and then the University of Wisconsin, but found himself out of step with the times and with the dominance of rock music.

“I was a conscientious objector to the 1960s,” he said. The convulsions America was experiencing as a result of the Vietnam War did not help, and when, in 1970, the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis released his fusion album Bitches Brew, Smith decided that the jazz game was up, and he sold his drum kit.

He visited London for the first time in the summer of 1971. Two years later – “figuring that a town with five symphony orchestras and a National Health Service was a pretty good place to be” – he and his flautist wife Lenore Ketola, from whom he was later divorced, came back and made it their home.

Having established himself as a music critic, Smith gained his entrée to Radio 3 when his Grappelli book, published in 1987, led to a commission the following year to make a series about him. He became the regular presenter of Jazz Record Requests in 1991 on the death of Peter Clayton.

There was, Smith recalled, a hard core of requesters to the programme: “There’s a Dave Taylor in Lincolnshire who was always writing to me. The funny thing is that when I invited Humphrey Lyttelton to be the studio guest on the 40th-anniversary show, I asked him if he could remember the most persistent writer to the show. He said, ‘Oh yes, there was this chap called Dave Taylor…’ ”

Smith’s last major contribution to Radio 3 was a week-long series of essays in late 2020 called Jazz Among the British in which he explored the differences between US and UK jazz and reflected on the transatlantic ties that certain American artists – notably Duke Ellington – had forged.

He continued to write, spending 30 years as the music critic of Country Life, and had poetry published in magazines including Encounter and The Tablet.

Geoffrey Smith is survived by his second wife Janette Grant and his son from his first marriage.

Geoffrey Smith, born August 23 1943, died April 2 2026

byLiam Oneel

in

May 12, 2026

Geoffrey Smith, much-loved Michigan-born presenter of Radio 3’s Jazz Record Requests

Geoffrey Smith, who has died aged 82, was a genial and extraordinarily knowledgeable Radio 3 presenter, primarily of jazz programmes; h...

Read More