NFL players who became friends with former Titans kicker Rob Bironas, who died in a single-car accident on Saturday, say the picture painted of Bironas doesn’t match anything they ever knew about him.
Bironas died when his SUV crashed into several trees. Multiple witnesses have described Bironas as enraged and threatening to other drivers. Bironas’s wife reported him missing shortly before he died, but she says he seemed completely fine when they were together at their home that evening, and she assumed he had gone to sleep until she entered their bedroom and saw he wasn’t there. And friends told USA Today nothing about the Rob Bironas they knew matches the description of the witnesses.
“I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It just doesn’t make sense,” said David Akers, a fellow former NFL kicker and close friend of Bironas. “I’ve been behind him, I’ve been in the car with him and I haven’t seen that side. I’ve just seen the side that chills out a little bit. I don’t know. Unless he was just really good at having two different lives and that’s not what I’ve heard from his other friends that have been around him as well.”
Titans punter Brett Kern spent five years as Bironas’s teammate and talked to him the day before he died. Kern says that not only was Bironas not depressed about anything, but Bironas seemed to be upbeat about the future and excited about his prospects of landing another NFL job.
“I talked to him on Friday, because he had the workout with the Lions, and he was so excited that it went well. I told him I was proud of him, and that’s the last thing I told him,” Kern said. “He was really looking forward to signing with another team.”
It seems that no one who knew Bironas can explain what happened on Saturday night. We may never understand.