Trent Richardson got a $20.5 million guaranteed contract as the third overall pick of the Browns in the 2012 NFL draft. A lot of that money went to greedy friends and family who Richardson now says were partially responsible for his career going bust.
Richardson said on ESPN’s E:60 that people were so demanding of his money that he would be thinking about it during games, looking up in the box where he’d paid for 40 people to attend the game and thinking about how much money that cost him.
“I’m thinking about this stuff in the game. I’m actually looking up at the box making sure everybody is in there,” Richardson said.
Richardson said that in one 10-month span, friends, family and various hangers-on went through $1.6 million of his money.
“You’d get calls, ‘My car’s going to get repo’d,’” he said. “So you’d give $10,000 this week away. Then someone calls and says ‘I’m going to get evicted.’ Another $10,000 goes out. It adds up.”
The Browns traded Richardson away after a year, and one of the reasons the Browns grew tired of him is that they told him to “Make your circle smaller,” and Richardson didn’t do it.
It was particularly painful to Richardson that when he was traded during his second season, the friends and family who had been living with him in Cleveland all decided that they would move with him to Indianapolis -- but none of them would lift a finger to help him pack up his house and move.
“I had to pay people to pack up my house,” he said. “Why I got to pack my house? You all can’t do this? They were saying, ‘He’s got the money, he can just pay to do it.’”
Now Richardson finally has made his circle smaller, including firing his brother from his $100,000 a year personal assistant job. He says he’s not broke, but his life now is “humbling.” After the Browns, Colts, Raiders and Ravens have all sent Richardson packing, there’s a good chance that his NFL career is over. Which means the gravy train is finally over for those greedy friends and family.