Ryan Clark Isn't Afraid to Tackle Hard Truths

The former NFL safety turned ESPN analyst has a fearless approach that's brought him both fame and controversy. With The Pivot Podcast, he's building his own media empire.

- By Brady Langmann

An undrafted free agent out of LSU, Clark played for 13 years in the NFL and won a Super Bowl in Pittsburgh.

IT WAS OCTOBER 2007–peak pigskin season for all who celebrate–but Ryan Clark, then a safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was crying in the bathroom of a hospital room. Daggers in his side, 104-degree fever.

Clark carries the trait for sickle cell anemia, something he'd always known, but he had just played in Denver and the altitude lit his condition ablaze. How bad was it? Clark wasn't just ready to die; in that bathroom, he'd made peace with it. If it's time, I'm comfortable with that, Clark thought.

In walked the surgeon... and he looked exactly like Tom Brady, the nemesis of all defensive backs. Of course he did. It figures, Clark said to himself, that if I die, the dude treating me would look like this man. Turns out the Brady lookalike brought a very TB12 approach to health care: success at all costs. He told Clark bluntly that he was taking out his spleen. "I don't even care what the affliction is," Clark remembers him saying.

"That moment obviously saved my life," Clark tells me over Zoom, nearly 18 years later. Steelers fans know the next chapter by heart: Clark won Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, hoisting the Lombardi Trophy alongside Troy Polamalu. The former undrafted free agent from LSU then retired in 2015 after a 13-year career. It was a sports-movie ending, and another player—maybe most players—might have retired home to Baton Rouge.

Not Ryan Clark. I'm chatting with the man today because of everything that's happened after he shed the black and gold. Clark, now 45, has spent years building what is suddenly a skyrocketing media career, spanning multiple ESPN programs as well as The Pivot Podcast, the über-popular interview show he cohosts with fellow former players Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder.