Ballerific Sports: Earl Wolff of The Jaguars Recounts Being Kidnapped At Gunpoint for Sports Illustrated’s “The MMQB” – blogged by @niksofly

“Just let me get back to my family.” Those are the words that #Jacksonville safety #EarlWolff plead as he is kidnapped, assaulted, and extorted. Every second that he was being held against his will was a second closer to the possibility of death. Wolff, like many of us that college or our career take away from our hometown, voyage back to meet with our beloved friends and family. We laugh. We talk…and we leave. We return home without a hair out of place or a brush with possible death. For Wolff, a generic Monday night would change his life forever. Wolff’s robbery made news, but for the first time, Wolff gives a detailed account blow-by-blow to Sports Illustrated’s The MMQB.

Check it out:

[It was a regular Monday in February, and I was back home in Fayetteville, N.C. I was exhausted from travel and a weekend in Atlanta, but it was my buddy’s birthday, so I went over to his girlfriend’s house and we spent the night catching up and playing the card game Tonk. When he went to the porch to FaceTime his daughter, that was my cue to head out. I said goodbye just past midnight. My mother’s house was just five minutes away. I had come home to celebrate her birthday.

My 2011 white Range Rover is parked on the street. As I get in and reach for the seatbelt, someone yanks my door open. There’s a man wearing a black ski mask and pointing an AK-47 inches from my face.

“Give me the keys!” he barks. “And get out of the car!”

I freeze, wondering if my buddy is playing a trick on me. I wonder if it’s a sick joke. I babble, but words aren’t coming out of my mouth.

“Give me your wallet! Your phone!”

I step out and hand over my belongings. Another man with a shotgun rushes toward me and shoves me into the back seat. Two other men with shotguns appear from the side of the house and hop in the car. The man with the AK-47 gets behind the wheel, and I’m squished between two of the masked men in the backseat. We begin driving around the neighborhood.

“Where’s the money at?” one shouts at me.

“I, I … I don’t have any money,” I stammer. “I don’t have a dollar on me.”

“Where’s the money at?” he says again.

“You can have the car, you can have anything you want,” I say. “Just let me get back to my family.”]

You can continue reading the rest at The MMQB.

-Niko Rose