Away from the NFL spotlight, financial ruin drove Clinton Portis to the brink of murder
Fortune pilfered, Clinton Portis contemplated revenge under the veil of darkness. On a handful of late nights and early mornings in 2013 he lurked in his car near a Washington, D.C.–area office building, pistol at his side, and waited for one of several men who had managed a large chunk of the $43.1 million he earned with his 2,230 carries over nine NFL seasons. Purportedly safe investments had suspiciously soured, and almost all the money Portis set aside to fund his future had evaporated. That future included a mother who doubles as his hero and four sons scattered across the Southeast. Their comfort and security. Their happiness.
The hucksters he deemed most responsible ignored his calls. None were bound for jail. Their coffers were dry; a lawsuit seemed pointless. Once his helplessness gave way to rage, Portis lusted for a confrontation. He would meet this betrayer not with pleas or demands, or even blows delivered by thick fists attached to thick forearms. Bullets, he thought, were his sole means of balancing the scale.
“It wasn’t no beat up,” Portis says. “It was kill.”
He recounts those grim urges in the kitchen of his two-bedroom apartment, 11 floors below the penthouse of a chic tower in Northern Virginia, as winds bellow outside the panoramic windows. Portis, 35, plays dominoes with a nephew as he speaks, reflecting on his private fury and his public bankruptcy—due in part to his own gambling and profligacy—and how he gradually learned to embrace life this far from the top.
As he sifts through his past, his focus remains fixed on the array of tiles in front of him.
Illustration by Michael Byers
Flanked by Redskins owner and close friend Daniel Snyder at his retirement press conference on Aug. 23, 2012, Portis responded to a question about his life after football by calling to his side two of his sons, Chaz and Camdin. Ever fashionable, Clinton wore a sharp dark-blue blazer and a sparkling stud in each ear. Ever honest, he choked back tears while reminiscing about a nursing assistant who once told her young son that if she ever grew wealthy, she would buy a Jaguar and a house painted purple, the color of royalty. “She’s got a Jaguar. She’s got a purple house,” Portis said of his mother, Rhonnel Hearn-Pearson. “And she’ll forever be a queen in my eyes.”
Just 30 years old, the 5' 11", 218-pound Portis was only 77 rushing yards shy of 10,000 for his career and 648 short of John Riggins’s all-time Redskins mark—but he was eager to deliver that farewell speech. His infatuation with football, in fact, had begun to wane five years earlier when Snyder had knocked on his hotel room door in Miami, sun not yet peeking through the blinds, and collapsed into the running back’s arms, muttering through sobs that the teammate Portis most revered, Sean Taylor, had succumbed to gunshot wounds.
Fortune pilfered, Clinton Portis contemplated revenge under the veil of darkness. On a handful of late nights and early mornings in 2013 he lurked in his car near a Washington, D.C.–area office building, pistol at his side, and waited for one of several men who had managed a large chunk of the $43.1 million he earned with his 2,230 carries over nine NFL seasons. Purportedly safe investments had suspiciously soured, and almost all the money Portis set aside to fund his future had evaporated. That future included a mother who doubles as his hero and four sons scattered across the Southeast. Their comfort and security. Their happiness.
The hucksters he deemed most responsible ignored his calls. None were bound for jail. Their coffers were dry; a lawsuit seemed pointless. Once his helplessness gave way to rage, Portis lusted for a confrontation. He would meet this betrayer not with pleas or demands, or even blows delivered by thick fists attached to thick forearms. Bullets, he thought, were his sole means of balancing the scale.
“It wasn’t no beat up,” Portis says. “It was kill.”
He recounts those grim urges in the kitchen of his two-bedroom apartment, 11 floors below the penthouse of a chic tower in Northern Virginia, as winds bellow outside the panoramic windows. Portis, 35, plays dominoes with a nephew as he speaks, reflecting on his private fury and his public bankruptcy—due in part to his own gambling and profligacy—and how he gradually learned to embrace life this far from the top.
As he sifts through his past, his focus remains fixed on the array of tiles in front of him.
Illustration by Michael Byers
Flanked by Redskins owner and close friend Daniel Snyder at his retirement press conference on Aug. 23, 2012, Portis responded to a question about his life after football by calling to his side two of his sons, Chaz and Camdin. Ever fashionable, Clinton wore a sharp dark-blue blazer and a sparkling stud in each ear. Ever honest, he choked back tears while reminiscing about a nursing assistant who once told her young son that if she ever grew wealthy, she would buy a Jaguar and a house painted purple, the color of royalty. “She’s got a Jaguar. She’s got a purple house,” Portis said of his mother, Rhonnel Hearn-Pearson. “And she’ll forever be a queen in my eyes.”
Just 30 years old, the 5' 11", 218-pound Portis was only 77 rushing yards shy of 10,000 for his career and 648 short of John Riggins’s all-time Redskins mark—but he was eager to deliver that farewell speech. His infatuation with football, in fact, had begun to wane five years earlier when Snyder had knocked on his hotel room door in Miami, sun not yet peeking through the blinds, and collapsed into the running back’s arms, muttering through sobs that the teammate Portis most revered, Sean Taylor, had succumbed to gunshot wounds.
Ridiculous really. Has no one to be but himself. He could have invested in gas stations, franchises, real estate, construction. 
