Reche Caldwell’s story should be a cautionary tale for some young NFL Players with money and access to things. Sometimes when you lose the game you love, you wind up losing yourself. In a story for an upcoming edition of “ESPN The Magazine” Caldwell details his rise to fame and how two specific plays during his career sent him into a downward spiral that eventually let him to being out of the league and being involved in not one, but two raids by swat teams.

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Caldwell was on the cusp of possible stardom with the Patriots when that stardom slipped right through his hands in the form of a potential touchdown pass from Tom Brady. Caldwell made two HUGE blunders during the 2006 AFC Championship game against the Colts and it’s fair to say that if Caldwell doesn’t drop those passes from Brady, the Patriots very likely win that game and go on to the Super Bowl. After the season the Pats cut him, even though he was the teams leading receiver the season prior. He caught on with the Redskins but might as well not have been there and the following year he was out of the league completely. Those two plays haunted him and nobody wanted to sign him after that and thus started his off the field spiral.

After his playing career, he started hanging out in his old neighborhood of West Tampa because he was still a star around those parts and his money made him seem larger than life. Around 2013 he eventually opened an illegal gambling house that was taking in millions but because Caldwell so was naive, it wasn’t long before police were ramming the door down and throwing flash grenades as they ran through the place, arresting Caldwell.

He made bail the same day and with his gambling ring out of business, he decided he should sell molly after noticing how many people were looking for it. Caldwell continued to prove he is no criminal genius as he ordered the molly online from somewhere in China and had it delivered to his girlfriend’s house. A postal worked flagged the package and a undercover FBI agent posted as a UPS driver and made the delivery, for which Caldwell signed for. Soon as he did, police and swat teams came from everywhere and took him down again.

To this day, Caldwell isn’t sure how authorities took down his drug cartel so swiftly. Perhaps it was the poorly stuffed shoebox-sized package wrapped in elaborate Chinese markings that sounded like a Molly-stuffed maraca moving down the post office’s conveyor belt. “Good lord that boy was a bad criminal,” says his mom, “and thank Jesus for that.”

Luckily for him when he went to trial, his lawyer was able to prove the drugs weren’t even real molly, which meant he wouldn’t face as serious of charges, and instead of facing 20 years, the judge sentence him to 27 months in a very easy facility in Alabama. It was there that Reche sat and heard about his little brother, Andre, winning a super bowl with the Broncos this past February and these days he just wants to live through his little brother and can’t wait to get out and attempt to turn his life around.

The story is very interesting and you can read more on ESPN