Ravens left tackle Ronnie Stanley has long had an idea for what he wanted his foundation to look like. But the picture became more clear in 2016 after he adopted Lola, a pit bull mix from a local animal rescue and care shelter.
“I was just figuring out the right time where I could put a lot of my focus into it,” he said Tuesday in an interview in connection with the launch of the Ronnie Stanley Foundation. “I just kind of sat on it for a while. I didn’t want to rush into something. I wanted to make sure it was viable. I just put my mind to it and I think the timing was right. Everything has kind of gone according to how we wanted it to. It’s a very blessed feeling.”
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It’s been a difficult year for Stanley. Last November, just two days after he signed a five-year, $98.75 million contract extension that made him one of the highest-paid offensive linemen in the NFL, Stanley went down with a season-ending ankle injury in the first half of a home game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
He had surgery and spent months rehabbing the injury in hopes of being on the field for the start of the 2021 season. Stanley achieved that goal and started for the Ravens in Week 1 against the Raiders in his hometown of Las Vegas. But it quickly became clear that he wasn’t fully ready and the 2019 All-Pro had one of the most difficult games of his career.
With his ankle still giving him issues, Stanley sought the opinion of various doctors and ultimately chose to have another surgery which ended his 2021 season. Stanley said he’s feeling better, but he’s facing another long and arduous rehab process. He currently has a cast on his lower left leg. Once that comes off, he’ll graduate to having to wear a boot.
Stanley acknowledged that it’s been weird to have so much free time on his hands and it’s given him time to think about what he wants to do off the field and when his career ends. Giving back is part of that.
The Ronnie Stanley Foundation has a mission to improve the quality of life for rescue dogs, provide training that cultivates therapeutic properties and matches each rescue dog with an individual who has faced a challenge in life, such as a chronic illness or emotional trauma. The foundation has already placed two dogs in homes, one to aid a young girl with sickle cell anemia and the other with a U.S. Navy veteran who has been diagnosed with PTSD.
Stanley, though, has even bigger plans and he’s enlisted the help of a board of directors that includes Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta and former NFL players Justin Tuck and Eric Weddle.
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“I picked those people, not only because of what they do in the professional world, but also their character and how much they care about what’s being done,” Stanley said. “They also truly to their core care about animals. I wanted that to be an important factor for the other board members.”
Stanley spoke to The Athletic on Tuesday about his foundation, his health and his football future. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Moving forward, how do you envision this foundation evolving?
I’m very excited. Right now, we’re training dogs just to be companions for these people. Hopefully, we’re able to possibly train some of these dogs as actual service dogs for maybe people with terminal illnesses or maybe somebody with epilepsy that has seizures. I think that’s probably the end goal to try and get them into every aspect of normal human life and people who truly need life-saving animals in their life. Who knows, maybe we’ll work with other animals down the line.
When you have a year like you’ve had, does that make you think more about what you want to do and how you want to spend your time?
I think it made me think more about how I would spend my time if I didn’t have football. As a football player, you always know that time is going to come. But when that time comes, I feel like there’s always that phase where you’re like, “Oh, what am I going to do?” No matter how much you think about it, that’s probably it. I still have most of my focus on coming back to football and still having a pretty lengthy career, post this (injury). But it’s definitely forced me to figure things out with what to do with my free time and not just kind of not doing anything, which is what I’m doing right now because of my foot.
You’ve really never had a serious injury before. Has this been tough to deal with mentally?
The toughest part of that is it being back-to-back years I’ve kind of had the same exact thing. Not exactly the same thing, but the same body part being the issue. That’s probably the hardest part and just dealing with the what-ifs and talking about the what-ifs if I had to go through this again. Then, I just have to remind myself of all the positives. You can’t really stay focused on that stuff. I was actually way way more injured when I was in high school and I feel like that kind of set me up, at least mentally to deal with this. I know I can get through it. This isn’t the worst thing that I’ve been through.”
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The team has been very careful about what they’ve said about your injury. What can you say about it? Do you feel pretty good that this will be behind you and this won’t continue to negatively impact your career?
You know, I honestly am really confident that I can come back from this. I think a lot of it was just me trying to really get back into playing and maybe I should have waited a little bit longer, whatever the case may be, build up a little more strength around this ankle. Just doing it this time around, I think I’m just going to do everything the exact right way. Not to say I didn’t do it the right way before. I think I could have just used a little more time. This time around, there’s just going to be no pushing past what I should do.
You know how the media and fans are. They’re always looking for a reason, like why did this happen again, what could you have done to prevent it. Is there anything you lament with how this went down? Or was this just an unfortunate byproduct of playing a very physical sport at a very demanding position?
It’s always easy to look at things retroactively and say: “What if? What if this? What if that?” I obviously wish I could have handled things differently in some cases, but I don’t have any hatefulness or I’m not mad at any specific person or anything like that. There’s always good intentions around. I think this is something where always looking back, you’re saying, “Maybe, this could have been avoided.” It’s always easy to do that. I definitely was in a phase like that for a while. But I think moving forward, this is a new opportunity to really rebuild this thing the right way.
What is your mindset going forward and how are you going to approach these next six months?
I’m just taking it a day at a time. That’s been my approach, taking it one day at a time. When I’m able to really get into rehab and really work out again and get things moving, just push myself. But be smart about things. Yeah, just taking it one day at a time. That’s been my motto through this whole injury.
(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)
