Mental health takes a hard toll on people, and throwing insensitive comments around it doesn’t sit well with Emmanuel Acho. After Eagles OT Lane Johnson retired, mentioning that he wanted to focus on his mental health, Stephen A. Smith took a dig at the iconic player’s decision. Acho called Smith out for his insensitivity.

“Four players in the NFL and fraternity have died by suicide in the last 12 months,” Emmanuel Acho said on the Speakeasy podcast. “You can joke about a lot of things on television, but mental health, Stephen A. Smith, is not one of the things that you can joke about when we’ve lost active players like Marshawn Kneeland, active players like Rondale Moore; mental health is not something that you can use your entertainment prowess to now make light of.

“You can’t allow Stephen A. Smith to make this caliber of mistake because this is a lethal mistake that Stephen A. Smith is making. There isn’t an apology that can reduce the damage that he has already caused in making the mistake.”

This backlash is coming from Stephen A. Smith’s comments over Lane Johnson’s retirement reason.

“Now, he calls it quits. Not before the season. Not in the offseason. Oh, no, no, no, no!” Smith said. “After being subjected to this, he said, ‘Life is a little bit too short. I need to focus’ — what did he say? His mental health? Am I making it up?

“Four games into the 2026 season, a dude that has been in the league forever sits back and says, ‘I need to focus on my mental health.”

Smith had to issue a public apology after the fans called him out for his comments. Former Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins wrote on Threads:

“Player retiring because of mental health & people are speaking negative on him. Crazy times we are in.”

“I’ll never question someone’s decision to stop playing pro football at the highest level, given the physical demands, the mental demands, the emotional demands, everything that goes into it,” Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio said. “… Sometimes, we just get to a point where a guy doesn’t want to do it anymore for whatever reason. When he makes that decision, we should all accept it and respect it.

Lane Johnson has been struggling with anxiety since his junior college days.

Johnson’s abrupt retirement in the middle of the season left everyone in shock, since he was still playing at a very, very high level. However, the veteran, who spent all 14 years of his career at Philadelphia, had done enough to call it a career.

Johnson’s struggles with anxiety were tough. In the 2021 season, he suffered terribly as he was trying to stay off the antidepressant prescribed to him. Things were so bad that he was throwing up blood. He missed three games to go back to his home state, Oklahoma.

“I was living in hell for a long time,” Johnson said in an interview with FOX’s Jay Glazer.

“I was ashamed, to be honest. In this league, the NFL, where it’s a gladiator-type sport, it’s something that’s not often talked about but is often felt throughout the league.”

But since then, Johnson has been vocal about his struggles with mental health. He also took the charge to motivate other people dealing with the issue.

“I’m at a point now where I’m just grateful,” Johnson said in 2022 during his visit to Success TMS, a depression-treatment clinic in Cherry Hill. “I feel like there’s a lot of power in sharing your story.”

Despite all of the struggles, he made sure his game remained at the top. According to Pro Football Focus, Lane Johnson recorded 6,886 pass-blocking snaps, allowed 295 pressures and just 33 sacks, while also putting together a 1,405-snap stretch without giving up a single sack.

Though Smith later also apologized to him publicly, by then the damage was already done. The First Take host admitted to having mental health problems, too, but it didn’t do him much good.

The comments did hurt a large group of people, and the situation might take time to cool down.