‘American Sports Story’: How Aaron Hernandez Went from NFL Star to Ruthless Killer

For all its sensationalism, Aaron Hernandez’s story is a sad one—first and foremost for his victims, who were callously murdered and injured for no reason, and also for Hernandez himself, who squandered enormous talent and opportunity because he couldn’t conquer his demons.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, the first installment of Ryan Murphy’s spin-off from American Crime Story, recounts the University of Florida and New England Patriots tight end’s rise from humble origins and fall from the athletic mountaintop, dramatizing the many factors that conspired to doom him. Devoid of stars but featuring a strong lead performance from Josh Rivera, it’s compulsively watchable and detailed, if—per Murphy tradition—about as subtle as a gridiron gang tackle.

Despite a couple of framing device flash-forwards in its first two episodes, American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, which premieres Sept. 17 on FX, is a straightforward recap of Hernandez’s life, beginning in Bristol, CT where, as a kid, he and his brother DJ (Ean Castellanos) were trained to be footballers by their dad Dennis (Vincent Laresca), a domineering former UConn star who sabotaged his dreams by getting involved in a robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer.

Dennis is hostile to his wife Terry (Tammy Blanchard) and controlling with his kids, although part of the latter is driven by his desire to see DJ and, especially, Aaron avoid the mistakes he made. To do that, he demands that Aaron follow in his footsteps and join DJ, an aspiring quarterback, at his alma mater. However, when Dennis suddenly passes away, Aaron is seduced by a recruiter into attending the University of Florida, where he plays under Coach Urban Meyer (Tony Yazbeck), who similarly worries about Aaron’s penchant for partying and troublemaking and yet recognizes that his gifts may lead him to the NFL.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez posits Dennis and Urban as the first of Aaron’s numerous father figures to both nurture his skills and let him down by refusing to stick by him and reign in his worst impulses. Created by Stu Zicherman (based on the Boston Globe and Wondery podcast “Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez & Football, Inc.”), the series passes blame around without letting Aaron off the hook, and that balance helps offset its wholesale bluntness.

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Aaron’s fixation on living up to Dennis’ idea of manhood is complicated by his homosexuality, which he conceals lest he suffer the slings and arrows of virtually everyone in his orbit, who use the f-slur to underscore their intolerance. This is confusing and infuriating for Aaron, who dates plenty of women—and marries and has a child with high school sweetheart Shayanna Jenkins (Jaylen Barron)—while simultaneously having clandestine affairs with both a classmate and, later, trainer Chris (Jake Cannavale), whose affections he can’t resist.

Rivera is at the constant center of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, and his nuanced and furious performance is the primary reason to stick with the show. His Aaron is a man who’s waging a constant internal war between his light and dark instincts, and he captures his hurt, resentment, and fury without sentimentalizing him; the character is both a byproduct of his upbringing and circumstances, and an individual who, regardless of his lousy role models and unfortunate losses, actively chose to make the wrong decisions.

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Fundamentally fragmented and with few guardrails to keep him on the straight and narrow, he’s an out-of-control phenom who continues to succeed at the same time that he loses his grip on himself, and Rivera portrays him with equal parts heart and menace.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez paints its protagonist as a kid with bad urges and a victim of paternal domination, sexual abuse (at the hands of his uncle), domestic strife—compelling him to live with his cousin Tanya (Lindsay Mendez), who habitually spars with Terry—and a college and professional football culture that enables misbehavior so long as young men perform on the field.

This is all accurate and yet the series’ lack of delicacy often makes it overly obvious, negating any mystery or suspense. Whereas Urban betrays his promise to mold Aaron into an adult, New England coach Bill Belichick (Norbert Leo Butz)—who drafts him after countless teams pass because of understandable character concerns—makes clear that he’s not a babysitter. Still, he and the team, along with Aaron’s agent Brian Murphy (Thomas Sadoski), work hard to shield Aaron from the consequences of his actions, thereby teaching him that he can get away with anything—a lesson that ultimately brings about his downfall.

Running ten episodes, American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez takes its time laying out the many strands that entangle Aaron, from the tensions between his marriage and his homosexual affairs, to his endless pot smoking, to his friendship with Alexander Sherrod (Roland Buck III), a drug dealer whom Aaron shot in the face (out of insane paranoia) but failed to kill. That crime isn’t the sole one Aaron perpetrates, since it’s preceded by a fatal drive-by shooting and followed by the execution of Shayanna’s sister’s boyfriend Odin Lloyd (J. Alex Brinson). In each case, the motivating factors are Aaron’s violent tendencies (rooted in his warped ideas of masculinity) and narcotics-addled delusions, not to mention a brain that was damaged by years of taking concussive hits, as indicated by post-mortem findings that he was suffering from extreme CTE.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’s main character is a perfect storm of corrosive influences, terrible situations, and inner torment, all of which culminates with incarceration for multiple murders and suicide in a drugged-out haze. Zicherman’s series is never tawdry or insensitive, treating its material with a melancholic sobriety that turns it into a small-scale tragedy. Nonetheless, it’s frequently graceless, such that it feels a bit like a Wikipedia entry come to life.

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Also not helping matters are some chintzy CGI effects for its football action and characterizations that are conceived in no more than two dimensions, whether it’s the hardass Urban, the harder-ass Belichick, or the pious Tim Tebow (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who fails to use Jesus to right Aaron’s wayward course. Still, for both casual viewers and NFL fans, this latest ripped-from-the-headlines saga is never dull and frequently gripping, and in Laith Wallschleger’s Rob Gronkowski, it gets a spot-on impression for the ages.

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