Bill Reynolds: Aaron Hernandez's fall chronicled in new book

Esquire magazine calls him "the man who knows Aaron Hernandez's secrets."

No big surprise, really.

For Jose Baez was Hernandez's lawyer, someone who was there right to the end of this incredible American saga, one that began in the playgrounds of a blue-collar town in Connecticut, where the sports dream hung over the town like a seductress.

It was a dream Hernandez once held in the palm of his hand, the New [...]

Esquire magazine calls him "the man who knows Aaron Hernandez's secrets."

No big surprise, really.

For Jose Baez was Hernandez's lawyer, someone who was there right to the end of this incredible American saga, one that began in the playgrounds of a blue-collar town in Connecticut, where the sports dream hung over the town like a seductress.

It was a dream Hernandez once held in the palm of his hand, the New England kid starring for New England's team, complete with all the fame that came with that. But everything comes with a price tag, even the incredible success of Aaron Hernandez.

In retrospect, the clues were there all along, if we only knew where to look. The trouble he got into at the University of Florida, the marijuana culture, the suspicion that he was involved in some shady dealings with some shady characters. It was enough to drop him out of the first round, even though he had first-round talent.

So, when he arrived in Foxboro as a fourth-round pick in the 2010 draft, he quickly was perceived as a steal. He was the youngest player in the entire NFL, playing for his hometown team, a child's fantasy coming true.

Roll the credits.

Until it got complicated.

Which is where Jose Baez comes in.

His book is called "Unnecessary Roughness: Inside the Trial and Finals Days of Aaron Hernandez," and rest assured the Patriots' honchos won't have it on their Christmas list.

In all the important ways, Hernandez's life was never easy, once you peeked beneath all the money and all the fame. His childhood in Bristol, Conn., was wrapped in a certain dysfunction, due to the death of his father and his constant marijuana use, to the point that when he was starring at the University of Florida, famed coach Urban Meyer was going to throw him off the team until star quarterback Tim Tebow essentially told Meyer that, if he threw Hernandez off the team, he was going to quit.

Guess what?

You guessed it.

Or as Hernandez says in the book about his Florida days: "I was a kid in a candy store and there was no one other than the coaches around to tell us we couldn't do what we wanted to do."

The other thing that comes across in the book as emphatically as an open field block?

"Every time I was on the field, I was high on weed. I could not play without weed."

This was the baggage he brought home with him to New England, the baggage he brought to the Patriots. Not that they weren't aware of it. No big surprise. The NFL is full of risk-reward players. From the beginning of his time with the Patriots, he was a great talent, another one of Bill Belichick's steals in the draft — big, fast, tough, a football thoroughbred, the perfect receiving complement to Gronk.

But it all got complicated in summer 2013. That was when Hernandez was charged in the murder of Odin Lloyd, a semiprofessional football player who was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancée. Hernandez immediately was cut by the Pats, and in 2015, was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was back on trial in 2017, charged in a double murder in Boston's South End from 2012, but was acquitted of the killings. Five days later, Hernandez was found dead in his prison cell, hanging by his bed sheets.

Had there ever been a bigger fall from grace around here?

So, the obvious question was why?

There are no easy answers.

But this new book asks a lot of questions. Questions about his sexuality. Questions about his friends. Questions. Like what did the Patriots know about Hernandez's past, and when did they know it? There seems little question he loved the Patriots. He calls Gronk "the best TE ever to walk on a football field," and says that he and Tom Brady were close because "Brady always wanted to know where I was."

No big surprise, really.

The Patriots had to know Hernandez had a fragile personality, as talented as he was, when they drafted him. But I suspect that no one had ever heard of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, back then, back when that was just another phrase in a book no one ever looked at.

But, according to "Unnecessary Roughness," Aaron Hernandez had third-stage CTE, the youngest person his doctors had ever seen with it, as that stage can cause paranoia, depression, and thoughts of suicide.

In short, it seems like a scouting report on the late Aaron Hernandez, the New England kid who grew up to star for the New England Patriots.

Aaron Hernandez — the New England kid who seemingly has paid a very high price for those football dreams of his.