In a rented art studio in Cincinnati, Aaron Maybin drags brushstrokes across an impressive watercolour painting of a tiger, the mascot of the Cincinnati Bengals—the NFL club the 25 year-old is trying to earn a spot with during the dying days of summer.
“As with any of my pieces, I don’t think I’ll ever be finished with it,” Maybin tells the camera crew who have been following him around for HBO’s Hard Knocks documentary series. He stares at the painting—his art goes for upwards of $20,000 a piece these days—and a huge smile comes across his face, a genuine reaction to the tangible accomplishment staring back at him from the canvas. Moments like this are everything for Maybin these days. Four years removed from being chosen by the Buffallo Bills with the 11th pick of the NFL draft and clinging on for his life in Bengals training camp, it’s a time in his career when accomplishments have been hard to find.
From an office across town, a Bengals staffer dials Maybin’s number on his phone. “Aaron, Marv Lewis wants to see you,” the staffer says on behalf of the head coach. “Bring your playbook.” The three scariest words in football.
“I’ve been in the game long enough to know how it goes,” Maybin told Lewis after learning he’d been released, words of optimism masked by a solemn face, “And I appreciate you guys thinking enough of me to let me go and give me the opportunity to catch on someplace else.”
Few could have guessed that opportunity would come in the CFL, where the ex-Penn State star pass rusher has officially signed with the Toronto Argonauts, just two weeks before the playoffs. After all, Maybin was supposed to be a star in the NFL, too. Coming into the league as a rare 20 year-old phenom, playing amongst grown men at football’s highest level. In four short years, a future game changer had become a situational linebacker who couldn’t hold a spot on a roster. Let alone on the field.
We’ve seen pass rushers hone their craft in the CFL before excelling down south (Cameron Wake is the go-to example) and the league is full of skilled players who have become mega-stars after travelling north of the border. But the path from the NFL to the CFL has been a decidedly less popular one amongst defensive players.
But with the Argos, Maybin finds himself in a new situation, with a chance to reverse the trend and contribute to a championship-calibre team. At his first official practice Monday, he may have seemed eager to escape the scrum and the added attention a new player with NFL pedigree can expect, but he was saying all the right things.
“It’s a great opportunity to come onto a very talented team with aspirations of doing some big things in the playoffs,” Maybin said before tossing aside the notion that the adjustment to the CFL game could present a steep learning curve. “The field is bigger than I’m used to, but there’s nothing intimidating about it. The way I see it, I’m a football player. I’m not there yet; I still have some work to do. [But] I’ll adjust.”
Entering the 2009 draft after just two seasons at Penn State, Maybin was an intriguing prospect, a once-in-a-generation pass rusher in terms of his speed and explosiveness.
“Aaron always had a tremendous motor,” recalls Larry Luthe, who coached Maybin at Mt. Hebron high school just outside of Baltimore. “He always played faster than everybody else. You never knew his ceiling, but I knew if people saw him in person they’d realize what he could do.”
He was a standout player at Mt. Hebron, and while he had the grades to go to college without playing football, a recruiting trip to a sold-out Ohio State-Penn State game in State College, Penn., had convinced him: playing football for Joe Paterno at Penn State was where he wanted to be. In his second season, in 2008, Maybin was a finalist for Player of the Year, and with his stock sky-high he left school early and declared for the draft.
But at just 240 pounds, he was about 15-20 pounds lighter than scouts and coaches would have liked. The Bills took him anyways, content that he’d either put on the weight as he got older, or would find a way to succeed regardless. He played 16 games as a rookie, but struggled to put up numbers, registering just 11 total tackles. As his second season was set to get underway, football was, rightfully, the least of Maybin’s worries.
In the summer of 2010, Maybin’s son, David, was stillborn. As he had done throughout his life, he sought therapy through his art. He painted a self-portrait: Maybin in his Bills uniform, holding a cracked white mask over his face, concealing everything but two tear-filled eyes.
The season was an ongoing struggle as Maybin dealt with the loss, and he was cut at the end of it, eventually finding a new home with the New York Jets the following summer. He enjoyed his best season in 2011, recording six sacks, but was still only a situational player. After appearing in eight games with Gang Green last season, he was cut again.
“When the time does come [to walk away from football], I’m going to be fine,” Maybin told the Hard Knocks cameras, “I’m not going to have to worry about what to do next, what career path to take. That’s not an issue I’m going to have. And it’s an issue I think many people struggle with because football was their first love. I can’t say that. [Football] is a love I’ve nurtured my entire life, but was it my first love? Hell no. Art was.”
Maybin’s parents—his mother, Constance, passed away when Maybin was young and dad, Michael, is a Captain at the Baltimore City Fire Department—put a brush in his hands at an early age in an attempt to channel their sons’ energy. A football would follow shortly, and while Maybin was a natural athlete, the sport couldn’t offer the creativity that the easel could provide.
“He was always sketching, always drawing,” recalls Maybin’s high school coach, Larry Luthe. “Aaron loves football, but he’s always defined himself as more than a football player. He has high expectations, not just athletically, but as a person. ”
Yet as his NFL fortunes were fading, cut from his third team in five years, many questioned his dedication to the game, pointing to his art as an indication of a man whose focus was not fully on football. A ridiculous notion if there ever was one, says Luthe.
“When Aaron got cut, people were saying ‘He should’ve been spent more time focusing on football’,” says Luthe, “Look, you can only watch so many hours of film a day, only so many hours in the gym working out. And Aaron is not the type who’s going to sit down and play video games for three hours.”
Obviously it remains to be seen how Maybin’s time in Toronto will turn out. Will he struggle to find his groove like Ricky Williams? Will he find a home in the CFL? Will he impress coaches and scouts enough to earn a trip back to an NFL camp next summer? Or, like always, will his experience be unique, unable to fit onto a defined path? He’s only 25 years old, and there is plenty of football ahead. If he wants it, and, by all accounts, he does.
“Aaron loves football. I can’t imagine that he wasn’t frustrated and disappointed at the way things worked out,” says Luthe, who remains in contact with his former player. “The CFL is an opportunity to prove himself and I know he’s open to the challenge. He definitely has something to prove. And knowing Aaron he’s the type of person who will do whatever it takes to go out on his own note.”
“One hundred people can look at a painting and you’ll get 100 different interpretations of what this means and that means,” Maybin said after the Bengals released him. “But the fact of the matter is I still love this game. As long as there’s an opportunity, I’ll be chasing it.”
In Toronto, he now finds himself working on a new canvas. His latest piece painted in double blue. And like all of his art, we don’t know how, or when, it will end.