American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez Review

Why do we still let boys and men play football? Other things society once deemed acceptable – smoking, drinking alcohol during pregnancy, tanning beds – now come with strict warning labels. Yet football remains a popular national pastime. As the saying goes, on any given Sunday, stadiums, bars and living rooms are filled with screaming, adoring fans watching NFL players take punch after punch. We now know about the long-term traumatic effects of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), yet the football industry has largely remained unchanged.

Surprisingly, this is the basic tone of the new FX series American sports history: Aaron Hernandez. By now everyone knows the story: The New England Patriots tight end committed suicide in 2017 while serving a life sentence for the murder of Odin Lloyd in 2013. Now the tragic story of Ryan Murphy is being revisited. Based on the 2020 podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc.The 10-episode series follows Hernandez (Josh Rivera) from his time as a high school sports star, to his time as a college football player at the University of Florida with Tim Tebow (Patrick Schwarzenegger), to his career with the Patriots. Hernandez was constantly getting into trouble, and as long as he was winning games, no one seemed to care. There was a win-at-all-costs mentality. After he breaks his ankle, Patriots coach Bill Belichick (Norbert Leo Butz) tells him he needs to go from “hurt to just hurt.”

Murphy is an incredibly busy television producer. This month alone he has four new shows in his program. And he has many modes: There is the crazy Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story and his upcoming grotesque), the bombastic and kitschy Ryan Murphy (Joy) and the over-the-top Ryan Murphy (9-1-1 and his upcoming Doctor Odyssey). But sometimes viewers are treated to a more nuanced Ryan Murphy, with shows like The guys in the band, Normal heartAnd American crime history. With the latter, Murphy has managed to take crime cases that have permeated our collective pop culture and offer a new perspective and understanding.

And that's exactly what's happening here. Does Aaron Hernandez's sexual abuse as a child justify his crimes? Of course not. Does the traumatic and sudden death of his demanding father when he was 15 justify them? No. And what about his repressed homosexuality? No. But all of those things, along with the numerous concussions he's suffered throughout his career, serve to provide context and offer not an explanation or a defense, but a more compassionate point of view.

The series treats much of what was gossip and rumor as fact. He was acquitted of the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado after an altercation in a Boston nightclub, but the series assumes that he committed those murders. Although there was never an established motive for Lloyd's murder, the series provides one. At the end of each episode American sports history reminds viewers that “certain characters, characterizations, incidents, locations and dialogues have been imagined or invented for the purpose of dramatization.” The dramatic license results in a story that has been told many times before – not only in the podcast on which the project is based, but also in documentaries such as Netflix’s Killer Inside: The Ghost of Aaron Hernandez and Apple TV+ The Dynasty: New England Patriots– again. We already know most of the facts about Hernandez's career and decline, but American sports history forces the viewer to look at the familiar from a different perspective.

Although it is the first installment of the American sports history Franchise, this new series could just as well have been called American Crime Story: Aaron Hernandez. The slight change in title seems important because in many ways the series is a test of the football industry. “I don't know how to act on the team,” Hernandez tells his girlfriend. “Why can't you just be yourself?” she asks. “They don't want that,” he replies. As the NFL Draft approaches, one player remarks, “Now I know why they call this shit a slave auction.”

As the heart of the series, Rivera, who gained 30 pounds for the role, captures the vivid contrast that was Hernandez: On the one hand, he was a fun-loving joker with a shy smile and sweet demeanor (he proposed to his girlfriend with a Ring Pop), and on the other, a guy who made a lot of bad decisions and lived with a simmering anger that was constantly boiling over.


Viewers don't need to know anything about football to understand this story. It's the off-field action, the politics and the aforementioned “win at all costs” mentality that drives it. Tom Brady (Ross Jirgl), the Patriots' most famous player, barely appears. Rob Gronkowski (Laith Wallschleger), the tight end drafted the same year as Hernandez, makes a brief appearance as the goofball he's known for. And Deion Branch, who lived across the street from Hernandez and played a major role in the Hernandez episode of “The Hernandez,” dynastyis not displayed at all.

Many of Murphy's favorite directors, writers and producers are employed here, including Paris Barclay, Maggie Kiley and Steven Canals. Canals's deft direction of the series' eighth episode, simply titled “Odin,” is haunting. However, the script is sometimes a little too obvious. “He's going to end up in the Hall of Fame or in prison,” says a character in the third episode.

Rivera is supported by a strong supporting cast. Mendez, who won a Tony this year for We roll along happilyis fantastic as Hernandez's cousin Tanya, a loving mother figure who also wasn't the best influence. Ean Castellanos shines as Hernandez's brother DJ, who also has a love of football but not as much talent. As Hernandez's fiancée Shayanna Jenkins, Jaylen Barron helps us understand why she stayed so loyal to him. Meanwhile, Thomas Sadoski makes Hernandez's agent Brian Murphy one of the few people who tried to help the player, or at least see him as more than just a cash cow. As Aaron's narcissistic and unstable mother Terri, Tammy Blanchard is heartbreaking for Aaron. And even though he only appears in one episode, J. Alex Brinson makes Odin more than just a footnote in Hernandez's story.

In total, American sports history makes Hernandez a fully developed person. Here he is not a total monster, but also not a total victim (of his upbringing, his background, bad choices, or an American institution that failed to look out for him or protect him). Does this portrayal reveal the truth, the core of who he really was? Thankfully, that is largely left up to the viewer.

American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez Premieres September 17 on FX