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THE ATHLETIC
A drug 10,000 times as potent as morphine, a football star’s death and a teammate on trial
By Stephanie Kuzydym
HOUSTON — They gather in the team room, the 16 seniors on the Rice football team. During the season, the players squeezed into theater seats in this cramped room above the south end zone to review game film. On this January day in 2015, the big screen displays no miscues or highlights, but a roster of their teammates, from juniors to incoming freshmen.
This team-building event, The Accountability Draft, asks seniors to draft players onto eight teams. Throughout the offseason, each team earns points for things like attendance, good grades and volunteer work. They lose points for skipping class, bad grades or being late to anything. The prize is a steak dinner at head coach David Bailiff’s house before the start of August two-a-days.
As usual, defensive tackle Stu Mouchantaf is a visible and vocal presence. A team captain, “Mooch” is looking for the next version of himself. And if there is an obvious future captain among the bunch, Blain Padgett is it. Their hometowns bracket Houston, Mouchantaf from Katy to the west, Padgett from Sour Lake to the east. They are defensive linemen, Mouchantaf on the inside and Padgett on the outside, and each embodies the tough, focused, all-in ethos of football in Texas.
The Accountability Draft, even before any points are earned, reveals insights into the Owls. This is not about who you are on the field but how you are off the field. The selection process isn’t simply about players identifying teammates who will do right for themselves; it’s about players learning to do right for one another.
Four years later, no record of the draft exists; when Padgett was selected remains in the darkness of the team room. Those involved that day do remember how Padgett, whom they only knew from his recruiting visits, was chosen early. Very early. They recount thinking the incoming freshman, in essence, was a Mouchantaf in the making.
Two teammates, both hardworking, natural leaders. One is dead, the other accused of contributing to that death. Now, more than ever, the question of accountability remains.
Our entire American culture has been touched by the opioid crisis, including the locker room culture across college football. The tragedy that continues to unfold at Rice could happen anywhere young men sacrifice their bodies for the game.
In 2017, The Washington Post uncovered that NFL teams gave players powerful painkillers, in violation of federal regulations, so often that an average between six and seven doses were given per player per week. Former NFL wide receiver Calvin Johnson said pain relievers were handed out “like candy.” That is not to say that overprescribing is true at Rice. Former Owls players and coaches who spoke to The Athletic say the use of prescription painkillers was not rampant. But, as is the case practically anywhere football is played at a high level, painkillers were still prescribed by team doctors.
Five minutes into his PowerPoint presentation, as he clicks through his slides, Dr. Peter Stout settles on one showing the potency of various opioids in relation to morphine.
“Codeine is like 1/10th as potent as morphine,” Stout says in November. “You’ve probably had codeine as cough syrup. Tramadol gets used as a pain-management drug after minor surgeries, and it’s also about 1/10th as potent.”
Then there’s hydrocodone (1/2 as potent) and oxycodone (2x), heroin (5x), then U4470 (7x), then various versions of fentanyl, about 100 times as potent.
In December, the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported fentanyl is America’s deadliest drug, topping heroin. And then there’s sufentanil, an analog of fentanyl approved by the FDA at the start of November, which is 500 times stronger than morphine.
Each of the 14 horizontal lines on Stout’s PowerPoint bar graph is longer than last, creating what looks like a poorly designed descending staircase.
“Then there’s carfentanil,” Stout says. “It just keeps going …”
A red bar rapidly extends, left to right, across the entire screen.
“And going …”
The bar again crosses an otherwise-blank white slide.
“And going.”
And then another.
“This is a presentation I’ve used trying to get people to understand this plague is here,” Stout says. “It’s crazy-dangerous, and it scares the crap out of me.”
Stout has stood in front of drug rehabilitation coalitions and schools, in corporate boardrooms and Houston City Council public safety committee meetings, concerned the city isn’t seeing what’s coming.
Carfentanil’s approved use? Sedating very large animals.
“Like putting down elephants on the Serengeti,” Stout said.
“Its legitimate use is for a large-animal tranquilizer because it’s fast-acting and wildly potent.”
The drug is so powerful that scientists like Stout, the president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, aren’t even sure how much constitutes a lethal dose. The current projection is 20 micrograms — the size of a grain of salt.
Carfentanil, used to illicitly mimic hydrocodone, has a lethal dose that makes the counterfeit pills highly unpredictable. (Courtesy of dea.gov)
In 2017, Texas had a lower rate of opioid overdose deaths than all but five other states. But that data offers little comfort for Stout, who recognizes an alarming trend. Like everywhere else in the country, he points out, the pattern started small in Houston, then increased drastically. In 2015, there was one fentanyl death in the city. In 2016, there were 13. In 2017, 24. By October 2018, more than 50 deaths. That’s more than a 4,900-percent increase in four years.
“If we’ve got 50 this year, that means we’re going to have 100? 120 next year?” Stout theorizes.
The numbers could become even higher. In March 2017, police discovered the first known incident of carfentanil in Houston.
“We processed it thinking it was meth,” Stout says. “It wasn’t until we got in the laboratory and were looking at the results that we said, ‘Crap. That’s not meth. That’s carfentanil.’”
The bag contained 80 milligrams, or 4,000 lethal doses.
A year later, in March 2018, the first carfentanil-related death is reported in Texas, in Houston.
The deceased is a Rice football player.
The 2015 Owls are gathering to gorge themselves at a preseason training table in a room that overlooks the Rice Stadium field. Blain Padgett arrived in Houston in August from tiny Sour Lake as Rice’s fourth-highest-rated recruit, a three-star signing for a program more accustomed to two-star talent. Still, playing time for Padgett is far from a given — a redshirt season is far more likely — especially with a core of unmovable senior defensive linemen on the depth chart.
At the moment, one of those seniors has everyone looking up from their plates. Stu Mouchantaf is commanding the room as tonight’s karaoke emcee. Mooch scans the tables for his next songbird. It could be an underclassman, an assistant coach or a longtime staffer. No one is safe from being called up to sing.
Quick-witted and a natural showman, Mouchantaf has earned his place at the front of the room.
He transferred to Rice from Blinn College, a junior college, in 2012 and made such an impact in his first training camp that Bailiff positively gushed, calling him “a godsend.” The next season, Mouchantaf battled from a valuable backup to a starter with 33 tackles. But his teammates aren’t won over just by his play; they recognize how he worked through a torn ACL at the end of his 2013 season, an injury that also kept him out of 2014 after he reinjured it in rehab. That’s why, despite not playing a snap in 679 days, Mouchantaf will begin the 2015 season as a captain, wearing No. 97, one of two “honor jerseys” bestowed on team leaders.
Padgett and Mouchantaf played one season together on the Rice defensive line. (Courtesy of Rice Athletics)
But by Rice’s fifth game, against Western Kentucky, Mouchantaf looks like anything but his indomitable self, with just four tackles in as many games. Then, late in the 49-10 loss to the Hilltoppers, Mouchantaf suffers a painful hyperextended and dislocated elbow. With three of his four original defensive line starters either banged up or out entirely, Bailiff has no choice but to pull the redshirt off another of his prized freshmen. As Padgett plays his first snaps for Rice, Mouchantaf fears he has played his last.
The 2015 season will prove disheartening for the Owls, who will go on to finish 5-7 and see a three-year bowl streak snapped. But the seniors will graduate tied for the most wins over four years of any class, and with five games left to play, Mouchantaf is damned if he’ll let a bum wing keep him off the field, no matter how painful.
Showing the grit that has taken him this far, Mouchantaf somehow manages his pain and returns in a limited role, making just two more tackles the rest of the way. Padgett, lining up next to him, makes 14 stops.
As a sophomore in 2016, Blain Padgett totals 5 1/2 tackles for loss and proves to be one of Rice’s rising stars. He shines in the season finale at Stanford, making six stops and a sack, standing out as one of Rice’s few bright spots in a 41-17 loss. But Padgett’s highlight becomes a low point, as his season ends 10 minutes early when he tears his labrum in the fourth quarter.
Fortunately, Padgett’s shoulder doesn’t require surgery, just grueling rehab. When the 2017 season starts, Padgett looks primed for a big junior year. In the third game, the Owls are playing at crosstown rival Houston. Mical Padgett, Blain’s father, notices his son dropping his shoulder away from a play. Mical, a former linebacker at Texas whose own college career was cut short by a knee injury, knows instantly that Blain has reinjured his shoulder.
Padgett was considered an NFL prospect, even after his shoulder surgery. (Erik Williams / USA Today)
This time, Blain needs surgery and five months of rehab. Sidelined for the remaining nine games of a one-win season, Padgett still maintains his intensity. Wearing a backward ball cap, his arm in a black sling, he barks at the defensive line during practice like a coach. When he is finally medically cleared to lift weights just before spring 2018, Padgett texts his Hardin-Jefferson High offensive line coach, Mike Fogo, and asks if he can get some reps in at his old weight room.
“Yeah, you can come lift, but you gotta talk to the kids afterward,” Fogo texts back.
Padgett shows up and works out, then begins to write a speech. He asks Fogo if he needs a theme. Fogo tells him, no, just talk about working out. Ever the pleaser, Padgett asks: “Do I need an intro? How long should it be?”
“Stop,” says Fogo. “It’s not a speech class.”
So Padgett decides to speak from his heart about what he knows: Be that guy who works harder than everybody else. Be that guy who gets there early and stays late. Be that guy who does what’s right.
“He was the guy telling our players to be him,” Fogo says now.
But Padgett isn’t telling anyone about his pain, much less how he manages it.
Mical Padgett is eating lunch at Subway in Sour Lake with his oldest daughter, Kenedy, when his phone rings, showing the number of Roe Wilkins, Blain’s teammate in high school and college. It’s early March and spring ball is about to begin; Roe is probably calling to talk some football or give a report on Blain. Everyone is excited about his return.
Hey, Mr. Padgett. Have you seen Blain? He didn’t show up for a workout and we haven’t seen him …
Teammates had tried calling and texting Blain for hours but had received no response. Mical immediately knows something is wrong and begins to freak out inside. He calls Blain and starts texting coaches and teammates. Kenedy reaches out to friends.
Hell, I’m just going over there, Mical decides.
He and Kenedy jump in his truck for the 85-mile drive from Sour Lake. About 20 minutes into their drive, a Houston police officer calls. Blain has passed. Mical pulls over his truck, gets out and hugs Kenedy. On the side of the road, on Highway 90, they weep.
Mical assumes his son met a violent end or had been hurt in an accident. Instead, Blain had simply gone to sleep and never woke up.
That day, March 2, Rice issues a news release announcing spring practice will be delayed a week. “Football is secondary to dealing with the loss of a teammate and friend, and our sole concern right now is supporting them in this difficult time,” says new Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren, in just his third month with the program.
Investigators will later conclude Padgett swallowed an elongated white pill that, to the naked eye, looked like a Watson 853, a commonly prescribed pain reliever that contains a hydrocodone-acetaminophen compound. Except this pill had been illicitly manufactured to look like a Watson 853. Instead of hydrocodone, which is half the strength of morphine, the pill was laced with carfentanil, the synthetic opioid 10,000 times more powerful than morphine.
Eric Termuelen, the lead investigator on the case, eventually comes to believe Padgett went to the street to get the drug. His probe leads him to a former Rice player: Padgett’s one-time linemate, Stu Mouchantaf.
On Nov. 14, Stu Mouchantaf shifts his shoulders and stares at an empty wall as he waits for an elevator at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse. In a gray suit, his playing weight stripped from his large frame, Mouchantaf doesn’t merit a second glance from the morning rush of courthouse workers. His mother and attorney stand behind him. He clasps his hands, closes his eyes, lowers his head and slowly exhales, waiting for the elevator to whisk him back into privacy, away from even the two strangers who recognize him as the former Rice football player: a tv cameraman and a security guard.
A month has passed since he first stood in a courtroom following his arrest in October, wearing gym shorts and a blue hoodie, listening to prosecutors lay out probable cause before a judge. He heard their allegations: that he had confessed to selling Padgett four or five hydrocodone pills; that he was a flight risk; that he had family in Lebanon and that he had bought a one-way ticket to there shortly after Padgett’s death. Then he heard the judge agree and order a $250,000 bond.
Court records also reveal a teammate ran into Padgett on campus the day before he died. Padgett allegedly told him he was waiting to buy hydrocodone from Mouchantaf. The next day, investigators found Padgett’s body and several pills that resembled hydrocodone but contained carfentanil.
Still, Mouchantaf pleads not guilty to the charges of delivery of a controlled substance resulting in death. The offense carries a potential sentence of five to 99 years.
Seven months later, on a Friday in late June, Mouchantaf steps off the elevator for his arraignment hearing.
Instead, he is taken into federal custody.
In late February, a few days before what would have been his son’s 22nd birthday, Mical Padgett stares out across his south Texas property and into the woods. Free-range chickens roam near a henhouse Blain built in a week, just two months before his death. Mical doesn’t waste his energy on anger; he doesn’t spend his time worrying about justice or judgment, be it guilty, not guilty or innocent.
“All I know is he gave my son a pill that killed him,” alleges Mical of Mouchantaf. “I’ve made peace with that, and I’ve prayed about that. It’s not going to bring my son back, and I’m sure (Mouchantaf)’s got more life to live and he will hopefully end up making something of himself. So I don’t wish him ill will. I don’t wish him anything.”
The Padgetts still all feel the same about Blain as they did when they wrote him letters during his seasons at Rice. The notes express the family’s love for Blain in many forms: adulation from his sisters Kenedy (Know you are one of the strongest people I know and can get through anything) and Kamryn (You will do amazing no matter what the score); motivation from his dad, Mical (Let Baylor know who Blain Padgett is. Get off tonight.); and reassurance from his mom, Wyndi (We are here for you Blain + we will always love you! Forever).
The Padgetts: Mical, Kamryn, Wyndi, Kenedy and Blain. (Courtesy of the Padgett family)
They saved the notes, little pieces of Blain they can still hold.
“I’m not ashamed of my son at all,” Mical says.
Rice honored the Padgetts during homecoming last season. The family mourns publicly and privately, but none of them hate the school Blain loved. They appreciate the school for paying tribute to their son, for recognizing Blain is not defined by his worst mistake.
Rice Athletics stopped responding to interview requests for this story. Stu Mouchantaf’s father declined to speak with The Athletic, and his mother never responded to an interview request. Lisa Andrews, an attorney for Mouchantaf, told The Athletic in an email last fall that her client wouldn’t be made available for any interview “anytime soon.” She didn’t respond to an interview request after he was taken into federal custody. The last he told a former coach, Mouchantaf promised to one day tell his side of the story.
The Padgetts, however, do not shy away from telling Blain’s story. They share their tributes of him in packed stadiums and don’t leave an eye dry. They have set up a scholarship fund at Wesley Methodist, the same church that held his funeral. They work with student council members at Blain’s high school for their “One Pill Can Kill” platform that was presented in April at the Texas Association of Student Councils convention. They warn of the dangers of taking pills not prescribed on 90forever.com, a memorial website on which the motto is “B That Guy.” And the Padgetts post pictures of him and text chains on social media, reminding everyone how much they love Blain and how much Blain loved them.
✰kam❀@padgett_kamryn
https://twitter.com/padgett_kamryn/status/1087960728131256320
started missing my best friend and looked through our text... i love and miss you more than you could ever imagine. i can’t even imagine how hard these next few months are going to be but i know you are always by my side. i miss you like crazy, bro<3
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The Texas sky opens wide and Wyndi Padgett grabs her rain boots and a bundle of red azaleas and navy roses. The ground is always muddy out there, but the rain today will make it worse.
She drives alone along her familiar commute to school, but instead of turning right into the school parking lot, she turns left into Rosedale Cemetery. She pulls up to a huge rock etched with an outline of Texas, like the tattoo Blain had on his back. Smaller rocks lay at its base, painted with #90 and Bible verses.
Wyndi sits on a bench and, as she often does, tells Blain about her day.
As it turns out, this day, June 24, was the day she had been dreading. She has already been through so much — the funeral, more than a year of mourning, trying to find a new normal — that attending all of those endless court dates would have been too much to bear. But today, she tells Blain, just four days after Stuart Mouchantaf was taken into federal custody, she had sat in a courtroom.
From her position in the back row, Wyndi couldn’t see the man she had first met four years ago, when her son was a freshman. The man she used to cheer for on fall Saturdays who was now accused of selling the pills that killed her son. If she would lean forward just enough, she could have probably seen his shoes. She didn’t lean forward.
Her husband, Mical, was on a business trip, so Wyndi sat with her parents. As the judge prepared to address him directly, Mouchantaf stood. Wyndi braced the wall with her left hand and grabbed her mother’s hand with her right. Sad and mad and stunned all at once, Wyndi felt as if she hadn’t drawn a breath in five minutes.
Wyndi saw the color of his shirt, the shade of his tie. She noticed how his suit was so much smaller than the ones he wore on game days. She had a clear view of him now, the first time she had seen him since … then Wyndi realized how tight she was squeezing her momma’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Wyndi tried to reconcile the Stuart Mouchantaf she was seeing with the one she remembered: one of the guys, a big ol’ teddy bear. But that’s not who he is to her anymore. Today, he was standing in front of a judge.
And she was sitting on a bench in the back row, knowing that other bench waits for her back home.
THE ATHLETIC
A drug 10,000 times as potent as morphine, a football star’s death and a teammate on trial
By Stephanie Kuzydym
HOUSTON — They gather in the team room, the 16 seniors on the Rice football team. During the season, the players squeezed into theater seats in this cramped room above the south end zone to review game film. On this January day in 2015, the big screen displays no miscues or highlights, but a roster of their teammates, from juniors to incoming freshmen.
This team-building event, The Accountability Draft, asks seniors to draft players onto eight teams. Throughout the offseason, each team earns points for things like attendance, good grades and volunteer work. They lose points for skipping class, bad grades or being late to anything. The prize is a steak dinner at head coach David Bailiff’s house before the start of August two-a-days.
As usual, defensive tackle Stu Mouchantaf is a visible and vocal presence. A team captain, “Mooch” is looking for the next version of himself. And if there is an obvious future captain among the bunch, Blain Padgett is it. Their hometowns bracket Houston, Mouchantaf from Katy to the west, Padgett from Sour Lake to the east. They are defensive linemen, Mouchantaf on the inside and Padgett on the outside, and each embodies the tough, focused, all-in ethos of football in Texas.
The Accountability Draft, even before any points are earned, reveals insights into the Owls. This is not about who you are on the field but how you are off the field. The selection process isn’t simply about players identifying teammates who will do right for themselves; it’s about players learning to do right for one another.
Four years later, no record of the draft exists; when Padgett was selected remains in the darkness of the team room. Those involved that day do remember how Padgett, whom they only knew from his recruiting visits, was chosen early. Very early. They recount thinking the incoming freshman, in essence, was a Mouchantaf in the making.
Two teammates, both hardworking, natural leaders. One is dead, the other accused of contributing to that death. Now, more than ever, the question of accountability remains.
Our entire American culture has been touched by the opioid crisis, including the locker room culture across college football. The tragedy that continues to unfold at Rice could happen anywhere young men sacrifice their bodies for the game.
In 2017, The Washington Post uncovered that NFL teams gave players powerful painkillers, in violation of federal regulations, so often that an average between six and seven doses were given per player per week. Former NFL wide receiver Calvin Johnson said pain relievers were handed out “like candy.” That is not to say that overprescribing is true at Rice. Former Owls players and coaches who spoke to The Athletic say the use of prescription painkillers was not rampant. But, as is the case practically anywhere football is played at a high level, painkillers were still prescribed by team doctors.
Five minutes into his PowerPoint presentation, as he clicks through his slides, Dr. Peter Stout settles on one showing the potency of various opioids in relation to morphine.
“Codeine is like 1/10th as potent as morphine,” Stout says in November. “You’ve probably had codeine as cough syrup. Tramadol gets used as a pain-management drug after minor surgeries, and it’s also about 1/10th as potent.”
Then there’s hydrocodone (1/2 as potent) and oxycodone (2x), heroin (5x), then U4470 (7x), then various versions of fentanyl, about 100 times as potent.
In December, the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported fentanyl is America’s deadliest drug, topping heroin. And then there’s sufentanil, an analog of fentanyl approved by the FDA at the start of November, which is 500 times stronger than morphine.
Each of the 14 horizontal lines on Stout’s PowerPoint bar graph is longer than last, creating what looks like a poorly designed descending staircase.
“Then there’s carfentanil,” Stout says. “It just keeps going …”
A red bar rapidly extends, left to right, across the entire screen.
“And going …”
The bar again crosses an otherwise-blank white slide.
“And going.”
And then another.
“This is a presentation I’ve used trying to get people to understand this plague is here,” Stout says. “It’s crazy-dangerous, and it scares the crap out of me.”
Stout has stood in front of drug rehabilitation coalitions and schools, in corporate boardrooms and Houston City Council public safety committee meetings, concerned the city isn’t seeing what’s coming.
Carfentanil’s approved use? Sedating very large animals.
“Like putting down elephants on the Serengeti,” Stout said.
“Its legitimate use is for a large-animal tranquilizer because it’s fast-acting and wildly potent.”
The drug is so powerful that scientists like Stout, the president of the Houston Forensic Science Center, aren’t even sure how much constitutes a lethal dose. The current projection is 20 micrograms — the size of a grain of salt.
Carfentanil, used to illicitly mimic hydrocodone, has a lethal dose that makes the counterfeit pills highly unpredictable. (Courtesy of dea.gov)
In 2017, Texas had a lower rate of opioid overdose deaths than all but five other states. But that data offers little comfort for Stout, who recognizes an alarming trend. Like everywhere else in the country, he points out, the pattern started small in Houston, then increased drastically. In 2015, there was one fentanyl death in the city. In 2016, there were 13. In 2017, 24. By October 2018, more than 50 deaths. That’s more than a 4,900-percent increase in four years.
“If we’ve got 50 this year, that means we’re going to have 100? 120 next year?” Stout theorizes.
The numbers could become even higher. In March 2017, police discovered the first known incident of carfentanil in Houston.
“We processed it thinking it was meth,” Stout says. “It wasn’t until we got in the laboratory and were looking at the results that we said, ‘Crap. That’s not meth. That’s carfentanil.’”
The bag contained 80 milligrams, or 4,000 lethal doses.
A year later, in March 2018, the first carfentanil-related death is reported in Texas, in Houston.
The deceased is a Rice football player.
The 2015 Owls are gathering to gorge themselves at a preseason training table in a room that overlooks the Rice Stadium field. Blain Padgett arrived in Houston in August from tiny Sour Lake as Rice’s fourth-highest-rated recruit, a three-star signing for a program more accustomed to two-star talent. Still, playing time for Padgett is far from a given — a redshirt season is far more likely — especially with a core of unmovable senior defensive linemen on the depth chart.
At the moment, one of those seniors has everyone looking up from their plates. Stu Mouchantaf is commanding the room as tonight’s karaoke emcee. Mooch scans the tables for his next songbird. It could be an underclassman, an assistant coach or a longtime staffer. No one is safe from being called up to sing.
Quick-witted and a natural showman, Mouchantaf has earned his place at the front of the room.
He transferred to Rice from Blinn College, a junior college, in 2012 and made such an impact in his first training camp that Bailiff positively gushed, calling him “a godsend.” The next season, Mouchantaf battled from a valuable backup to a starter with 33 tackles. But his teammates aren’t won over just by his play; they recognize how he worked through a torn ACL at the end of his 2013 season, an injury that also kept him out of 2014 after he reinjured it in rehab. That’s why, despite not playing a snap in 679 days, Mouchantaf will begin the 2015 season as a captain, wearing No. 97, one of two “honor jerseys” bestowed on team leaders.
Padgett and Mouchantaf played one season together on the Rice defensive line. (Courtesy of Rice Athletics)
But by Rice’s fifth game, against Western Kentucky, Mouchantaf looks like anything but his indomitable self, with just four tackles in as many games. Then, late in the 49-10 loss to the Hilltoppers, Mouchantaf suffers a painful hyperextended and dislocated elbow. With three of his four original defensive line starters either banged up or out entirely, Bailiff has no choice but to pull the redshirt off another of his prized freshmen. As Padgett plays his first snaps for Rice, Mouchantaf fears he has played his last.
The 2015 season will prove disheartening for the Owls, who will go on to finish 5-7 and see a three-year bowl streak snapped. But the seniors will graduate tied for the most wins over four years of any class, and with five games left to play, Mouchantaf is damned if he’ll let a bum wing keep him off the field, no matter how painful.
Showing the grit that has taken him this far, Mouchantaf somehow manages his pain and returns in a limited role, making just two more tackles the rest of the way. Padgett, lining up next to him, makes 14 stops.
As a sophomore in 2016, Blain Padgett totals 5 1/2 tackles for loss and proves to be one of Rice’s rising stars. He shines in the season finale at Stanford, making six stops and a sack, standing out as one of Rice’s few bright spots in a 41-17 loss. But Padgett’s highlight becomes a low point, as his season ends 10 minutes early when he tears his labrum in the fourth quarter.
Fortunately, Padgett’s shoulder doesn’t require surgery, just grueling rehab. When the 2017 season starts, Padgett looks primed for a big junior year. In the third game, the Owls are playing at crosstown rival Houston. Mical Padgett, Blain’s father, notices his son dropping his shoulder away from a play. Mical, a former linebacker at Texas whose own college career was cut short by a knee injury, knows instantly that Blain has reinjured his shoulder.
Padgett was considered an NFL prospect, even after his shoulder surgery. (Erik Williams / USA Today)
This time, Blain needs surgery and five months of rehab. Sidelined for the remaining nine games of a one-win season, Padgett still maintains his intensity. Wearing a backward ball cap, his arm in a black sling, he barks at the defensive line during practice like a coach. When he is finally medically cleared to lift weights just before spring 2018, Padgett texts his Hardin-Jefferson High offensive line coach, Mike Fogo, and asks if he can get some reps in at his old weight room.
“Yeah, you can come lift, but you gotta talk to the kids afterward,” Fogo texts back.
Padgett shows up and works out, then begins to write a speech. He asks Fogo if he needs a theme. Fogo tells him, no, just talk about working out. Ever the pleaser, Padgett asks: “Do I need an intro? How long should it be?”
“Stop,” says Fogo. “It’s not a speech class.”
So Padgett decides to speak from his heart about what he knows: Be that guy who works harder than everybody else. Be that guy who gets there early and stays late. Be that guy who does what’s right.
“He was the guy telling our players to be him,” Fogo says now.
But Padgett isn’t telling anyone about his pain, much less how he manages it.
Mical Padgett is eating lunch at Subway in Sour Lake with his oldest daughter, Kenedy, when his phone rings, showing the number of Roe Wilkins, Blain’s teammate in high school and college. It’s early March and spring ball is about to begin; Roe is probably calling to talk some football or give a report on Blain. Everyone is excited about his return.
Hey, Mr. Padgett. Have you seen Blain? He didn’t show up for a workout and we haven’t seen him …
Teammates had tried calling and texting Blain for hours but had received no response. Mical immediately knows something is wrong and begins to freak out inside. He calls Blain and starts texting coaches and teammates. Kenedy reaches out to friends.
Hell, I’m just going over there, Mical decides.
He and Kenedy jump in his truck for the 85-mile drive from Sour Lake. About 20 minutes into their drive, a Houston police officer calls. Blain has passed. Mical pulls over his truck, gets out and hugs Kenedy. On the side of the road, on Highway 90, they weep.
Mical assumes his son met a violent end or had been hurt in an accident. Instead, Blain had simply gone to sleep and never woke up.
That day, March 2, Rice issues a news release announcing spring practice will be delayed a week. “Football is secondary to dealing with the loss of a teammate and friend, and our sole concern right now is supporting them in this difficult time,” says new Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren, in just his third month with the program.
Investigators will later conclude Padgett swallowed an elongated white pill that, to the naked eye, looked like a Watson 853, a commonly prescribed pain reliever that contains a hydrocodone-acetaminophen compound. Except this pill had been illicitly manufactured to look like a Watson 853. Instead of hydrocodone, which is half the strength of morphine, the pill was laced with carfentanil, the synthetic opioid 10,000 times more powerful than morphine.
Eric Termuelen, the lead investigator on the case, eventually comes to believe Padgett went to the street to get the drug. His probe leads him to a former Rice player: Padgett’s one-time linemate, Stu Mouchantaf.
On Nov. 14, Stu Mouchantaf shifts his shoulders and stares at an empty wall as he waits for an elevator at the Harris County Criminal Courthouse. In a gray suit, his playing weight stripped from his large frame, Mouchantaf doesn’t merit a second glance from the morning rush of courthouse workers. His mother and attorney stand behind him. He clasps his hands, closes his eyes, lowers his head and slowly exhales, waiting for the elevator to whisk him back into privacy, away from even the two strangers who recognize him as the former Rice football player: a tv cameraman and a security guard.
A month has passed since he first stood in a courtroom following his arrest in October, wearing gym shorts and a blue hoodie, listening to prosecutors lay out probable cause before a judge. He heard their allegations: that he had confessed to selling Padgett four or five hydrocodone pills; that he was a flight risk; that he had family in Lebanon and that he had bought a one-way ticket to there shortly after Padgett’s death. Then he heard the judge agree and order a $250,000 bond.
Court records also reveal a teammate ran into Padgett on campus the day before he died. Padgett allegedly told him he was waiting to buy hydrocodone from Mouchantaf. The next day, investigators found Padgett’s body and several pills that resembled hydrocodone but contained carfentanil.
Still, Mouchantaf pleads not guilty to the charges of delivery of a controlled substance resulting in death. The offense carries a potential sentence of five to 99 years.
Seven months later, on a Friday in late June, Mouchantaf steps off the elevator for his arraignment hearing.
Instead, he is taken into federal custody.
In late February, a few days before what would have been his son’s 22nd birthday, Mical Padgett stares out across his south Texas property and into the woods. Free-range chickens roam near a henhouse Blain built in a week, just two months before his death. Mical doesn’t waste his energy on anger; he doesn’t spend his time worrying about justice or judgment, be it guilty, not guilty or innocent.
“All I know is he gave my son a pill that killed him,” alleges Mical of Mouchantaf. “I’ve made peace with that, and I’ve prayed about that. It’s not going to bring my son back, and I’m sure (Mouchantaf)’s got more life to live and he will hopefully end up making something of himself. So I don’t wish him ill will. I don’t wish him anything.”
The Padgetts still all feel the same about Blain as they did when they wrote him letters during his seasons at Rice. The notes express the family’s love for Blain in many forms: adulation from his sisters Kenedy (Know you are one of the strongest people I know and can get through anything) and Kamryn (You will do amazing no matter what the score); motivation from his dad, Mical (Let Baylor know who Blain Padgett is. Get off tonight.); and reassurance from his mom, Wyndi (We are here for you Blain + we will always love you! Forever).
The Padgetts: Mical, Kamryn, Wyndi, Kenedy and Blain. (Courtesy of the Padgett family)
They saved the notes, little pieces of Blain they can still hold.
“I’m not ashamed of my son at all,” Mical says.
Rice honored the Padgetts during homecoming last season. The family mourns publicly and privately, but none of them hate the school Blain loved. They appreciate the school for paying tribute to their son, for recognizing Blain is not defined by his worst mistake.
Rice Athletics stopped responding to interview requests for this story. Stu Mouchantaf’s father declined to speak with The Athletic, and his mother never responded to an interview request. Lisa Andrews, an attorney for Mouchantaf, told The Athletic in an email last fall that her client wouldn’t be made available for any interview “anytime soon.” She didn’t respond to an interview request after he was taken into federal custody. The last he told a former coach, Mouchantaf promised to one day tell his side of the story.
The Padgetts, however, do not shy away from telling Blain’s story. They share their tributes of him in packed stadiums and don’t leave an eye dry. They have set up a scholarship fund at Wesley Methodist, the same church that held his funeral. They work with student council members at Blain’s high school for their “One Pill Can Kill” platform that was presented in April at the Texas Association of Student Councils convention. They warn of the dangers of taking pills not prescribed on 90forever.com, a memorial website on which the motto is “B That Guy.” And the Padgetts post pictures of him and text chains on social media, reminding everyone how much they love Blain and how much Blain loved them.
✰kam❀@padgett_kamrynhttps://twitter.com/padgett_kamryn/status/1087960728131256320
started missing my best friend and looked through our text... i love and miss you more than you could ever imagine. i can’t even imagine how hard these next few months are going to be but i know you are always by my side. i miss you like crazy, bro<3
102
1:30 AM - Jan 23, 2019
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✰kam❀'s other TweetsThe Texas sky opens wide and Wyndi Padgett grabs her rain boots and a bundle of red azaleas and navy roses. The ground is always muddy out there, but the rain today will make it worse.
She drives alone along her familiar commute to school, but instead of turning right into the school parking lot, she turns left into Rosedale Cemetery. She pulls up to a huge rock etched with an outline of Texas, like the tattoo Blain had on his back. Smaller rocks lay at its base, painted with #90 and Bible verses.
Wyndi sits on a bench and, as she often does, tells Blain about her day.
As it turns out, this day, June 24, was the day she had been dreading. She has already been through so much — the funeral, more than a year of mourning, trying to find a new normal — that attending all of those endless court dates would have been too much to bear. But today, she tells Blain, just four days after Stuart Mouchantaf was taken into federal custody, she had sat in a courtroom.
From her position in the back row, Wyndi couldn’t see the man she had first met four years ago, when her son was a freshman. The man she used to cheer for on fall Saturdays who was now accused of selling the pills that killed her son. If she would lean forward just enough, she could have probably seen his shoes. She didn’t lean forward.
Her husband, Mical, was on a business trip, so Wyndi sat with her parents. As the judge prepared to address him directly, Mouchantaf stood. Wyndi braced the wall with her left hand and grabbed her mother’s hand with her right. Sad and mad and stunned all at once, Wyndi felt as if she hadn’t drawn a breath in five minutes.
Wyndi saw the color of his shirt, the shade of his tie. She noticed how his suit was so much smaller than the ones he wore on game days. She had a clear view of him now, the first time she had seen him since … then Wyndi realized how tight she was squeezing her momma’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Wyndi tried to reconcile the Stuart Mouchantaf she was seeing with the one she remembered: one of the guys, a big ol’ teddy bear. But that’s not who he is to her anymore. Today, he was standing in front of a judge.
And she was sitting on a bench in the back row, knowing that other bench waits for her back home.
