A small window appears on screen to indicate that, after a brief wait, ‘Tim’s iPhone’ has joined the call. There remains only one small issue. ‘Your camera’s not on, Dad,’ Troy Green says. Ah, Zoom and older relatives. It’s a familiar script.
Tim Green is 61 now and he and Troy, 31, have always been close. They are neighbors and best friends. They eat together most days and they recently chewed the fat for so long that Troy was forced to hang up – just to get some sleep. They now host a podcast together, too.
But soon Tim’s camera turns on and the reality of their relationship comes into sharper focus.
Back in 1986, Green was a first-round pick in the NFL draft. He spent eight seasons as a ferocious defensive star with the Atlanta Falcons before pursuing careers in TV, in law and as a best-selling author.
Today, however, a tube drapes over Green’s right shoulder and curls all the way into his neck. The 61-year-old is sitting in a wheelchair – as he has for much of the past decade, since being diagnosed with ALS in 2016 and told by doctors: ‘Get your affairs in order… the end is near.’
It is a devastating disease that progressively robs the body of muscle function. ‘A disease that knocks you down. And it isn’t possible to get up,’ Green says. ‘It’s very humbling.’ The average survival time is just three years; Green was told he might have six months.
Former NFL star Tim Green has opened up on his devastating battle with ALS
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Green spent eight seasons as a ferocious defensive star with the Atlanta Falcons
The father of five – and grandfather to 11 – was given the devastating ALS diagnosis in 2016
Tim and his son Troy Green now present a podcast together enтιтled ‘Nothing Left Unsaid’
Nearly a decade later, the father of five can still smile and he is still writing books. He has not lost his sharp wit and, for a while, he could still lift 100-pound dumbbells.
The first sign of trouble came when Green struggled to use his nail-clipper. These days, the 61-year-old retains some movement in his hands. Enough to shoot enemies on the Xbox. He remains a client relationship manager at his law firm and works six days a week. But Green now requires care seven days a week.
He needs a feeding tube and a ventilator. He cannot talk on his own, either, so his days working on Fox NFL Sunday and Good Morning America are over. More significant still?
‘I can’t get over the fact that I can’t hug my wife and kids, throw my (11) grandchildren up in the air, or tickle them until they’re laughing hysterically,’ Green says. ‘There’s nothing like that sound… it’s helium for the soul.’
There’s something else he struggles with – the word ‘no’.
’My kids will be at his house at like 10am eating dessert,’ Troy says. ‘Guys, I said no!’ he’ll tell them. ‘Well, Pop said yes,’ they reply.
‘Our rule is that if they’re with my dad, anything goes,’ Troy explains. Not that Tim wants pity.
‘I hope (people) don’t feel sorry for me, if they do, they’re wasting their time,’ he says. ‘I focus on what I can do, not what I can’t do… and thankfully I can still do a lot.’
Including host a podcast. No matter that he can’t speak – for more than a year, on ‘Nothing Left Unsaid,’ Tim and Troy have interviewed big names from business, medicine, politics and sports, including NBA legend Charles Barkley. Elon Musk is the guest they both want.
The former NFL player turned lawyer and best-selling author is pictured back in January 1998
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Green communicates using a tablet, his eyes darting around a digital keyboard to sтιтch sentences together, one letter at a time.
Every strand of conversation requires several minutes of silent concentration.
Thanks to developments in artificial intelligence and speech ‘cloning’, however, Green still sounds like he always did. He can’t speak but he has not lost his voice. And that matters. ‘Because besides your face,’ the 61-year-old says. ‘It’s the most important signature we have.’
Tim was a student at Syracuse when a friend showed him the Finger Lakes of upstate New York. ‘That day, I made the decision that I would live here one day,’ he recalls.
Four decades on, it remains home. Troy now lives next door and his older brother, Thane, is two houses further up. Their sister Tessa lives across the street, their youngest brother Ty still lives at home with Tim and his wife Illyssa. Tate Green has ventured out to New York City because she is married to Rangers star Adam Fox.
‘One of the biggest silver linings to my ALS diagnosis is my family rallying around me,’ Tim says.
They hang out most days. Tim enjoys heading out on their boat – repurposed to carry his wheelchair – and playing board games such as ‘Code Names’.
For years, video games were banned in the family home. Green wanted his kid’s to read. He eventually relented on one condition – ‘we were only allowed to play if we played with him,’ Troy explains.
Ty and Tim still team up on Call of Duty thanks to Xbox’s remarkable ‘Copilot’ feature. ‘There are two people controlling the same character,’ Troy explains. Ty moves the character, Tim fires the gun and lobs the grenades.
‘One of the biggest silver linings to my ALS diagnosis is my family rallying around me,’ he says
The 61-year-old is pictured enjoying a movie night with his grandchildren last year
He spends his mornings catching up on emails and going through a exhaustive medical routine that an includes an infusion, injections and the use of a chest vest to help clear his airways of mucus.
Law takes over in the afternoon . ‘And then, at night, is when I let the creative energy flow,’ Green says. ‘Writing was always a dream of mine. There is no way I could ever give it up.’
He started working on his first novel during his second year in the NFL and would read War and Peace on the way to games. Green’s 40-plus books include crime novels and children’s stories. The writing process now takes around 10 times longer than it once did.
‘But the truth is I would write with my toes if I had to… (it’s) worth every second,’ he says.
Troy’s young daughter loves reading with her granddad and has even begun working on tales of her own. ‘(Dad) opened up a new Word document and started writing the story about “Shelly the Mermaid”,’ Troy recalls.
His next works, Rocket Arm, is out in September and – like many of Green’s books – centers around the sport that may have put him in this position. Green lost count of the number of concussions he suffered playing football; his head – a weapon on the field – would become so swollen that he often needed Vaseline to put his helmet back on.
The 61-year-old has said he believes the sport was a leading cause of his ALS. ‘It plays a role in everything,’ he says. ‘It helped my writing career, legal career, and believe it or not, even with ALS. I joke sometimes that the NFL was my training to be able to fight this disease.’
His book, ‘Final Season’, is about a football prospect whose father has been diagnosed with ALS. It was a troubling dilemma faced by Ty and his parents. ‘Final Season’ became a New York Times bestseller.
Green is pictured alongside his wife, Illyssa, in 2017 – just months after his ALS diagnosis
But Tim stands by a previous claim – from 1996 – that ‘guys would be willing to take 10 to 20 years off the end of their lives in order to get out there on a Sunday and play’. He insists he would not change his story. Even after all he has lost and learned.
‘People hearing that may roll their eyes,’ he says. ‘But I really mean it.’ Green is far from the only ex-sportsman with ALS and, in recent years, he has grown close with former Saints star Steve Gleason. He was diagnosed in 2011 aged just 34.
Both families have joined the hunt for better treatment and research. The Greens are backing a ‘master platform trial’ in Mᴀssachusetts that they believe is the best route towards ensuring ALS is ‘something you die with, not die from.’
Green’s campaign, Tackle ALS, has amᴀssed $10.3m and ‘Nothing Left Unsaid’ helps raise money for research, too. Tim pours hours into each episode – reading and researching his guests and typing out some questions. (Most of his answers to this interview were pre-recorded, too).
But the conversations remain real and raw. When they spoke to sports commentator Joe Buck, Tim laughed so hard that he began to cry. It caused his eye-tracking technology to malfunction. ‘Moments like that are more special now,’ says Troy.
Back in school, his dad would come in and read to the class. ‘Come on, man, get a hobby,’ Troy would think. By five or six years old, however, Troy had predicted they would one day work together. Tim was best man at his son’s wedding and considers Troy his ‘life coach’.
Troy used to take ‘pride’ in his dad’s action-figure physique. ‘But when you get older, you realize the superhero is the other stuff – the mental part, the emotional part,’ Troy explains. His dad has learned lessons, too. ‘I was too proud,’ Tim says. ‘I needed to be humbled.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if Troy wasn’t with me in the hospital,’ the 61-year-old says of his son (L)
He explains: ‘I wouldn’t be here if Troy wasn’t with me in the hospital, because I wasn’t going to get the trach (tracheostomy).’
Green spent years in denial about his condition but one night in 2018, he was reportedly blue in the face and struggling to breathe. The levels of carbon dioxide in his blood put him on the brink of death and doctors insisted he needed a tracheostomy. Immediately. But Tim refused. Until Troy explained that the family could lose his body but not his soul.
‘I once thought living with a trach wouldn’t be a life worth living,’ Green says. ‘Boy, was I wrong.’
Since then, he has welcomed nine more grandchildren and watched Tate get married and seen Ty get into his first-choice college.
‘So, it really just depends what you want in life,’ Tim says. ‘For me, my faith and family just keep getting better. So I’m still smiling every day.’
