Deion Sanders shares heartbreaking story about driving off the road following a suicide attempt over fear of losing his children to divorce

All was not at all times well for flamboyant former NFL star and current Colorado head football coach Deion Sanders, who recently took a while to sit back and revisit one of the worst moments of his life.

Coach Prime admitted that his marriage to Carolyn Chambers, the mother of his children Deiondra and Deion Jr., was fragile and that the difficult state of his relationship at the time acted as a catalyst that pushed him to consider taking his own life. Sanders and his son Shedeur met with former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on the “All the Smoke” podcast for a wide-ranging conversation, after which the discussion turned to the mental well-being of Black men.

About half-hour into the interview, Jackson asked the two-time Super Bowl winner, “Has Prime ever dealt with mental health?”

“Yes, shoot, I was on the side of the highway trying to kill myself. You’re trying to finish me off. You’re damn right I did,” Sanders replied. “I went through a certain stage. God told me to collect money, but I didn’t want to accept the charges.”

Deion Sanders (photo: Don Juan Moore/Getty Images)

Sanders explained that his divorce in 1998 made him realize that he could probably lose his children forever.

“Dude, I was playing baseball at the time and going through my first divorce, so now your kids have been taken away from you and you know, that’s the only thing you feel like he loves you because nothing else is real. The only thing you feel like he loves you comes from your seeds, so I say, “rattling, the kids are gone.”

Sanders continues to tell his story, recalling how he was driving on the highway after an evening baseball game.

“I was driving down the highway (in) Cincinnati and I was playing Kirk Franklin’s Conqueror – ironically. I’m about to exhaust myself and play Conqueror. What kind of conqueror are you, trash? You sit there and look in the rearview mirror, you look at the side view and you sit there, trying to vent.”

Sanders described in detail how he tried to push his Mercedes off a cliff, which he said fell 30 to 40 feet. He survived the ordeal and, surprisingly, did not suffer any serious injuries. This experience felt like an eye-opening and life-changing moment. It was at this point that Sanders decided that his life was more than worth living and began his spiritual journey.

“I took my car down the highway, man, I made it to the end… and I was still here,” Sanders continued. “I remember the police came and knocked on my window. They said, “Is every thing okay?” I replied, “Yes.” They replied, “Did someone run you off the road?” I said, ‘No,’ and my lawyer at the time, Eugene Parker, who’s now deceased, said, ‘Listen, I’m either going to get you help or we’re going to have to pull out of the game and get ourselves together not directly, because that is real.’”

“And he introduced me to a gentleman, Pastor David Forbes, from Columbus, Ohio. I drove up to him, and he to me, and I started a spiritual consultation,” the coach explained.

Sanders released “Elevate and Dominate” in March and cited God’s grace that allowed him to survive a near-death encounter.

“I wanted it to be over,” Sanders wrote in his book. “But by the grace of God, that was the beginning. The beginning of something GREAT.”

Sanders also previously talked about his suicidal thoughts in his 1999 video autobiography titled “Power, Money and Sex: How Success Nearly Ruined My Life.”

“I finally got down on my knees and gave everything to the Lord,” Sanders said.

“Slowly but surely, I had to come to terms with my faith and my strength,” Sanders said. “I had to get a lot of Word to fend off the enemy. Without faith I would not be where I’m today. People argue about what faith is and who Jesus is, however it works for me. I’m not going to sit here and argue about who’s what and what’s what. Let me just say that it really works for me.

The story later resurfaced in 2019, when ESPN interrupted Sanders’ extraordinary sports profession in an episode of its “30 for 30” documentary series. The episode mainly focused on how Sanders managed to play an NFL game for the Atlanta Falcons and an MLB game for the Atlanta Braves inside 24 hours. However, Sanders also mentioned a time when he struggled with his mental health.