Former LA Chargers Defensive End’s Wife Opens Up About NFL Teams Treating Families of Starters and Backups Differently

Former LA Chargers defensive end Isaac Rochell was a 7th-round pick out of Notre Dame in the 2017 NFL Draft. Since then, he and his internet-famous wife, Allison Kuch, have seen plenty of what life in the NFL is really like … the good, the not-so-good, and everything in between.

Recently, Allison opened up about how Isaac experienced different treatment from teams depending on his role and performance, pulling back the curtain on a blind spot in the modern NFL.

In case you didn’t know, Rochell and Kuch have built a strong social media presence. Kuch has 1 million followers on Instagram, and she and her husband have done ad partnerships for State Farm and Vital Proteins. But in her latest media appearance, she wasn’t promoting anything.

Instead, Kuch used her time on Kelly Stafford’s podcast to talk about how NFL teams, like the Chargers, treat families behind closed doors. She started by discussing how her husband’s career has had its ups and downs, unlike Kelly’s husband, Matthew, which prompted a question from Mrs. Stafford.

“With those ebbs and flows, did you feel a huge difference in the way the organization treated him and you?” Stafford asked on her show, The Morning After.

“Absolutely,” Kuch responded. 

It may sound surprising to some, but in the world of sports, it’s not too surprising. Ideally, every team would like to treat the families of their players excellently. But with so many players on a roster, blind spots will occur. For players like Rochell, he’s going to fall by the wayside as opposed to a player of Stafford’s status. 

However, Kuch later revealed that the politics of sports cuts way deeper than just the treatment of family. 

“My husband was on a practice squad playing over guys on the active roster,” Kuch shared.

Stafford was stunned. “What?” she asked. “They just didn’t want to pay him?”

“It was more like political,” Kuch responded.

It’s hard to know which team Rochell’s wife was referring to. He’s had stints on both the Cleveland Browns and the Chargers practice squads. But if we had to guess, it’s probably Cleveland, as they like to go to extreme lengths to save money. This sounds no different, as they bounced Rochell between the practice squad and the active roster to avoid paying him more.

Why is it so hard to believe the bad treatment came from the Chargers? Because Kuch later shared that when her husband played well, she and Rochell were taken care of. And he had his best seasons in LA, by far.

“The years that my husband was on teams that played really well, it was like we were hanging out with all of his teammates outside the facility. I felt so close with everybody. It was like Kumbaya,” Kuch revealed.

She then went on to say that on other teams, she didn’t know who to call or what to do on gameday. This sense of abandonment must have felt strange compared to teams like the Chargers. This all but shows that the NFL has an issue when it comes to uniformly treating players’ families well.