CARNELIAN BAY, Calif. — Before a 10-mile run on a cool sunny morning six years ago, Robert Gallery pulled on calf sleeves and compression pants to help with the soreness. The former offensive lineman still weighed 285 pounds, and training for a half-marathon was hell. No matter, he needed to run because it helped clear his head, as much as a head like his could be cleared.

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Gallery came to the crosswalk on Highway 89, which borders Lake Tahoe and runs toward Emerald Bay. The street was busy with construction traffic, school buses and 9-to-5ers sipping lattes and checking their hair in rearview mirrors. As he waited for a break, a semi-truck came barreling through.

That’s when the thought hit him.

What if I step in front of the semi? I’ll be killed, and it will look like an accident. No one will think I’m a coward.

Suicide — or more accurately, making the noise stop — had been on his mind.

Gallery courted death, riding his motorcycle 90 miles an hour in a 35-mile zone, weaving around cars and trucks. He floored it in his EV — up to 120 — hugging curbs and screeching tires. High in the Sierra Nevadas, he went off-road on his dirt bike and steered closer to the edges than any mountain goat would go.

It didn’t seem that long ago when he won the 2003 Outland Trophy as the top interior lineman in college football. Joe Bugel, a foremost authority on offensive line play and the coach of Washington’s Hogs, predicted Gallery would be a 15-year Pro Bowler.

After the Oakland Raiders made him the second pick of the draft, Gallery didn’t make any Pro Bowls.

But that didn’t make him any less of a badass. With shoulder-length hair, a lumberjack beard and tattoos that wallpapered his torso and arms, Gallery, who stood 6 feet 7, weighed 325 pounds, ran the 40-yard dash in 4.98 seconds and bench-pressed 225 pounds 32 times, dealt in intimidation.

He lasted through 10 surgeries and eight NFL seasons until he had nothing left. Regretfully, he retired, harrowed by what could have been, should have been. Then came the brain fog, ringing in his ears, memory voids, tequila, rage and thoughts of taking his life.

At the crosswalk on his run that morning, Gallery took a deep breath, let the semi pass and started to jog.

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All that mattered was making the noise stop.

As a 5-year-old, he was assigned to pick up rocks and toss them in a wagon on 400 acres that had been passed down from one generation of Gallerys to another and another. As he grew, Gallery graduated to more challenging tasks — driving the tractor, tilling the land, baling hay and unloading corn and soybeans into augers that led to a storage bin.

The farm was outside of Masonville, a town in Eastern Iowa with a fish fry/bar, a church, a grain elevator and not much else. For his Eagle Scout project, Gallery built flower boxes for the local park. The locals still talk about it.

An eight-mile drive on a gravel road took him to East Buchanan High, where Gallery would become president of his class and a member of the National Honor Society. They came from miles around on Friday nights to watch his team play on a football field illuminated by the floodlights of neighboring farms. As one of 18 players on the team, he lined up at tight end, defensive end, linebacker, kicker and on all special teams.