Series / American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez

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American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez is a 2024 American biopic drama Mini Series (though the first instalment in a hoped Genre Anthology series) created by Stuart Zicherman and produced by Ryan Murphy. It is a spin-off of American Crime Story. It premiered on September 18, 2024 on Hulu.

The miniseries depicts the real-life rise and fall of Aaron Hernandez, a star NFL tight end for the New England Patriots until his arrest for murder in 2013.

The cast includes Josh Andrés Rivera as Hernandez, Patrick Schwarzenegger as Tim Tebow, Jaylen Barron as Hernandez's fiancee Shayanna Jenkins and Thomas Sadoski as Hernandez's agent Brian Murphy.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Aaron's father Dennis regularly has violent outbursts. We never see him harm the kids but it's referenced several times — in one instance, Aaron immediately flinches from his father who has to assure him that he's not about to get hit.
• The Ace: Once he joins the Patriots, Aaron's quarterback and coach are Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, both widely considered the best in their respective positions in NFL history.
• Addled Addict: Aaron's life gets derailed by drugs many times throughout the series — in college he shows up to practices high, fails drugs tests and nearly gets cut from the team, and as an adult he endangers his child because he passes out while babysitting.
• Alas, Poor Villain: As gruesome as his crimes are, there is some sympathy that viewers can develop for Hernandez's harsh childhood and downward spiral. His portrayal as a broken and mentally ill man makes his downfall feel tragic rather than cathartic.
• Amoral Attorney: Despite Hernandez obviously being guilty of his murders, Jose Baez offers to defend him having previously defended the equally controversial Casey Anthony.
• Arcadian Interlude: Episode six opens with a very brief one: a scene of Aaron and Chris making love in a fancy hotel room in Cabo. This is the first and only moment on the show in which Aaron seems completely happy and completely at peace with himself.
• Armored Closet Gay: Hernandez, a football star, is the last person anyone would think would be gay. In "The Man", he brings his childhood friend Shayanna with him to a party at the Kraft mansion to make himself look more presentable.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The night before Aaron is drafted, DJ's jealousy over Aaron's talent and career prospects prompts an argument that turns physical between the brothers. But the next morning, when Aaron is drafted by the Patriots, he and DJ jump into each others' arms and celebrate.
• Backfire on the Witness Stand: Aaron's lawyer Baez destroys the case against him in his second trial, since it all depends on Sherrod's testimony; Baez uses Sherrod's criminal background and extortion attempts against him and shreds his credibility.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • After making out with a teammate in his car, Aaron comes home and is confronted by his father about someone spotting him in the parking lot. Aaron seizes up for a moment, but his dad is talking about Aaron and his drunk buddies dancing on the roof of someone's car.
  • In episode three, Tim Tebow asks Aaron about his evening plans; the interaction is framed in a way that makes it seem like Tebow might be hitting on Aaron. He's actually inviting him to church.
    Tim: Hey, what are you doing tonight?
    Aaron: What do you mean?
    Tim: I mean, what are you doing tonight? Like the thing that comes after today? [Scribbles on a piece of paper] Come by here around eight, all right?
  • After his first murders, Aaron is paranoid that he's been found out, which goes into overdrive when he gets some frantic messages from his agent, but when they finally meet, the news is that he's getting his contract extended.
• The Beard: The series presents Shayanna Jenkins as being a means for Aaron to hide his homosexuality from the public. His lover Chris has his own beard, Sasha.
• Big Brother Instinct: For all the tension between them, when Aaron threatens to kill himself over his spiraling drug issues and worsening relationship with Shayanna, DJ immediately rushes to his side and talks him down.
• Bittersweet Ending: As depressing as Hernandez's descent into criminality and mental instability is, the one upside is that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) can finally be taken seriously by the NFL and other sports organizations.
• Brutal Honesty: Murphy successfully sells himself to Aaron as his agent with his blunt candor, saying that any agent who says that he's going in the first round is lying to him, since Aaron's off-field issues are going to knock him far down the draft.
• Composite Character: Chris, a physical therapist who becomes Aaron's lover, stands in for various men with whom Aaron allegedly had sexual relationships during his short-lived NFL career.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Aaron Hernandez is this to Simpson and Cunanan.
  • Aaron is a young rising star in the NFL, whereas OJ was already retired when he got into trouble with the law.
  • Hernandez is the Straight Gay closeted counterpart to Andrew who is much more flamboyant and effeminate.
• Dead Guy Junior: Aaron's older brother is named Dennis, Jr., after his dad. Everyone calls him DJ or Deej.
• Depraved Bisexual: He shows genuine attraction to Shayanna, the girl he dated in college Vanessa, and the guys he's cheating on them with. In contrast, he's practically indifferent to his numerous victims, even the three men who died at his hands.
• Domestic Abuse: Terri ends up in the hospital after her new boyfriend ruthlessly beats her to a pulp.
• Downer Ending: Hernandez is acquitted of his double murders, kills himself, and is posthumously confirmed to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • During a night out in college, one of Aaron's teammates wonders aloud if Tim Tebow is gay because Tebow never touches drugs, alcohol, or women.
    Mo: Look at that motherfucker [Tebow]. Soda in one hand, Bible in the other. Looks like he immune to pussy.
  • Robert Kraft says that Hernandez, once considered a character risk out of college, has matured into a fine young man and player; the audience knows he has already killed two people.
  • After becoming Aaron's girlfriend, Shayanna has drinks with a group of WAGs who matter-of-factly discuss their strategies for tolerating and/or mitigating their partners' cheating. The other women all look extremely skeptical when Shayanna insists that Aaron doesn't sleep with other women; the scene then cuts to show Aaron naked in a hotel bed with Chris.
  • In "Dirty Pain", Aaron is actually telling the truth when he tells Shayanna that the text messages on his phone are from a guy he used to train with, but Shayanna believes that he must be lying, because why would another man send him texts about missing him?
• Drugs Are Bad: Aaron becomes a giant pothead in college, and it starts to seriously endanger his college football career when he fails drug tests and shows up to practice high. It later spirals out of control again as his life is falling apart.
• Dumbass DJ: Two asshole sports radio guys take a break from Stay in the Kitchen jokes to trash Hernandez.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Sherrod erupts at Hernandez on the witness stand, yelling that all he ever did for Aaron was look out for him.
• Eye Scream: "Dirty Pain" opens with a close-up of doctors surgically removing shrapnel from what's left of Sherrod's right eye socket.
• Face–Heel Turn: Hernandez descends into a criminal as the series progresses, contrasting his behavior during his years in high school.
• Foil: Tim Tebow, Hernandez's quarterback at University of Florida. Where Hernandez is angry, not white and struggles with temptations towards drugs and sex, Tebow is a Bible-thumping clean-cut straight arrow.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Aaron is forcibly outed while in prison after rumors about his sexuality reach the gossip journalists.
• Gay Cruising: During college, Aaron and another male student make prolonged, flirtatious eye contact with each other at the university library, and hook up in an out-of-the-way bathroom. Later, Aaron is mortified when the school paper runs an article about "guys cruising the library for gay sex" and anonymously interviewing gay students about their hookups, which included "a married professor, a member of the swim team and [...] a football player."
• Gayngst: Hernandez has a lot of anger and shame over being gay.
• Gayngst-Induced Suicide: It's a factor, at least — right after being outed, he drowns his pain with drugs during which he finally kills himself.
• Gold Digger: A lot of the other players' wives and girlfriends talk openly about snagging a rich pro for their money, which discomforts Shayanna.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: DJ Hernandez has made a concerted effort to stay out of trouble and work hard on the field to further his own football ambitions. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to make up for the fact he simply wasn't born with the elite-level athleticism his younger brother Aaron was.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?:
  • In episode 5, DJ admonishes Aaron to get up and take a business meeting "without tits in your face." Aaron responds, almost by rote, "I like tits in my face."
  • Aaron also says a version of this to Chris, after they just spent an entire afternoon in bed together.
  Aaron: I don't know about you but I'm not...like that.
  Chris: No one said you were.
• Hide the Evidence: After Aaron's first murders, he realizes his car was probably spotted on camera and stashes the vehicle at his aunt's house.
• Hope Spot:
  • It seems like Hernandez has found some stability after finding Jesus, but we know it won't last.
  • When Aaron is found not guilty in his second trial, his lawyers give him and his family confidence that the first trial's verdict can be overturned. Aaron kills himself before they get the chance.
• How We Got Here: The series begins with Aaron shooting Sherrod, then backtracks to the start of his football career.
• Hypocritical Humor: The football players at the University of Florida engage in a lot of homophobic-yet-homoerotic bonding with each other, including playing "gay chicken" in the locker room and yanking off their shirts together at a Frat party while chanting "shirts are gay!"
• It's All About Me: Aaron's self-centered mother. When Aaron's career takes off, all she is interested in is his money, and when he's arrested, all she cares about is the damage to her own reputation.
• Love Martyr: In "What's Left Behind", Shayanna throws in her lot with Aaron, siding with him against her own family in the murder trial, because she fears that otherwise, he has no good influence in his life, as it's clear that his teammates never really cared about him and his mother's primary motivation seems to be protecting her family's reputation.
• Loving a Shadow: In a familial example, Aaron's cousin Tanya keeps seeing him as the shy, awkward boy that she had to protect from Abusive Parents, and doesn't acknowledge that he's grown up into a deeply troubled, violent man who is responsible for his own actions. Particularly damning is her decision to let him store a car in her garage that ends up being linked to an unsolved shooting.
• Lying by Omission: More than once, Aaron truthfully tells Shayanna that he isn't sleeping with other women, conveniently omitting that he is sleeping with other men.
• Manly Gay: Hernandez is portrayed as an aggressive football player/criminal who portrays masculine traits that don't cause anyone to suspect his homosexuality.
• Minor Symptom Foreshadowing:
  • Dennis Hernandez groans in pain over his hernia, which he says will be cleared up with some minor surgery. He doesn't survive the surgery.
  • In "The Man", Aaron starts suffering headaches and tinnitus after getting repeatedly hit in the head, foreshadowing his eventual CTE.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Odin is forced to reveal the existence of Aaron's second apartment to his girlfriend, after she assumes that his late night out was him stepping out on her with another woman and he has to explain his whereabouts.
• The Mistress: Twice in Aaron's life he pursues clandestine relationships with other men while maintaining a public relationship with Shayanna.
  • In high school, Aaron dates Shayanna while also secretly hooking up with his teammate Dennis SanSoucie.
  • As an adult, Aaron has an on-and-off affair with Chris while he and Shay are engaged, cohabitating, and raising their daughter together.
• Moe Greene Special: Sherrod gets a bullet in the eye, but survives.
• Naked People Are Funny: Aaron is in the showers when he's reminded he has to go pick up his team gear. As a joke, he goes to get it without getting dressed. Belichick is unamused.
• Never My Fault: After Aaron is arrested for murder, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft are furious about how it affects the Patriots and the fact they were "duped". This is despite them being well aware of Aaron's off-field troubles before the NFL Draft that caused every other team to pass on him because they knew it was likely something like this would happen.
• No Sympathy: After he dies, there's a montage of real sports pundits saying they have no sympathy for Aaron.
• Nothing but Hits: Tons of period hits soundtrack the series, including such mid-'00s bangers as "The Whistle Song" when he's in high school and "Boom Boom Pow" when he's in college.
• Off the Wagon:
  • Aaron kicks the drugs in his final year of college, but after blowing it in the interviews at the scouting combine, he starts hitting the weed again pretty hard.
  • In "Dirty Pain", he tries to get clean while in California, but the pain from his recent shoulder surgery causes him to relapse, and things spiral out from there.
• Paranoia Gambit: Sherrod texts Aaron that he's outside waiting for him, but Aaron can't find him when he goes to confront him. He calls him and demands to know where he is, to which Sherrod taunts him, "In your head, motherfucker.'"
• Parent with New Paramour: Aaron has a tense relationship with his mother, especially when she moves on quickly to a new boyfriend after his father's death.
• Pedophilia Is a Special Kind of Evil: Aaron's molestation at the hands of his uncle serves as one of the most traumatic parts of his childhood.
• Perp Walk: Aaron gets cuffed before he can even get a shirt on, and gets marched out with his shirt on awkwardly over his cuffs.
• Pet the Dog: For all that Belichick treats Aaron like an implement, when Aaron begs to be traded because he's afraid for his safety if he remains in Boston, Belichick offers to keep him in California for a season so that he can lay low and get clean, then tells him that if he still has problems when he gets back, the Pats will provide him with security. Aaron looks genuinely relieved.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In "The Man", Belichick forces Aaron into a different position in order to test out a new strategy, resulting in Hernandez getting injured more often, especially in the head. While Belichick eventually gets the results he was looking for, Aaron ends up suffering multiple head injuries, greatly contributing to his CTE.
• Raging Stiffie: Aaron gets a visible erection as Chris, a handsome physical therapist, massages his inner thigh.
• Rape as Backstory: In "Birthday Money", a flashback shows that young Aaron was molested by his uncle.
• The Resenter: In "Birthday Money", DJ is shown to resent the fact that Aaron keeps getting chances to make something of himself despite all his bad behavior, while DJ himself keeps his record clean but is expected to settle for coaching a team in Germany.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • In episode five, Shayanna tells a group of disbelieving WAGs that Aaron doesn't sleep with other women. She's correct, but her underlying assumption that Aaron is faithful to her is wrong: the truth is that he doesn't cheat on her with women because he prefers to cheat on her with men.
  • Conversely, in episode six, Shayanna correctly assumes that Aaron is cheating on her when she sees Chris's "I miss you" text on his phone, but she mistakenly assumes that Aaron's side piece is a woman.
• Sanity Slippage: Aaron is clearly losing it, both as a result of repetitive head trauma and of the paranoia caused by Sherrod's threats, leading to hallucinations of Sherrod watching him.
• Saying Too Much: Aaron confesses way too much to Odin while high, made worse because he can't remember what he admitted in the morning.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Hernandez gets in a fight with a bartender at the club, but a booster for his college comes in to clean it all up. It's stated that pretty much all of the Florida Gators get away with legal scraps regularly.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Episode 4 features a scene in Aaron's hotel room, in which Chris tries to comfort Aaron who is despondent about his combine interviews and chances in the draft. Chris impulsively kisses Aaron and then apologizes for being "unprofessional." Aaron kisses Chris and lays him down on the bed as the scene fades to black.
• Sports Dad: Dennis is a particularly rough one, demanding that his sons reach all the success he never had.
• Sports Star to Scoundrel: Hernandez is shown struggling with the temptations of drugs and sex while playing for the NFL, which culminates in him participating in double homicide and other violent actions, motivated by his extreme aggression caused by CTE.
• Successful Sibling Syndrome: DJ is often in the shadow of Aaron, because the latter is way more successful, despite the former being the more well-behaved.
• Tough Love: Dennis's parenting philosophy is harsh and occasionally drifts into straight-up abuse.
• Toxic Family Influence: When Aaron's emotional and legal problems start to mount, his older cousin Tanya keeps descending upon his girlfriend Shayanna to pressure her to stick it out with Aaron, even though it would probably be in Shyanna's best interests to cut ties with him. Aaron's mother Terri also leans on her to try and convince her not to testify against Aaron, even though the police have made it clear that she could be charged as an accessory, and even though Shayanna's mother and sister threaten to cut her off.
• Turn to Religion: Tim Tebow brings the troubled Hernandez to his church, and he becomes devout and starts cleaning up his act.
• Villain Protagonist: The series follows Aaron during his football career and his violent murders.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Aaron's mother is put in the hospital by her new boyfriend; Aaron and Sherrod find him in a parking lot and lay a beatdown on him.