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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Falcons' Kyle Pitts faces uncertain future after troubling contract update
Once considered a future standard-setter for the tight end market, Kyle Pitts now finds himself in a far more uncertain position. Three years removed from his record-setting rookie season, Pitts is set to play the 2025 season on his $10.88 million fifth-year option with "no whispers" of an extension, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's D. Orlando Ledbetter. Though his production has dipped, Pitts remains one of only five tight ends — along with Travis Kelce, George Kittle, Sam LaPorta and Trey McBride — to eclipse 600 receiving yards in each of the last two seasons. Still, that hasn't guaranteed him long-term security in Atlanta. A serious MCL tear in 2022 hindered his development, and despite perfect attendance the past two years, Pitts hasn't matched the dominance of his 1,026-yard rookie campaign. Now, entering a crucial contract year, the Falcons are taking a wait-and-see approach. Part of that hesitation may stem from a coaching staff reset. Offensive coordinator Zac Robinson wasn't in place for Pitts' peak season, and neither was head coach Raheem Morris. It's also no secret Atlanta's quarterback play has been turbulent — from Marcus Mariota to Desmond Ridder and an injury-plagued Kirk Cousins. That carousel contributed to Pitts' inconsistent numbers. NFL insider Jordan Schultz reported earlier this offseason that 'multiple teams have reached out to the Falcons about the availability of TE Kyle Pitts.' While Schultz noted that 'nothing is imminent,' Atlanta would reportedly require 'at least a Day 2 pick to even spark serious talks.' Trading Pitts midseason could re-enter the picture if the Falcons struggle out of the gate, but Blogging Dirty's Grayson Freestone argued against such a move. 'Kyle Pitts is someone the Falcons can't replace for 2025,' Freestone wrote. 'They have no receiving threat without him, and there aren't any outside options to fill his spot.' With second-year quarterback Michael Penix Jr. stepping into the starting role, Pitts' presence may be more vital than ever. His ability to serve as a security blanket could be key to Penix's development — and his own market value. If Pitts delivers, Atlanta could choose to franchise tag him in 2026. The 2024 tight end tag price was $13.8 million, a figure that may be favorable for a player still only 25 years old. The ball, quite literally, is in Pitts' court.
New York Times
24-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
AI is coming to the NFL, and it could transform the game
In 1968, Stanley Kubrick released '2001: A Space Odyssey' and creeped out an entire country with the idea of a future controlled by artificial intelligence. In the summer of 2025, Zac Robinson is facing the idea of watching football and discussing strategy with a computer, and he's a little creeped out, too. Advertisement The 38-year-old Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator worked as an analyst for Pro Football Focus before starting his coaching career in 2019, a stint that convinced him of the value and potential of advanced analytics. But there's a wide gulf between the math used to optimize fourth-down decisions and a voiced AI agent telling you to look out for the weakside linebacker while you're sitting alone in your office on a Tuesday night. 'I don't know,' Robinson said, considering the scenario. 'I'm a little scared.' He and other NFL coaches are going to have to get comfortable crossing that water soon. Instead of Hal 9000, think of it as the Bill Walsh 3000, which could be assigned to watch the rotations of the secondary while a human coach focuses on the front seven. 'I'd have to see what that looks like,' Robinson said. '(A computer) barking at me, I might get a little frustrated, but if it ends up being a cool tool, that'll be interesting.' Ryan Paganetti got his job in part because of artificial intelligence. He was hired by Las Vegas Raiders head coach Pete Carroll in March as the team's 'Head Coach Research Specialist,' but the job may be better understood as AI coordinator. 'I don't think when I was hired the idea was, 'This is our AI guy,' but there is no doubt whatsoever that I am going to be using AI every single day,' he said. 'And probably in increasingly larger amounts every month that goes by.' In a league in which teams are constantly looking for an edge, the next big one won't be coming through the draft or free agency, Paganetti believes, but from artificial intelligence tools that are on the verge of transforming how coaches think about the game and do their jobs … and maybe even which coaches still have those jobs in a decade. 'It almost might be a blockbuster moment where some coaches, their roles are replaced entirely,' Paganetti said. 'That's an issue in all sorts of industries where AI is just better and more accurate. I think that is going to happen with the football industry, to some degree. Advertisement 'I feel pretty confident saying some team is going to win a Super Bowl in the next few years utilizing AI at a very high rate, significantly higher than it has ever been used before,' he said. 'It's really an opportunity to differentiate yourself from a team that might have a more talented roster or better coaches or whatnot. There is going to be more and more separation with teams that are bought in.' Carroll is fully bought in. The NFL's oldest head coach is maybe its biggest believer in its youngest technology. 'Everything you can think of is possible right now,' the 73-year-old said. His early adopter status isn't surprising considering his history, which includes head coaching stints with the New York Jets, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks and at the University of Southern California, where last year he taught a class called 'The Game of Life.' As part of that class, Carroll spoke with author and new-age guru Deepak Chopra. 'Check this out,' Carroll said, 'he talked about AI giving him the opportunity to interview himself, talking to himself through AI so he was actually questioning his own person and being answered by his own person in return. Some of it does feel like science fiction, I get that, but AI is around the corner for us.' Nearly three decades ago, IBM began developing the supercomputer Deep Blue to face off against world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov won his first match against the machine in 1996, but Deep Blue won the rematch the next year, and humans haven't provided a chess challenge to computers since. Computers have since mastered the ancient Chinese board game Go, which involves exponentially more possible moves than chess. Football presents a much tougher computer problem than chess or Go for myriad reasons, but many experts agree that some of the analytical functions done by human coaches could be done better, or at least more efficiently, by artificial intelligence, and the current rate of improvement in the industry suggests that moment might not be far away. While the world ponders a future where computers can generate their own decisions, the technology still is almost entirely machine learning and brute computing power rather than human-like intelligence. 'Think of machine learning as a technique for achieving artificial intelligence,' said John Guttag, the Dugald C. Jackson Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at MIT. Advertisement The large language models that power most AI and machine learning 'don't know how to watch football yet, but I think with some work, they can be taught to watch football,' said Udit Ranasaria, a senior researcher at SumerSports, one of a handful of companies developing artificial intelligence tools with the potential to reshape professional football. 'We can get to a place where we have something like ChatGPT that understands what's happening in the NFL.' It probably won't take long, said Guttag, who leads the school's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Data Driven Inference Group and has co-presented several papers about the uses of machine learning in the NBA and Major League Baseball. In 2020, he was the thesis supervisor for a 55-page dissertation written by Udgam Goyal titled 'Leveraging Machine Learning to Predict Playcalling Tendencies in the NFL.' 'A big branch of artificial intelligence from almost the beginning has been computer vision, trying to get computers to see things and figure out what is in the image,' Guttag said. But football is a more complex problem for computer vision than basketball, baseball or soccer because of the proximity of players to the line of scrimmage and the variance in personnel. 'Fourth-and-1 with Mike Vick and Alge Crumpler looks a lot different than fourth-and-1 with Kirk Cousins and Kyle Pitts,' said Omar Ajmeri, the CEO and co-founder of Slants, which uses machine learning to pull scouting information from football film. Current artificial intelligence is capable of 'watching' game film from two teams, formulating a game plan and printing out call sheets for offensive and defensive coordinators, said Vishakh Sandwar, one half of the winning team at this year's Big Data Bowl, which is sponsored by the NFL. 'It's just a matter of the quality at this point,' he said. Sandwar and fellow NYU alum Smit Bajaj's winning project created an algorithm that can identify coverages based on the computer's 'visual' analysis of defenders. The model, which used technology developed by Sumer, achieved an accuracy level of 89 percent based only on pre-snap alignments. It adjusts in real time as defensive players move and can identify which are the worst offenders in giving away coverages before the snap. It also allows coaches to create custom looks by moving defenders on a digital whiteboard. Artificial intelligence 'is very good at piecing together relationships in very, very high-dimensional spaces,' Bajaj said. 'With languages, it's able to piece together and understand that based on the entire history of the internet, this is the word that is likely to come next. It's increasingly being used, I would assume, in NFL buildings to piece together player-to-player relationships as well.' Advertisement 'Over time, it will get better and better,' Guttag said. 'And what you'll do is say, 'Here are all the series that led to first downs. Here are all the series that didn't lead to first downs. What are the important differences?' — without hypothesizing before. You'll just let the AI machine learning look at all that data and say, 'Here are some interesting differences.' One of the great things about machine learning is it finds things you didn't know were there.' Bajaj spoke to The Athletic for this article in March. By May, he had been hired by the Philadelphia Eagles (Sandwar was hired by Sumer this spring). Before joining the Eagles, Bajaj was interning in the Philadelphia Phillies' analytics department, which has more than 35 employees. In the NFL, only three teams have more than six employees in their departments, according to research by ESPN's Seth Walder. Fourteen have three or fewer, and none have more than the Cleveland Browns' 10. 'I do know there are opportunities, but it requires a real commitment,' Guttag said. 'If you're going to do this, it's going to take premier talent. We're not going to be able to take an ex-player and say, 'Go run this department.' You look at what Google pays their top machine-learning people. It's not NFL player salaries, but it's not NFL office salaries, either.' After Ajmeri presented at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2018, he was asked to meet with NFL teams in 'really far corners of the conference center,' even across the street at a Starbucks. The upcoming arms race in artificial intelligence hiring will stay in the shadows, predicted Paganetti, who declined to discuss any specifics about how the Raiders will use the upcoming advancements. An artificial intelligence agent could assist in play calling during games, but NFL rules ban that sort of assistance from kickoff until the clock hits zero. During the week, everything in the AI realm is in bounds, although the league continues to monitor developments, at least the ones it knows about. 'There's still an extreme level of secrecy,' Paganetti said. 'Even people who work in analytics have very little idea what people working in analytics for other teams do sometimes because it's considered company secrets. We know what the scouts do on the other team: They scout. We know what the coaches do on the other teams: They coach. But when it comes to the actual contribution of the analytics department of another team, it's really open-ended.' Atlanta passing game coordinator T.J. Yates, like coaches in many buildings in the NFL, already works with Telemetry Sports for computer-generated coaching aids. The son of an engineer and the Falcons' coaching staff's biggest trumpeter of technological possibilities, Yates knows other advancements are looming. Advertisement 'If you're not using it, it's dumb, because it's there for us,' Yates said. 'The days of sitting there grinding until two or three o'clock in the morning, there are way too many available opportunities to cut that out and be efficient and go home and get some sleep and have a sharper mind and have good energy for your players the next day.' SumerSports' technology isn't built to replace coaches, just to make their jobs easier, CEO Lorrissa Horton said: 'Our question is 'How can we help them be more efficient?'' Former Falcons and Patriots executive Thomas Dimitroff is the director of football operations at Sumer and has led the organization's presentations to coaches and executives around the league. 'Everyone is on the edge of their seats during those meetings,' Dimitroff said. 'They are salivating at the idea of 'How can I be able to do this?' Coaches would welcome nothing more than to be able to do these things faster and more effectively than they are doing them now.' The key, he said, will be making sure the technology is easily accessible. 'There are a lot of very, very smart coaches,' he said, 'but oftentimes they don't have the time in their schedule to learn what Lorrissa's group can teach so they get a little antsy with it and say, 'Screw it, I'll get to that later.'' Tennessee Titans head coach Brian Callahan believes artificial intelligence acceptance around the league will vary. 'Anytime you are talking to a football coach who has done one thing for a long time, it takes time for that to take hold, but I do think there is a much more open mind to all of those things: data, analytics, new processes,' the 41-year-old said. 'Yeah, there will be some pushback in some spots, but there are a lot of other spots where guys will look at it as something that can really help.' Advertisement Guttag is less optimistic about buy-in, pointing out the resistance coaches showed to accepting the math behind fourth-down decision-making, maybe the most rudimentary form of machine learning introduced to the game. 'Anyone who knew any math at all knew they were behaving stupidly, and yet they continued to do it,' he said. 'It's kind of remarkable.' The next wave of artificial intelligence will make the fourth-down bot look like an abacus. The NFL already is using an AI application called Digital Athlete to help teams predict injuries, but the upcoming coaching applications are where NFL fans are most likely to see results. 'With things like 'What play should you run against this look? What blitz should you run against this alignment?' — those are areas where AI can really move the needle or come up with ideas that you might otherwise never have thought of,' Paganetti said. This season, the league will implement Sony's Hawk-Eye system to measure first downs with computer vision, which means six 8K cameras will be used in every stadium. If the footage from those cameras is someday fed into AI applications, it could further accelerate the pace of advancements. Dimitroff estimates that 75 percent of NFL teams are using some sort of artificial intelligence in their weekly preparation but that most are using it only at the most basic level. Carroll, at least, plans to be on the cutting edge soon. 'It's just such a wide-open domain to kind of figure things out and do things new, take advantage and utilize everything you can think of,' Carroll said. 'That's something I like, man. If you're not curious, you're not growing. The last thing I'm going to do is ignore AI.' (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photo: Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
New York Times
18-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Falcons offseason will include plenty of golf, including a QB working on a ‘horrible' game
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Atlanta offensive coordinator Zac Robinson has been 'addicted' to golf since his father introduced him to the game as a 5-year-old. Now, he's starting to see the same signs in his quarterback. 'Mike (Penix Jr.) is at the point where it seems like he is addicted,' Robinson said. Advertisement Robinson played for four NFL teams and spent five years as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Rams before coming to Atlanta in 2024, and no team he's been on has more golfers — or wannabe golfers — than the Falcons, he said. Penix, who was drafted eighth in 2024 and took over Atlanta's starting job at the end of last season, noticed the same thing when he arrived and decided he needed to pick up the game to fit in. His game is a work in progress. 'I started about a year ago and I try to go at least once a week,' Penix said. 'Yesterday was terrible; don't ask about yesterday. Yesterday was bad. It was bad. I don't even want to tell y'all, but there are a lot of guys that play. We bond like that. Safe sport, fun sport.' Penix is on the hunt for an instructor this offseason, he said. 'Whenever I'm done playing (football), I feel like I might want to play, so I need to learn now,' he said. Falcons running back Bijan Robinson was happy to hear Penix acknowledge his game has a long way to go. 'That's a big step because around me, he talks like he's the coldest player in the world,' Bijan Robinson said. 'Mike Penix is horrible.' The second-year quarterback does have potential, though. 'I've played with him before and when he gets ahold of it, obviously it can go a long way,' Zac Robinson said of Penix. 'Golf is the toughest sport to master, and he's right in the thick of learning the game.' Zac Robinson isn't upset Penix is moonlighting in another sport. 'You can never fully master golf. It feels very similar to football,' Zac Robinson said. 'There is never a stopping point. There's always something you can work on. I like it from the aspect of competing with yourself. It's a different thing than being in a team sport.' The Falcons have a group chat that includes '25 or so guys' where players post any tee times they have with an open spot. 'They're saying, 'Need two, we're playing at The River Club.' It's, boom, 'I'm in, I'm in,'' Zac Robinson said. Tight end Kyle Pitts, center Ryan Neuzil, place kicker Younghoe Koo, offensive lineman Matthew Cindric and wide receivers Jesse Matthews and Dylan Drummond are among the regulars in the rotation. Pitts recently shot a 37 on the back nine of a round he played with Penix, the quarterback said. Neuzil said Matthews 'is probably the best player overall.' Advertisement Bijan Robinson is not part of the golfing group — 'absolutely not, absolutely not,' he said — but is an appreciator of the game through his friendship with Scottie Scheffler, a fellow University of Texas alum and the No. 1 player in the world. 'I'm going to try to get some lessons soon, hopefully in the next couple weeks,' he said. 'These guys are becoming really good, so I need to step it up.' (Photo of Michael Penix Jr.: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Planning for my disabled son after I die keeps me awake at night'
Suzanne Robinson's 15-year-old son, Zac, is severely autistic and non-verbal. 'If he's in the garden, he'll pick up leaves, he's eaten a snail before, he'll drink from a puddle,' says Robinson. 'He has no concept of personal safety, so you can't leave him alone for a second, because anything could happen.' Zac needs one-to-one care around the clock and lives full-time in a specialist school in Thatcham, Berkshire, called Prior's Court, funded by his local authority. While his care is paid for, having a disabled child is hugely expensive for Robinson and Matt, Zac's father. On average, parents spend an extra £322 a month on their child's condition, such as higher energy bills and food costs, according to disability charity Contact. 'Everything he needs is expensive. We've spent a lot on private therapies. We still spend loads on supplements and things, which may or may not help, but you do everything you can,' adds Robinson. 'We've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, probably, over 15 years, trying to help him as much as we can, really with pretty little result, if I am honest.' But the big concern for the couple is about what will happen to Zac – and their daughters – when they die. In England, a council will generally help to pay for care costs if a person has savings of less than £23,250. An inheritance could change the picture, especially if a home is inherited, as councils can require that homes be sold to help pay for care. Having a live-in carer costs between £800 and £1,600 a week, according to the NHS, while rooms in a residential or nursing home can cost as much as £850 a week. 'The worry is for the future. You're trying to protect your child as much as possible and provide for them without it affecting their entitlement to social care, because this stuff is ruinously expensive,' Robinson says. 'You don't want to leave it all to the girls, because that's not fair, but also we don't want our entire estate to be taken for his care so that they have nothing.' She adds: 'It keeps me awake at night. What's going to happen when we're not around? I don't want the burden of it to fall on my daughters.' The Robinsons are far from the only family to have to deal with this dilemma. Rhiannon Gogh, 47, also has a 15-year-old son, Tristan. Like Zac, he has severe autism, although he lives at home. The family realised something wasn't right when Tristan didn't hit the same milestones as his older brother, Henry. She says: 'We could never put him down. He cried a lot. He wanted to be rocked constantly, even when he was asleep. 'He never, ever looked at me. He never answered to his name. He never pointed at anything. He never responded to me talking to him. He seemed to be locked into a separate world. He used to run away from me at nursery when I would go to pick him up.' Like the Robinsons, Gogh has had to think about what will happen to Tristan when she and her husband die. Handing down estates to those without mental capacity is much harder than she expected. Not only does she need to think about making sure he can still access funded care, but levelling a large sum on a person without full mental capacity could make them a magnet for scammers. 'I quickly realised that all of the traditional financial planning that I'd put in place was completely wrong,' she says. 'It was going to cause him harm. He wouldn't be able to access his inheritance, he would be very, very vulnerable in receipt of it, and he would lose his access to care, support and benefits if I were to suddenly just land a chunk of money on him.' Parents of disabled children often have to give up work – which only exacerbates money worries. Robinson, 50, previously an actor and events organiser, is now a therapist. But when Zac was small, she stopped working to look after him, leaving her husband Matt, 49, who works as a business coach, as the sole breadwinner. 'Because of Zac's needs, no nursery would take him, we couldn't get him looked after, so the reality is that my career went completely on the back burner while my husband's took off.' She claimed carers' allowance, which worked out at £66.15 a week by 2019. It is now £83.30 a week. By the time Zac was nine – and with two younger daughters to care for – Robinson says she was 'on her knees'. Things got easier once Zac began attending residential school. But when he turns 16, his case will be passed to adult social care. The family faced a three-year battle to get him into residential care originally, and will face a similar process once again, including hiring lawyers to argue Zac's case. 'We'll have to go through the whole process again of proving his level of need and trying to get them to pay for it.' If the family fails to get his care extended into adulthood, their world could be upended again. Zac would have to move home, and Suzanne is particularly worried about how she will look after a fully-grown man as she ages. She asks: 'When he's 35, I'll be 70. Am I going to have to change a 35-year-old man's nappy at 70?' Gogh also gave up her corporate job 10 years ago to look after Tristan after he ran away from school. She now works as a financial adviser, specialising in helping families with severely disabled children. She has written a book, Planning with Love, on the subject. 'It's incredibly draining on finances,' Gogh says. 'He breaks things, he falls into things, he drops things, he bites clothing. He loves to see things dismantled and broken. 'He took an iPad once and smashed it on the corner of the table to see what happened. He's thrown a television out of a window.' A £400 car seatbelt was used just once before being thrown aside, because Tristan 'hated it'. She and her husband are planning a 'retirement for three', as he will be unable to support himself. Setting up your estate to ensure the future of your disabled child can be complex and often requires expert help, which is another cost. To ensure that the disabled person is eligible for care, while also receiving an inheritance, money can be left in trust. A disabled person's trust – which can be set up for someone eligible for disability living allowance or personal independence payments (PIP) – is specially designed for those without capacity. A discretionary trust can also be used, although it may attract higher tax bills. Trustees will need to be appointed to make decisions about what happens to the money. Those who cannot look after their own money may also need a deputy, who is appointed by the courts to make decisions for them, or might have their benefits managed directly by the Department for Work and Pensions. Choosing trustees is a minefield of its own. Gogh says: 'Who would a natural trustee be? You might think the natural choice would be a sibling, but then you think: 'Is it really fair to put that pressure on them by making them a trustee?'' Her eldest son, Henry, is just 17. He is very aware that, at some point in the future, he will become responsible for his younger brother. It's a heavy burden for a teenager. Gogh says: 'My poor other son has no choice, and he plays second fiddle, which is heartbreaking. 'I remember him saying to me in the car about a year ago: 'What if I go on holiday to Japan, in the future, when you're not here. Do you think someone will know how to get hold of me if something happens to Tristan?' 'He's already thought about that. He was only 15 at the time.' Planning for the future also raises the question of fairness between siblings. Robinson says that she doesn't want to leave all the money to her daughters, cutting Zac out entirely. But on the other hand, leaving everything in trust for Zac would feel equally unfair. 'You don't want to leave it all to the girls, but we don't want our entire estate to be taken for his care so they have nothing. That's just not fair. It's something families don't have to think about until you're in that position. 'You assume that you'll be able to split the estate between your children and they will all be able to look after that money themselves, and have the capacity to manage money. And of course, none of that applies in this case,' she says. Planning with Love: A Guide to Wills and Trusts for Parents of Children with Special Needs by Rhiannon Gogh (£15.99) Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
31-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
‘Planning for my disabled son after I die keeps me awake at night'
Suzanne Robinson's 15-year-old son, Zac, is severely autistic and non-verbal. 'If he's in the garden, he'll pick up leaves, he's eaten a snail before, he'll drink from a puddle,' says Robinson. 'He has no concept of personal safety, so you can't leave him alone for a second, because anything could happen.' Zac needs one-to-one care around the clock and lives full-time in a specialist school in Thatcham, Berkshire, called Prior's Court, funded by his local authority. While his care is paid for, having a disabled child is hugely expensive for Robinson and Matt, Zac's father. On average, parents spend an extra £322 a month on their child's condition, such as higher energy bills and food costs, according to disability charity Contact. 'Everything he needs is expensive. We've spent a lot on private therapies. We still spend loads on supplements and things, which may or may not help, but you do everything you can,' adds Robinson. 'We've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds, probably, over 15 years, trying to help him as much as we can, really with pretty little result, if I am honest.' But the big concern for the couple is about what will happen to Zac – and their two daughters – when they die. In England, a council will generally help to pay for care costs if a person has savings of less than £23,250. An inheritance could change the picture, especially if a home is inherited, as councils can require that homes be sold to help pay for care. Having a live-in carer costs between £800 and £1,600 a week, according to the NHS, while rooms in a residential or nursing home can cost as much as £850 a week. 'The worry is for the future. You're trying to protect your child as much as possible and provide for them without it affecting their entitlement to social care, because this stuff is ruinously expensive,' Robinson says. 'You don't want to leave it all to the girls, because that's not fair, but also we don't want our entire estate to be taken for his care so that they have nothing.' She adds: 'It keeps me awake at night. What's going to happen when we're not around? I don't want the burden of it to fall on my daughters.' 'I realised everything I'd put in place was wrong' The Robinsons are far from the only family to have to deal with this dilemma. Rhiannon Gogh, 47, also has a 15-year-old son, Tristan. Like Zac, he has severe autism, although he lives at home. The family realised something wasn't right when Tristan didn't hit the same milestones as his older brother, Henry. She says: 'We could never put him down. He cried a lot. He wanted to be rocked constantly, even when he was asleep. 'He never, ever looked at me. He never answered to his name. He never pointed at anything. He never responded to me talking to him. He seemed to be locked into a separate world. He used to run away from me at nursery when I would go to pick him up.' Like the Robinsons, Gogh has had to think about what will happen to Tristan when she and her husband die. Handing down estates to those without mental capacity is much harder than she expected. Not only does she need to think about making sure he can still access funded care, but levelling a large sum on a person without full mental capacity could make them a magnet for scammers. 'I quickly realised that all of the traditional financial planning that I'd put in place was completely wrong,' she says. 'It was going to cause him harm. He wouldn't be able to access his inheritance, he would be very, very vulnerable in receipt of it, and he would lose his access to care, support and benefits if I were to suddenly just land a chunk of money on him.' Parents of disabled children often have to give up work – which only exacerbates money worries. Robinson, 50, previously an actor and events organiser, is now a therapist. But when Zac was small, she stopped working to look after him, leaving her husband Matt, 49, who works as a business coach, as the sole breadwinner. 'Because of Zac's needs, no nursery would take him, we couldn't get him looked after, so the reality is that my career went completely on the back burner while my husband's took off.' She claimed carers' allowance, which worked out at £66.15 a week by 2019. It is now £83.30 a week. By the time Zac was nine – and with two younger daughters to care for – Robinson says she was 'on her knees'. Things got easier once Zac began attending residential school. But when he turns 16, his case will be passed to adult social care. The family faced a three-year battle to get him into residential care originally, and will face a similar process once again, including hiring lawyers to argue Zac's case. 'We'll have to go through the whole process again of proving his level of need and trying to get them to pay for it.' If the family fails to get his care extended into adulthood, their world could be upended again. Zac would have to move home, and Suzanne is particularly worried about how she will look after a fully-grown man as she ages. She asks: 'When he's 35, I'll be 70. Am I going to have to change a 35-year-old man's nappy at 70?' Gogh also gave up her corporate job 10 years ago to look after Tristan after he ran away from school. She now works as a financial adviser, specialising in helping families with severely disabled children. She has written a book, Planning with Love, on the subject. 'It's incredibly draining on finances,' Gogh says. 'He breaks things, he falls into things, he drops things, he bites clothing. He loves to see things dismantled and broken. 'He took an iPad once and smashed it on the corner of the table to see what happened. He's thrown a television out of a window.' A £400 car seatbelt was used just once before being thrown aside, because Tristan 'hated it'. She and her husband are planning a 'retirement for three', as he will be unable to support himself. 'My other son plays second fiddle' Setting up your estate to ensure the future of your disabled child can be complex and often requires expert help, which is another cost. To ensure that the disabled person is eligible for care, while also receiving an inheritance, money can be left in trust. A disabled person's trust – which can be set up for someone eligible for disability living allowance or personal independence payments (PIP) – is specially designed for those without capacity. A discretionary trust can also be used, although it may attract higher tax bills. Trustees will need to be appointed to make decisions about what happens to the money. Those who cannot look after their own money may also need a deputy, who is appointed by the courts to make decisions for them, or might have their benefits managed directly by the Department for Work and Pensions. Choosing trustees is a minefield of its own. Gogh says: 'Who would a natural trustee be? You might think the natural choice would be a sibling, but then you think: 'Is it really fair to put that pressure on them by making them a trustee?'' Her eldest son, Henry, is just 17. He is very aware that, at some point in the future, he will become responsible for his younger brother. It's a heavy burden for a teenager. Gogh says: 'My poor other son has no choice, and he plays second fiddle, which is heartbreaking. 'I remember him saying to me in the car about a year ago: 'What if I go on holiday to Japan, in the future, when you're not here. Do you think someone will know how to get hold of me if something happens to Tristan?' 'He's already thought about that. He was only 15 at the time.' Planning for the future also raises the question of fairness between siblings. Robinson says that she doesn't want to leave all the money to her daughters, cutting Zac out entirely. But on the other hand, leaving everything in trust for Zac would feel equally unfair. 'You don't want to leave it all to the girls, but we don't want our entire estate to be taken for his care so they have nothing. That's just not fair. It's something families don't have to think about until you're in that position. 'You assume that you'll be able to split the estate between your children and they will all be able to look after that money themselves, and have the capacity to manage money. And of course, none of that applies in this case,' she says.
