ESPN E:60 Recap: Cowboy Jason Witten Talks About Childhood Abuse

The National Football League has been in the new recently for how it handled allegations that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson abused his young son.

Now, one of the league's best players, Jason Witten, has come forward to talk with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap about what it was like to grow up in an abusive household and how he has been able to overcome it and thrive while helping others with his SCORE Foundation.

"It was tough," Witten said in the piece. "It was like a nightmare. But some of the greatest qualities that I have as an individual are things that I learned through those experiences."

The star tight end was abused by his father.

"You just didn't know which man was going to come home," the athlete said. "More time than not it was going to be the dad you loved, but on some situations it was someone you wished would never come back."

The athletes father, he said, had an alcohol and drug problem. "Sometimes it got a little physical," he said. "I saw him abuse my mom."

While Witten himself was not abused, he saw what was happening to his mother and his siblings. His mother said that she and her two older children (Jason is the youngest) were physically abused.

In 1993, when Jason was 11, his mother fled 400 miles away to her parents' home. Once that happened Witten's grandfather entered the picture and became a male role model, plus his football coach.

Witten, who is now a father to a three children, is considered a very tough player, something which an array of former and his current coach talked about.

The tight end said that his experiences growing up in an abusive home is what made him tough and has shaped how he plays.

Now, he's something different for his children than his father was to him. He's an involved, caring dad, who spends endless hours playing with his children despite his busy schedule as an NFL player.

"He's the best," said his wife Michelle Witten of Jason as a father. "He's just their hero."

Witten scores off the field

The player's SCORE foundation has launched numerous outreach programs and funded several new building projects in Texas and his native Tennessee.

Five years ago, the foundation launched the Jason Witten SCOREkeepers program, an initiative which places full-time, trained male mentors in battered women's shelters throughout Texas.

The mentors seek to demonstrate positive male behavior to the children living in these shelters in an effort to break the cycle of violence that plagues families affected by abuse.

In 2010, the foundation launched a domestic violence prevention program called "Coaching Boys Into Men" in high schools across Arlington, Texas. The program trains coaches to educate their players on the dangers of dating violence.

In addition to his work in the battle against domestic violence, Witten also built a Jason Witten Learning Center, complete with a state-of-the-art recording studio, at the East Dallas Boys & Girls Club center in March 2008.

A month later, he dedicated another one at the Boys & Girls Club in his hometown of Elizabethton, Tenn.

Then, he dedicated a third such center at the Halls/Powell Boys & Girls Club in Knoxville, Tenn., where he played college football at the University of Tennessee.