Lions' Larry Warford Stops Playing 'Pokemon Go,' Says It's 'Mind-Control Stuff'

Like many others, Detroit Lions guard Larry Warford was caught up in the Pokemon Go craze.

Until he realized just how big the game had become.

Then, the 25-year-old got out of it as quickly as he could, as he told Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press:

"

I'll tell you why I stopped playing it. I was walking down Mill Avenue in Tempe, Ariz., pretty much on (Arizona State's) campus. ... I was walking down and literally everyone that was on their cell phone walking down that same street was playing Pokemon Go. I was looking at their screens and it was about 30, 40 people walking down Mill (Avenue).

It was a bunch of people playing it and I was like, 'I don't like this.' I deleted it because I was like, 'This is some mind-control stuff.' I don't like it.

"

But it goes even deeper. Part of the reason Warford deleted the app was he ran into one of his Detroit teammates, who was also playing the game, at Arizona State.

"I was like, 'This is bad, this is bad,'" the guard, who was meeting some friends at a restaurant, said, per Monarrez. "They were playing it and I was like, 'Nope!' And I deleted it right there, right when I got to the restaurant. The funny thing is, the people I was eating with, they were playing it, too."

It's probably for the best, anyway. NFL training camps are starting to heat up, meaning football—not Pokemon—should be the focus for players.