Rey Maualuga will reportedly enter the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California to combat alcoholism, ESPN's Adam Schefter initially reported. Maualuga, Schefter tweets, will stay "for at least 30 days." Joe Reedy writes that Maualuga could "miss the beginning of the team’s offseason conditioning program, which will begin in late March." However, Geoff Hobson writes that it is "believed he’ll be back to Cincinnati in time for the March 29 start of the offseason conditioning program."
Maualuga is currently in American Samoa for a week with teammates Domata Peko and Jonathan Fanene.
Among the plans for the trip with fellow Samoan teammates Domata Peko and Jonathan Fanene are visiting areas devastated by last year’s tsunami and talking to the children in the high schools in the capital of Pago Pago. But for Maualuga it is also a trip to immerse himself in his family. His father died early in 2006 after a battle with cancer and he hasn’t seen his brother Rodney since the funeral.
Maualuga was arrested the morning of January 29 for a DUI, which he pled guilty to the following week.