Last May, the NFL world received devastating news when former San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide. After Seau’s family donated his brain to be used for studying, we now know the former linebacker suffered a brain disease called CTE.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a brain disease that has been linked to numerous former players that received numerous hits to the head throughout their career that causes players to suffer dementia, memory loss, and depression. Considering he played 20 seasons in the big leagues with three different teams, it’s safe to say Seau took numerous shots to the head over the years, but he was never officially linked to suffering any concussions.
As devastating as this news is for Seau and his family, hopefully this latest news can shed more light on an issue that won’t be going away anytime soon in the NFL–which is head injuries. Over the last couple of years, Roger Goodell has been doing everything in his power to make the game safer to play and unfortunately, there have been too many players over the years that have been dealing with injuries once their football playing days are over and done with.
What happened to Seau last May was absolutely devastating and hopefully the results of this latest study will help prevent these types of things from happening in the future. As mentioned before, hopefully this recent discovery will help address the issue even more in the future and prevent other players from developing this disease like Seau did.
