Even as the NFL prepares for Super Bowl LVII, an event that is almost guaranteed to be the most-watched television program of the year, the game keeps taking hits off the field.
New data out of Boston University, which first revealed an overwhelming prevalence of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of former NFL players, shows the link is just as powerful – if not more so – than before.
After finding all but one of the 111 brains of former NFL players from BU’s first study in 2017 (along with 91 percent of college football players) had developed CTE, the university’s CTE Center announced this week an increased sample size of 376 former NFL players revealed 345 brains (nearly 92 percent) showed occurrences of CTE.
This suggests the strength of the correlation between many years of football and developing CTE later in life remains strong, which Dr. Anne McKee, director of BU’s CTE Center, doesn’t want people to lose sight of.
“I think part of this new data release was to let people know that the disease is not going away,” McKee told WGBH. “We still need to do something about it, not just for the athletes that are participating in sports right now, but for the players who are living and suffering from the results of CTE.”
In particular, McKee called out the NFL for failing to address the risk of head injuries “at all,” which came glaringly to the forefront this season with Tua Tagovailoa potentially suffering three concussions in one season – one of which occurred on national television just a few days after he was believed to have suffered a severe head injury.
“I mean, they've put on more games per season, which immediately puts the players more at risk,” she said. “They are not attempting to quantitate in any way the number of hits an individual player receives in a season. They're not doing anything to monitor their brain health — which they could do, by baseline and then postseason evaluations. And they're turning the conversation to concussions, when concussions are not the major problem in football.”
Though concussions do tend to be the most obvious signs of head trauma, CTE goes beyond concussions and deal with the build-up of “non-concussive” impacts – for example, the kinds of hits that come simply from blocking someone or a routine tackle where people move on to the next play seemingly unharmed.
Football players may accumulate thousands of such impacts in their careers, according to McKee, and the risk for CTE doubles for nearly every three years someone plays football throughout their lives from Pop Warner through the pros.
McKee says she’s even noted the disease in teenagers who have had their brains donated to the center after death, though with less prevalence than in older football players. Symptoms can include “rage issues, aggression, impulsivity, depression, suicidality” and can progress into “cognitive impairment, memory lapses and even dementia” with age.
Several known players, like former Patriots linebacker Junior Seau and tight end Aaron Hernandez, were found to have developed severe CTE following their respective deaths by suicide. Hernandez, who died at 27 while serving a life sentence in prison for the murder of Odin Lloyd, was said by McKee to have suffered the most severe case of CTE in a person his age she’d ever seen.
Though McKee acknowledged some attitudes toward football have begun to change, especially in terms of participation in youth leagues, the shifts haven’t been universal enough.
“We need to educate parents and players that this is a disease that can be prevented,” she said. “It can be prevented by allowing your children to play at an older age, because if they start later they just don’t have the number of years of play. They could play a different sport not associated with head trauma. They could adopt different coaching and practice guidelines, so they're not as exposed to head trauma if they decide they want to play football.
“There are a lot of things that can be done that aren't being done — at least, they're not being done on an even basis throughout the country.”