Kuechly wasn’t the first talented player under 30 to choose their long-term health over football this year. He also suffered a number of concussions throughout his time in the NFL, and that seems to be the commonality among most in the now aptly named Under-30 club.
Since chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was discovered in 2002, it has been discovered that players like Junior Seau and Aaron Hernandez, both of whom killed themselves (and in the case of Hernandez, killed someone else as well), were suffering from severe symptoms of CTE.
“Should we just keep giving them more pads?” asked Jack Weinmeister, a first-year ecology student.
Weinmeister worries about players’ health but also said he believes that more should be done.
Weinmeister worries about players’ health but also said he believes that more should be done.
“They’re probably going to have to find a new way to keep the players’ heads safe,” he said.
Weinmeister is not alone in his skepticism surrounding the prioritization of players’ health. Griffin Carroll, a first-year criminology student agrees.
“There could be bigger consequences for head to head hits, but there’s no real way to stop it because they’re playing the game,” Carroll said.
In the past five years, the NFL has put multiple rule changes into effect that attempt to mitigate injuries, specifically to the head. Though Carroll mentioned that football is a contact sport, people get hurt, and now it might threaten the future of NFL football.
So, what is the future of football? Kids. Kids playing through high school and college and finally playing professionally. Chris Kiley, a fourth-year international studies and religious studies major said he believes that the constant injuries in football might be dissuading parents from letting their kids pursue it as a career.
“I was pulled out of football like midway through my freshman year of high school because my mother found out about CTE,” said Kiley.
Kiley’s mother saw the risks that come with football and decided not to take that chance and allow her children to play, something that more and more parents are doing today.
Some of those consequences appear to be starting to take their toll on George Willoughby, a third-year construction management student who also played football for nine years, the last of which was at St. Olaf College, a Division 3 school.
Willoughby thinks he may be beginning to suffer from symptoms of CTE because of the way he was coached as a young player. He also mentioned that he is more forgetful these days, sometimes having to walk back and forth from his house multiple times because he forgot something.
“I had the mentality from them [my coaches] that no matter what injury I have I’m going to keep going out on that field,” said Willoughby.
This is why he got into coaching. Willoughby is the defensive coordinator for Kent Denver’s middle school team. He is a firm believer that football can be played in a safe way with good coaching and fundamentals.
“It’s possible to learn how to block correctly, to learn how to play defense correctly without needing to use your head for everything,” said Willoughby.
That being said, Willoughby is supportive of Kuechly’s retirement but is skeptical that there will be any change in the immediate future in regard to reducing the use of the head in football at the NFL level.
“It’s different at the NFL level, where it’s a job and you’re like looking for any sort of means to get ahead, so I think that there are guys who play dirty for the sake of being dirty, guys that are set in their ways,” said Willoughby.
He thinks that change starts with him, the coach, the one tasked with the responsibility of teaching these young players how to play correctly and safely, and to make sure he helps his players rather than harming them, like his coaches inadvertently did to him.
“It all starts on the coaching level,” said Willoughby.
There seems to be a common consensus among the DU students interviewed that there isn’t much that can be done for NFL players now and that more young players might retire, but there is still hope for the future, that players will realize the risk but understand that knowing the fundamentals will reduce that risk exponentially.
The MFJS Reporter -- Winter 2020 T-R 