Tarpley played in 14 of 16 games last season, including starts at linebacker in the season's two final games. In the Instagram post in which Tarpley announced his retirement, he is seen holding up the ball after picking an interception on what would be the last play of his career.
Tarpley is a Stanford grad, which might lead some to argue that his education puts him in a position to have a pretty good career outside of football, even after only one year in the league. Here he might bear some similarly to Borland, with a degree and means to forge ahead without the NFL.
Tarpley was frank about the role his four concussions played in his choice to retire. While Mike DeVito, a defensive end for the Kansas City chiefs, spoke of a more general injury history after nine years in the NFL, the two concussions he suffered this past season were also prominent in his decision to retire. DeVito weighed that injury history in light of being a family man; he spoke openly of the need to be there for his wife and children in future years (echoing a thought already expressed by Hussain Abdullah, another Chief who announced his retirement in March).
For D'Brickashaw Ferguson, the issue was less concussions than Concussion.
Ferguson also weighed his own perception of his lessened effectiveness last season, and also recalled a pretty sorry treatment of a former teammate who was strung along through an offseason only to be cut during the NFL draft -- yes, during the draft -- as soon as the Jets had drafted his replacement. There were certainly other issues at play for him. Nonetheless, Ferguson had also spoken out about the concerns the Will Smith movie raised for him after seeing it last fall. Ferguson's a thoughtful man, and showed enough intelligence not to be fooled by the movie's eye-catching title (more catching than Subconcussive Hit would have been, although to be fair the movie does acknowledge the role those play in CTE), expressing concern for the possibility that his future might be affected even though concussions were not a part (or at least an acknowledged part) of his career. He didn't miss a game and never even showed up on an injury report.
DeVito and Ferguson are less unlikely retirement candidates than Tarpley; each could have played a few more years, even if in lesser roles (though it seems clear that Ferguson wasn't interested in doing so), but it isn't completely unprecedented for players around age thirty (especially this offseason -- we see you, Calvin Johnson) or a little younger (you too, Marshawn Lynch) to retire.
The other striking news in the last couple of weeks involves another couple of new studies, focusing on the thing the NFL absolutely doesn't want to hear and more than absolutely doesn't want you to hear. A study out of Boston University specifically took as its focus the role not of concussions, but repeated hits over years of playing football. You can be certain that the NFL will do everything it can to distort whatever result it eventually comes out with (and the initial results, while not yet conclusive, don't look good). The study also doesn't specifically address CTE, the hot-button that the NFL doesn't want to talk about; rather, the study focuses more broadly on brain trauma of many kinds. (Reminder: CTE can only be diagnosed after death.)
Another study was released last week, prior to its presentation at a medical conference this week, concerning former NFL players and traumatic brain injury (TBI) -- again, living retired players, so CTE not a subject of discussion). The study, from Francis X. Conidi of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology and the Florida State University College of Medicine, tested forty retired NFL players both through sensitive MRI exams and tests of thinking and memory. (Full disclosure: I have a graduate degree from FSU, though obviously not in medicine.)
The results are fairly troubling; in those scans and tests, a full 40% of those players tested showed significant evidence of TBI, by a rate with less than one percent margin of error. That's a rate well beyond that in the general population. The article goes into more specifics on the rates of difficulty in the different mental functions measured by the memory, reasoning, and other tests; take a look for yourself.
That's disturbing enough. But here's the sentence I find most chilling. I'm just gonna quote it directly:
The more years a player spent in the NFL, the more likely he was to have the signs of traumatic brain injury on the advanced MRI. However, there was no relationship between the number of concussions a player had and whether he had traumatic brain injury based on the advanced MRI.
No correlation to the number of concussions.
Again, this is going to be truly disturbing. Even if one assumes that one can do something about the number of concussions connected to playing football at whatever age or for however many years, it's going to be rather difficult to take hits out of football. Even the very idea is going to prompt the spewing forth of lame blather about putting players in skirts and other derogatory (and misogynistic, if you think about it) remarks from the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers (hint: if you make such remarks, or even think about making such remarks, you are by definition a mouth-breathing knuckle-dragger even if you have a damn Ph.D).
And yet, as much as the media keeps not noticing, again and again things keep reminding us of something I've been saying for a while now (even about other sports).
It's not just concussions.
Repeat:
It's not just concussions.
Way to go out on a high note, A.J. Tarpley.
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