Tyler Sash, a defensive back who played for the University of Iowa and the New York Giants, had advanced chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) at the time of his death back in September. He was 27.
I hesitated to provide the link or even mention the story, simply because it's starting to sound familiar. Sash had played football since around age 9. He had started, in the time since being cut by the Giants in 2013, been experiencing episodes of memory loss, inability to focus or pay sustained attention (to the degree that he was unable to hold or keep a job), uncharacteristic bouts with temper, and erratic behavior (including leading police on a high-speed scooter chase from which he fled on foot, and public intoxication).
He had experienced at least five known concussions over the course of his time in football, and of course many, many other hits that may have fallen into the category of those "subconcussive hits" that do as much, if not more, of the damage in many CTE victims.
His death was caused by an overdose of pain medications, with a "history of painful injuries" a contributing factor, as ESPN.com put it. Family members had attributed the aforementioned difficulties to that pain medication history. Nonetheless, his family decided to donate his brain to the Boston University's program, the one that had found close to 90 cases of CTE in former players. BU's program and the Concussion Legacy Foundation advised the family of the results last week, a disclosure that has brought some clarity, if not closure, to Sash's family.
As noted above, Sash played 16 years of football, from childhood through the NFL. Junior Seau played for 20 years in the NFL alone. Nonetheless, BU researcher Dr. Ann McKee, who performed both examinations, found the level of CTE in Sash's brain to be similar to the level in Seau's. McKee also acknowledged that Sash's brain was affected in a way she had only seen in one other former player so young. While the Times report did not name that player, it did describe that victim as a 25-year-old former college player; that sounds a lot like Michael Keck, whose severely traumatized brain was the subject of a recently released article in a major medical journal. Keck, interestingly, had also played football for 16 years.
Antwaan Randle El is a grizzled old guy by comparison. With 9 NFL seasons under his belt, plus four at Indiana, presumably four in high school, and who knows how much before that, he probably tops twenty seasons total, at least.
We need to come away from this with a lesson that shoulld have sunk in some time ago, apparently. The Frank Giffords or Mike Websters of the world are not necessarily the norm. For those who are diagnosed with CTE, the clock started ticking pretty early.
These late results are not inconsistent with this study, elaborated here, that suggests those players who start young and play a long time are at greater risk. Of course, those were former NFL players being tested, who had lived into their forties, fifties, or even sixties. Sash and Keck were 27 and 25, respectively, and Keck never played a down in the NFL and only a year-plus in college (but those ten years of youth football...). So, these are cases that go rather beyond the scope of that study.
The famous NFL stars get the headlines, not surprisingly. But it's becoming a young man's trauma (pace Paul Oliver, Chris Henry, Adrian Robinson, Owen Thomas), and not always (or not entirely) to be laid at the feet of the NFL.
We need to talk about what "risk" means in this context.
(To be continued...)
Tyler Sash
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