In the aftermath of the game, which seems to have mostly revolved around the sinfulness of one quarterback or the saintliness of the other, it might be easy to forget what kind of week it was before that game happened. (Yes, it is entirely possible the NFL worked very hard to make it that way.) So let me remind you.
Remember Ken Stabler? I didn't like Ken Stabler when I was growing up watching football, not because of anything about him personally, but his team always seemed to be beating a team I liked.
Stabler, who died in July due to colon cancer, made the news twice this past week. On Saturday Stabler, deservedly so, was announced as one of this year's inductees to the NFL Hall of Fame. This measure guarantees some awkward silence at the ceremony, silence in which people will have the opportunity to remember the other news about Stabler that came out this past week; that at his death Stabler was suffering from "advanced stage 3" chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
The linked story and others describe the severely slipping brain function of Stabler's late years. Unlike some, Stabler found a way to cope with ("manage" is probably too strong a word) his symptoms, possibly with his (and his partner's) understanding of the disease as it struck and claimed other victims. Stabler had other health issues left from his career -- his knees were so bad he seldom went out in his later years. As well, he had suffered prostate cancer as well as the colon cancer that eventually took him. Despite all the other health issues, Stabler was resolute about having his brain donated for CTE research, a decision he made after the suicide of Junior Seau and posthumous CTE diagnosis.
Stabler lived long enough to wonder about his grandsons' pursuit of football in high school.
Stabler was the seventh former NFL quarterback to be diagnosed posthumously with CTE. I'm not sure if Earl Morrall is reckoned as the sixth or eighth. The same story above also reports the posthumous diagnosis of Morrall, himself a Super Bowl quarterback like Stabler -- although unlike Stabler, who won with the Raiders in 1976, Morrall's start in Super Bowl III didn't go so well, as his Colts got abused by Joe Namath's Jets. Morrall made a more successful Super Bowl appearance two years later, leading the Colts to a win in relief of Unitas against the Dallas Cowboys. Morrall was also instrumental in another Super Bowl season, filling in for an injured Bob Griese for much of the Miami Dolphins' undefeated 1972 season, but Griese returned for the conference championship and Super Bowl. Morrall retired at age 42.
Morrall had also spent much of that 1969 season with the Colts technically as a back-up, in that case to Hall of Famer Johnny Unitas, a man who suffered his own maladies in his later years (including being unable to use his right hand, due to an elbow injury from his playing days) leading to his death in 2002 and worked to call attention to the damage he and other former players suffered. Nonetheless the posthumous examination of Morrall's brain revealed advanced stage 4 CTE, the highest stage known of that disease. His death was attributed to complications from Parkinson's disease at the time, a disease which shows many of the symptoms as CTE, but manifests differently in the brain upon examination.
Not all football players, even long-timers, manifest CTE (why Stabler and not, for example, Fran Tarkenton, another scrambling quarterback roughly contemporary with Stabler?), but that doesn't mean their later lives are free of football-related damage. Joe Montana may look just fine in those Papa John's pizza commercials, but he related to USA Today that he experiences plenty of post-football physical ailments, including arthritis and a bad knee and neck (with three neck fusions "so far"), as well as nerve damage related to head trauma that causes occasional vision problems.. This is in some ways conventional; football players have long exhibited all manner of physical dysfunction once their careers end, and as a general rule most of them recognize this as the tradeoff for having an NFL career in particular. Montana isn't expressing any regrets, but -- like Unitas -- isn't keeping silent about the price he has paid for all those Super Bowl rings.
One wonders if Payton Manning has read Montana's interview.
One more Super Bowl hero: Willie Wood, who made one of the pivotal plays of the very first Super Bowl for the Green Bay Packers against the Kansas City Chiefs. Early in the game Wood picked off a wobbly pass from Lin Dawson and took it almost all the way, setting the Packers on their way to a romp. Dawson calls it the one play he wishes he could have back, although he had a much better experience in Super Bowl IV.
Wood can't remember the play. Nor can he remember being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
And possibly the worst part for him is that, despite all the talk and all the examples of contemporaries who have been posthumously diagnosed, Wood will never know (barring a breakthrough in diagnosing living persons very, very soon) whether football took away his memories of football.
(next time: the media onslaught)
Kenny "the Snake" Stabler, in full slither...
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