Quickly now, name me more than two NFL players that have been seriously injured and had to retire as a result of head to head hits in the millions of hits recorded in say, the last 40 years? Helmet manufacturers do a great job of protecting these players. Too good of a job if you ask me. The protection afforded these athletes with modern equipment has cut down tremendously on the relative minor injuries that would have stopped a less cocooned athlete.As illogical as it sounds, it is time to start stripping off some of these layers so we can be protecting the players more.
Troy Aikman and Steve Young both retired due to concussions. That’s my “quick 2 seconds of thinking” list. There have been many many guys taken out by head injuries. Some of what happens in a collision a helmet can’t do anything about, concussions happen because the brain hits the skull, a lot of what determines how likely that is to happen is the person’s brain stem, some appear to be longer and more flexible than most.
But what really scared everybody was the Chris Henry autopsy. Chris never missed a game due to concussion, not in the NFL not in college, he had no reported head injuries, yet when they cut him open and examined his brain they found massive tissue damage and evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He was 26 years old and had the brain damage level of somebody in their 80s.