Junior Seau had CTE
 

Study -- Junior Seau's brain shows chronic brain damage found in other NFL football players - ESPN

Seau's ex-wife, Gina, and his oldest son Tyler, 23, told ABC News and ESPN in an exclusive interview they were informed last week that Seau's brain had tested positive for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease that can lead to dementia, memory loss and depression.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

Just terrible for Seau and his family, and not surprising after they described what he was like after football after he died. I hope the NFL can find a way to protect players heads and keep the game great.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

Brain Disease and Damage is a terrible thing; even if Seau 'got help' it wouldn't have made him feel much better. He couldn't remember anyone's name and was always in a permanent state of depression, sad as it is, he probably saw suicide as the only way out, once his career in football was over, so was his life.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

So damn sad. I wish he could've been a Patriot much longer.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

It really sucks seeing what brain damage can do to a guy that seemed like a legitimately great guy on and off the field.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

I'm not at all surprised. So sad for the whole family. There has got to be way to make this game safer.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

After a 20 year career in the league not to mention his college and HS days it would be astonishing if he didn't have CTE. The league is doing the best it can in hindsight. Time for the players and fans to embrace that. It's not going to be enough until the culture changes, and even then to some extent some of it may be unavoidable given the nature of the sport. Players and their representatives continue to fight anything they perceive as threatening or limiting their careers. There remains a mental health issue afoot here that drives not only the aftermath in some cases but drives some to hang on recklessly and absorb ever increasing damage in an increasing state of denial. We saw an example of that just this weekend.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

There is, obviously it won't help those at the end of their careers or previous generations who played with inferior helmets. But, the league could force the players to wear helmets rated high in concussion testing i.e. Riddell Rev 360 and Rev Speed and Rawlings new helmet or Shutts Ion 4D. Or better yet the players could actually choose to wear them. Instead many players choose to wear an inferior helmet with a traditional look because they don't like the way they look in the newer style helmets.

I coach/help run an AYF youth football team in Virginia and our Riddell rep also fits incoming rookies for several NFL teams and he says that they give a briefing on the helmets and the benefits of using a highly rated helmet etc... and he says every time a player chooses the old school helmet it is do to how he looks in the mirror.

I personally bought my son, a freshman in high school, a Rev 360. It is the highest rated helmet on the market at this moment. It wasn't cheap, but if it prevents just one concussion it is worth every penny.

So IMO, if the NFL and NFLPA are serious about reducing concussions then requiring the players to use the best helmets available is a no brainer. And for this reason, I don't take either side serious when they talk about player safety.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

This is garbage. The league "is doing the best it can" is crap. The league has put this problem entirely on the players. It claims these "big hits" and "illegal hits" are the cause, when every bit of research on CTE says otherwise. Major concussions are bad, but CTE is most commonly linked to REPETITIVE and SUB-CONCUSSIVE injuries. It's the frequent hits to the head that are causing this, not James Harrison launching off his feet.

Hines Ward said it best when he was talking about Brian Westbrook : The league gives guys every incentive to claim they don't have head trauma. They give them colorful euphemisms like "he got his bell run" to understate the fact that these guys are killing themselves for our entertainment. The guys that do come forward, admit they have been concussed are labeled "injury risk" or a "concussion risk", and they suddenly drop is value. They lose there paycheck.

There are plenty of ways to make the game safer, the ones the NFL has chosen are the opposite of safer:

Add 2 more games to the season
Require players to sit out 1 game after a major concussion (giving them every reason to lie)
Determining what a concussion is on a field sideline
Not releasing concussion statistics

Hell, we don't even know if they are doing a good job, because they won't tell us how many concussions are being suffered. The league is doing what the Goodell run NFL does best: blame the players, make meaningless rule changes, and spend tons of money telling everyone your fixing the problem.

Re: Junior Seau had CTE
 

This is not unexpected I don't think given everything he had to live for. Healthy children and great family, I met his brother and nephew last year at the AYF national championships. His nephew is a hell of a QB who is a freshman this year. JR also ran Successful business etc... Depression had to play a huge part in his suicide and he really didn't have anything to be depressed about, from an outsiders point of view.

Sad for him and his family. Hopefully science and technology can catch up to the problem and help with detection especially early detection.