It's Time For Ex-NFL Players to Be Scared, Very Scared

Andre Waters.

Shane Dronett.

Now Dave Duerson.

This is at least the third suicide involving a former NFL player within the last five years, which qualifies as an epidemic, which means this is the continuation of a horror story with no end in sight.

Jessie Tuggle paused over the phone from his home in the Atlanta area, and then he cleared his throat.

"When a guy (such as Duerson, pictured right) suffers from this type of a problem, and he commits suicide, and he doesn't want to shoot himself in the head, because he wants to donate his brain to science, because he knows what kind of problem he is having, there's a lot going on there," said Tuggle, 45, now in his 11th year of retirement as a perennial Pro Bowl linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons. "Now when you hear all of that, it's pretty scary to me, because it's real, and as an ex-professional athlete, yeah, it opens my eyes up, because I'm having some of the same problems."

A layman might conclude that these deaths resulted from too many blows to the head. The phrase "brain damage" comes to mind, but the medical term is chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

League officials disagree with such diagnoses, of course (It's called trying to avoid lawsuits), and to be fair, nobody really knows for sure why folks decide to kill themselves.

Whatever the case, none of this is good.

So I called Tuggle, among my all-time favorite athletes, who is adept at placing the NFL and life into perspective.

"I mean, guys are committing suicide or just dying or not being able to do things they normally did because of memory loss, so why wouldn't you say football is the cause of this?"
- Jessie Tuggle He took five trips to the Pro Bowl during his 14 seasons with the Falcons through 2000, and before that, he was efficient enough at Valdosta State to earn a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame. He also deserves charter membership into the Good Guys Hall of Fame. For one, he remains a splendid role model throughout his native Georgia. For another, he is such a family man that he has spent his football retirement as a Mr. Mom for his wife, DuJuan, and his two children who include Justin, who likely will start at quarterback next season for Kansas State.

But here's the primary reason I wanted Tuggle's thoughts on the NFL's brain-damage controversy: Since he was known as "The Hammer," and since he holds the league's record for most tackles during a given decade, you have to think that, not only did he deliver a few hits along the way, but he also took more than a few of them.

In other words, how is Tuggle feeling these days?

"You know, there's no doubt that I still suffer from the concussions that I had while I was playing, because during the 1980s and the 1990s, there wasn't a concussion test whereas, if you had a concussion, you couldn't play next week (which is the case now)," Tuggle said. "When I played, you just went back out there. So, no question, I can feel some of the effects of all of that now that I'm in my mid-40s.

"I suffer everything from short-term memory loss to (other) problems, stuff like that. And I truly believe it comes from the abuse we took as professional football players.

"There has been a lot of research out now about it, and I've read a lot of articles about what's been going on with former players -- not only from my generation, but from the one before me. And, boy, I see some of the football heroes I looked up to, and they are (suffering) in their 60s and 70s, and I'm thinking, 'What's going to happen to me?'

"A trend is developing."

Actually, that trend has been around a while, but it has been called different things. For instance: front temporal dementia.

That's the infliction of John Mackey, who once was so brilliant at tight end for the Baltimore Colts during the 1960s that he reached the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He also is a primary reason NFL players have free agency due to his early work with the players association.

Now, at 69, Mackey looks the same as he did as a player, but he is forced to stay in an assisted living facility. Common sense says it is the result of the pounding Mackey took from catching all of those Johnny Unitas slant passes across the middle.

Still, Mackey is alive, but Waters isn't.

Waters was a defensive back in the 1980s and 1990s for the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals who pulled the trigger in November 2006 after putting a loaded gun to his head. A neuropathologist determined Waters' brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease.

The culprit?

Football concussions, according to that neuropathologist.

No such thing officially was attributed to Dronett's suicide two years ago, but Tuggle's former teammate on the Falcons was classified as depressed after surgery the year before for a brain tumor.

Then there was Duerson, a multiple Pro Bowl defensive back for the Chicago Bears of Ditka and Ryan during the 1980s. After Duerson prospered in the early part of his post-football years that began in 1993, he suffered near the end. There was an ugly domestic incident with his wife, and soon there was a divorce. His once profitable food business went bankrupt, and he had to sell most of his assets.

Death followed for Duerson last week, along with a slew of questions about where this is headed for other former NFL players.

"I mean, guys are committing suicide or just dying or not being able to do things they normally did because of memory loss, so why wouldn't you say football is the cause of this?" Tuggle said. "I know the (Dronett suicide) was a shock to me. I don't think I'd ever been around anybody I knew personally who actually killed himself.

"Then you say, 'Oh, he had a brain tumor. He probably wasn't thinking logically.' But then you ask yourself, 'Was there a problem even before he had the brain tumor?' Then people will come back and say, 'Well, that was just an individual case.'

"But when you see somebody else commit suicide, and then somebody else, it's not an individual case anymore."

Uh, nope.