Ex-QB: CTE affects ‘all football players’

Former UGA RB Davis also worries about brain injuries.

More than a few current and former NFL players have recently expressed concern that they might have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that studies have linked to the sorts of concussive and sub-concussive impacts common in football.

Boomer Esiason went a further last week, claiming he “likely” has the condition, as do “all football players.”

Esiason, a former NFL MVP who ended a 14-year career in 1997 and became a CBS

football analyst, was discussing the issue on “Boomer and Carton,” his New York sports-radio show. Noting the deadline for former NFL players to register for the league’s $1 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit over its handling of brain injuries, Esiason was making the point that potential cases of CTE in living players — he thought such diagnoses might be possible in a few years’ time —were “carved out” of the settlement.

“If I died tomorrow and my brain basically was taken and researched and I was found to have CTE, which most likely I have,” he said, before co-host Craig Carton asked why he thought that was the case.

“Because I think all football players probably have it,” Esiason replied.

Esiason, 56, clarified that he thought many people who have suffered brain injuries in a variety of sports could be subject to CTE, or at least symptoms. Noting that Carton had “played soccer,” the former Bengals, Jets and Cardinals quarterback told his co-host, “You’ve had a head injury, you’ve had a number of concussions yourself, you might have had a car wreck, where you hit your head or something like that — I wouldn’t be surprised if you had it as well.”

His comments on CTE were couched in a more matter-of-fact way, but Esiason echoed some of the thoughts offered by Terrell Davis, the former University of Georgia standout. Shortly before his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the former Broncos running back said, “I can’t lie, we’re all scared.”

“We’re concerned because we don’t know what the future holds,” the 44-yearold Davis said of himself and other ex-NFL players. “When I’m at home and I do something, if I forget something I have to stop to think, ‘Is this because I’m getting older or I’m just not using my brain, or is this an effect of playing football?’ I don’t know that.”

RON SCHWANE / AP Terrell Davis, recently inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, acknowledges his fear that playing the sport may have damaged his brain.

Boomer Esiason says he “most likely” has CTE.