Hoffpauir, who died accidentally, diagnosed with ‘startling’ CTE level
One year after the death of his son Zach Hoffpauir, his father heard from the brain doctors at Boston University. Their diagnosis brought immense clarity and a morsel of relief. Zach did, in fact, have CTE. “I was totally at peace with it,” Doug Hoffpauir said Monday. “It made so much sense. And same for the people who went through it with him.
“At times, you just didn’t know what you could do to help him. But now it makes so much sense. Zach knew something was wrong. He always said ‘hashtag CTE’.”
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease found posthumously in the brains of football players. It didn’t kill former Stanford football player Zach Hoffpauir, who died accidentally in May 2020 when he unknowingly took Percocet that had been laced with fentanyl.
But Hoffpauir sustained several concussions during his career and displayed many of the classic CTE symptoms, including mood swings, depression and memory loss.
Following his death, Hoffpauir’s family donated his brain for concussion research.
According to Dr. Ann McKee, a professor of neurology at Boston University, which works with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, the examination of Hoffpauir’s brain revealed a “startling” level of CTE.
The pathology of the disease follows four stages, from I (mild) to IV (severe). Hoffpauir
had stage II — the same level found in the brain of Junior Seau after the NFL Hall of Famer took his own life, at the age of 43, with a gunshot to the chest.
But Hoffpauir was only 26.
“It’s always surprising when you see multiple lesions in the brain of someone so young,’’ McKee said. “Their brains should be pristine. It’s startling to see.
“There’s no way to specify when the disease started. I could only speculate that started four or five years earlier.”
Hoffpauir’s career doesn’t fit neatly into the model usually associated with players who display symptoms of CTE later in life.
He never played Pop Warner. He was never one of the so-called Pee Wee bobbleheads, where the young brain sits atop an undeveloped neck and absorbs hundred, if not thousands of hits.
Hoffpauir didn’t start tackle football until eighth grade and never played in the NFL. But by the time he was 26, after several
concussions at Stanford, his frontal lobe was full of the lesions that are the hallmark of CTE.
“The doctors said he was just vulnerable,” Doug Hoffpauir said.
CTE wasn’t Zach’s only affliction.
After he medically retired from football and left Stanford, Hoffpauir suffered from Valley fever, Meningitis and a form of Lyme disease. He had depression, anxiety and insomnia.
He went through a suicidal period but appeared to have found peace in the spring of 2020 when he accepted a position on the Northern Colorado coaching staff.
The head coach was Ed McCaffrey, the father of former Stanford star Christian McCaffrey — one of Hoffpauir’s best friends.
But on May 14, while living with his father in Phoenix during the pandemic, Hoffpauir took a Percocet to help him sleep and never woke up.
“This fentanyl crap is everywhere,” Doug Hoffpauir said. “It’s so sad.”
In a revealing documentary on Hoffpauir’s life released this week by Sports360AZ, his mother Shannon said he got the pill
from a friend.
To what degree was CTE involved in Zach’s deteriorating emotional and psychological state?
The disease carries three classic features — the “CTE triad” — according to Dr. Robert Cantu of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
1) Cognitive impairment, such as memory loss and difficulty with problem solving.
2) Emotional problems, including poor decisionmaking, impulsiveness and the tendency to lash out.
3) Psychological issues such as depression and anxiety.
“No mortal can make the statement that CTE is the primary issue if you’re just dealing with emotional problems, because those are so common in society,” Cantu said.
“Cognitive deterioration is the hallmark of CTE, and you rarely see it in 20and 30-year-olds.”
But Hoffpauir’s brain was not like that of a normal 20-something.
“He said his memory wasn’t what it used to be,’’ Doug Hoffpauir recalled.
“You can see the history of people like Zach, going slowly downhill. And there isn’t anyone who can tell
them what’s happening. But he knew something was wrong.”
In the documentary, Hoffpauir’s mother described a world in which her son lived into middle age.
“Come (his) 40s, he probably would have had either Alzheimer’s, Lou Gerhig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) or Parkinson’s,” Shannon said, tears in her eyes.
“And that would have been really hard for Zachary to endure, and to watch himself deteriorate.”
Doug Hoffpauir wants the world to know that even now, 15 months later, with the CTE diagnosis confirmed, he isn’t mad.
He certainly isn’t mad at Stanford — quite the opposite, in fact.
“Stanford was excellent to Zach,” he said. “They went above and beyond, even when he had concussions. They offered him four amazing years.”
Nor is he mad at the sport.
“I’m not anti-football,” he said. “I don’t want people to think, ‘This could happen to your kid.’ I mean, it could happen. But Zach was just more susceptible — it was just the way his body was.”