LANDOVER, MD – DECEMBER 22: Ryan Anderson #52 of the Washington Redskins reacts after a call in the first half against the New York Giants at FedExField on December 22, 2019 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
Washington linebacker Ryan Anderson, who has delivered a fair amount of dirty hits, had disturbing things to say about CTE.
The NFL is no stranger to controversy, but it does have a way of waiting out the discourse.
Look no further than the discussion about CTE, the brain disease that scientists have insisted is caused by the kind of traumatic and repetitive blows to the head NFL players deal with on a weekly basis. Icons of the game like Junior Seau have taken their own lives to both escapes the torment of the disease and also preserve their brains for studies so that future generations don’t have to live through what they did.
The debate reached a fever pitch a few years ago, but much like how COVID-19 gets a mere shoulder shrug from the league, CTE has become just another risk assumed when someone signs an NFL contract.
Most people get that repeated blows to the head and the brain trauma caused by it are both horrendous and, to a certain extent, avoidable. There will always be a baseline amount of contact in football, but the league has been trying to eliminate cheap shots and dirty hits.
But some players, like Washington Redskins linebacker Ryan Anderson, don’t seem to care.
NFL’s CTE problem doesn’t seem to faze Ryan Anderson, which is scary
“If I can remember my grandkids names then I didn’t play the game right,” Anderson was quoted as saying.
Anderson is perhaps best known as a cheap shot artist, with his hit on Greg Olson last year ranking among the nastier things we’ve seen happen on the gridiron lately.
It’s a disturbing quote, one made even more so when Anderson’s reckless abandon is factored in.
Moreover, it’s an incredibly sad quote to hear from someone who isn’t new to the CTE conversation. It’s not as though the discussion began yesterday and Anderson is speaking unintelligently unintentionally. There have been, and continues to be, well-documented cases of what contact in football does to the human brain.
Anderson’s statement is disturbing in that he thinks that’s the way the game should be played, but is heartbreaking in that he is willingly adding himself to a growing list of players who blindly volunteer themselves to the carnage CTE has ravaged on NFL players.