The recent suicide of former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson has prompted (and rightfully so) a number of former NFL players to open up about their own personal experiences with what may be football-related brain damage.

The rise for concern comes in the number of concussions the average pro-football player suffers every year - not to mention trauma likely experienced before going pro, as NFL stars have generally been in the game since childhood.

According to a 2007 study done by the NFL and the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes (CSRA), of the 2,552 retired players they surveyed, almost 61 percent indicated that they had suffered a concussion in their career. The study, which was published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, concluded that of the 61 percent, 595 had three or more concussions during their career.

And of those who had sustained three or more concussions, they were three times more likely to develop clinical depression than players who had not suffered concussions.


An earlier study in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that this group was also five times more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment - a condition linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Repeated blows to the head have also been recently linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition characterized by cognitive impairment, depression and, in a few cases involving ex-NFL players--Andre Waters, Owen Thomas, for example--suicide.

It's no wonder that Duerson's death - and, quite frankly, his suicide note requesting that his brain be donated to the NFL's Brain Bank Research - has opened a pandora's box full of emotionally complex and disturbing questions by the players of America's new favorite pastime.

Jessie 'The Hammer' Tuggle, an ex-Atlanta Falcons player, spoke candidly about Duerson's suicide, and says that Duerson's death helped him to realize that his own cognitive health might be a cause for concern:

"When a guy [such as Duerson] 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, to Fanhouse columnist Terence Moore. "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."



According to Duerson's ex-wife, the 50-year-old former Chicago Bears safety had been experiencing difficulty in spoken and written word comprehension and had short-term memory loss that "got worse as time went on." The Yale graduate and former businessman felt there was a connection to his issues with playing pro ball, but not enough answers around this nearly unspoken problem.

Shooting himself in the chest, instead of the head, was his way of wanting, as his son said to the New York Times, "to be a part of the answer."

Now in light of three suicides (Andre Waters and Shane Dronett, in addition to Duerson), in conjunction with ex-players like 69-year-old John Mackey, who is currently suffering from dementia, retired players like Tuggle have legitimate cause for concern.

"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, so if you had a concussion, you couldn't play next week (which is the case now)," said Tuggle to Fanhouse.com. "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," continued Tuggle. "And I truly believe it comes from the abuse we took as professional football 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?"

Why not, indeed?

Read the remainder of Tuggle's thoughts at Fanhouse.com by clicking here.

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