A deathblow (usually) refers to a single strike that kills instantly. For example, see the famous legal case of Odinson v. Thanos:
A mortal wound is different, because it doesn’t necessarily kill you right away. Some mortal wounds take time: They bleed you slowly and steadily, yet you die just the same.
In fact, some mortal wounds take decades.
It didn’t receive much media coverage (and I’ll tell you why in a sec), but earlier this week, football as we know it may have suffered a mortal wound.
At least one in four NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had the degenerative brain disease known as CTE, a new study has revealed.
The study, published Tuesday by the British Medical Journal, focused on how common chronic traumatic encephalopathy might be among NFL players. What it found is that of the 878 players who appeared in at least one NFL game and died in that six-year period, at least 25% had CTE.
[…]
The estimate of 25% is on the "low end," said Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, the study's lead author. The study found that the maximum possible prevalence of CTE was around 97%, but the true rate "is somewhere in the middle," Daneshvar said.
Dr. Daneshvar claims 25% is on the “low end,” but clearly, his team couldn’t analyze the brain of every deceased ex-NFL player. (CTE can only be diagnosed posthumously.) Instead, he relied on available data and published info, including from players who suspected they had CTE and donated their brains to science. It’s possible this skewed the results, because obviously, the family of mentally healthy ex-NFL players is unlikely to authorize a posthumous brain test because what’s the point?
If so, that’s good news for football players: It means the CTE rate is LOWER than 25%. Maybe it’s 10% or 15%. Who knows?
But if “only” 10% or 15% of football players suffer irreversible brain damage, is that really a win?
Either way, it’s probably a moot point: Over the last 25 years, the link between repetitive, concussive headshots — and dementia-related symptoms — is impossible to ignore. As much as we all love high-intensity, smashmouth football, our brains weren’t designed for that sort of trauma. Every play is a mini car crash.
So why isn’t this CTE study getting more publicity?
Here’s a hint: Of the 50 most-watched TV shows in 2025, 46 were NFL games. And at least six digital platforms — Netflix, Peacock, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, ESPN, and Fox One — have signed deals to stream NFL games. (And if you want the NFL Sunday Ticket, you’ll need a seventh: YouTube TV.)
Plus, the NFL has multibillion-dollar broadcasting deals with CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC, and ESPN/NFL Network. They’ve all tied their financial futures to the NFL’s success.
Live NFL games are one of the last entertainment properties that reliably draw millions of viewers. Which is why America’s biggest, most influential news/media conglomerates can’t afford to kill the golden goose: It would be self-defeating.
Doing so would cut their own throats.
So nobody’s incentivized to promote the study. The opposite is true: They’re incentivized to ignore it.
But parents in the heartland are listening. Since 2009, 12.2% fewer kids are playing high school football. That’s despite our country growing by 11.4%, or roughly 35 million people.
Football was once America’s most-participated high school sport; today, it trails outdoor track and field. For the first time since the 2000s, fewer than a million kids play.
We still love watching football, but we’re increasingly leery of the danger — especially when it comes to our children.
Because three cultural forces are happening simultaneously:
- Our population is getting older: Boomers are now between 62 and 80. Sadly, more of us are witnessing the horrible toll of cognitive decline. (Myself included.) For millions of Americans, it’s now a top-of-mind issue.
- We better understand the link between head trauma and CTE. We might quibble over the stats, but nobody believes headshots are consequence-free. (Well, almost nobody.)
- Fewer parents are letting their children participate in the sport. This means that the pipeline of new talent is narrowing. (And since playing football is how many of us became fans, that has consequences, too.)
Not too long ago, one of the best things about football was the big, glorious hits. ESPN dedicated an entire segment to celebrating plays that aren’t just illegal now — they’d get a player fined and suspended:
And that’s a new psychological development. Twenty-five years ago, watching a man get whacked in the head 11 times with a steel chair — purely for “sports entertainment” — was acceptable, family-friendly fun. Now, it’s even banned in the fake world of professional wrestling.
But pro wrestling is scripted; pro football is not. And without wholesale changes to the game, it’s difficult to see how football can “regulate away” the CTE risk. Players at some positions, namely offensive and defensive linemen, receive sub-concussive head trauma on virtually every play. Eliminating the CTE risk means overhauling the entire rulebook — and that has risks of its own.
There’s a reason why none of the networks are showing flag football or two-hand touch on primetime: Nobody wants to see it!
Yet we might not have a choice.
The New York Times: Many NFL Players Get Brain Disease. Why Hasn’t OSHA Intervened?
The most notorious form of workplace illness in the United States might be black lung disease. Scientists say that 10 to 20 percent of coal miners who have worked 25 years or more have gotten it. It has long been considered an epidemic.
Imagine an American job that is less safe than that, where one in four workers (and maybe far more) ends up with an incurable, degenerative brain disease that withers the mind, sometimes after just a few years of exposure.
Imagine the outrage at the working conditions, the demands that something be done to protect the employees, the questions about whether the industry needed to be overhauled, if not abolished.
“I don’t think that this would be abided in any industry,” said Doug Parker, the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Biden administration.
Unless that profession was N.F.L. football.
And the justification for government intervention? This new CTE study, of course:
New research shows that 25 percent of all former N.F.L. players who died during a recent six-year period had the degenerative brain disease known as C.T.E. — a tally that does not include the nearly three-quarters of deceased players who were not tested for the disease, which can be diagnosed only posthumously.
“That is clearly a minimum; the true percentage has to be higher,” said David Michaels, who was head of OSHA from 2009 to 2017, just as C.T.E. emerged as a health issue in football. “Whatever it is, the number is astoundingly high.”
Another former OSHA official, the chief scientist Adam Finkel, called it “apocalyptically high,” noting that Russian roulette carries better odds. To him, a risk of 1 in 100 would be an “epidemic.” But 25 percent?
“We never see things that are this dire,” he said.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk believes that once there’s a CTE test for living patients, the NFL as we know it will come to an end:
For now, the only way to diagnose CTE is after death. Looming over the sport is the inevitability that someone will develop a reliable test for diagnosing CTE in living patients. Patients who are still playing football. Patients who may abruptly decide, learning that they have the early stage of the disease, to walk away from the game.
If that ever happens, it would have the impact of Chris Borland’s early retirement, perhaps times 100. Or 1,000.
[…]
If/when players have a way of knowing that they already have CTE, the supply of high-level performers — which currently far exceeds the demand — eventually may not meet it.
Pro football can’t afford a 25% talent drain without visibly watering down the product. Its talent pool was already drying up; further attrition would be noticeable.
When the quality drops, people tend to walk. (And if you don’t believe me, go ask Wendy’s.) With smartphones, TikTok, and gaming, there’s never been more competition for eyeballs. Even without the CTE issue, pro football had its challenges.
Because not even the NFL is too big to fail.
But of all its vulnerabilities, the CTE issue is #1. It kills the pipeline of future talent, it forces rule changes that make the game less fun, it weakens the fan experience, and it exposes the NFL to punitive litigation and/or OSHA regulation.
America’s news/media conglomerates might have a vested interest in the NFL succeeding, but plenty of ambitious Democrats do not: If they can advance their careers by targeting the NFL, they’ll absolutely do so. (To “protect the children,” of course.)
And then, when a Democrat is president again, OSHA will strike.
The NFL’s smartest solution is to invest mightily in helmet technology. Perhaps it’s possible to construct a helmet that minimizes CTE risk.
But if the NFL can’t?
Then the game of tackle football is mortally wounded. It’ll have to evolve (or devolve) into something closer to flag football, because the status quo simply isn’t sustainable.
It’s too bad. The old NFL was amazing:
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