DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum I’d be concerned for Denzel Ward

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2809...-win-vs-bengals

I’d be concerned for Denzel Ward, this is his second concussion in 3 weeks. The kids career is in serious jeopardy. If he gets one more concussion, even next year, he needs to retire. Else he does permanent damage to his brain.Guy careers have been ended by 4 concussions over a period of a few years, it’s crazy Ward has had two so close together.

What a great player Ward has been for us, but I fear his career isn’t going to last. He gets one more concussion I’d rather he walk away from the NFL and still be able to have a fulfilling life that to risk further damage.

Honestly, with what we know now about CTE and such Ward should probably strongly consider retiring now. His long term health is far more important that football.

He is everything you want in a football player and a fine humble smart young man, but life is more that football. I don’t want to see him eating out of a straw or unable to write his own name.

Retirement has to be a real consideration for him at this point. I’d hope his Dr.s have his best interests in mind.....I couldn’t imagine any dr worth their salt not telling a guy to retire after two concussions in less than a month.

This just makes me sad. Ward is what we been looking for for a long time.

There are some cases where early concussion prone players figure out how not to get concussed, but I agree if he has even one more in the next year, and I were him, I'd retire.

Well, first I'd take a year to get paid on the NFL's injury policy, then retire :-P

Let's hope we get some good luck and he can bulk up/refine technique enough to avoid future brain damage.

Good grief - overreact much? Denzel is going to be fine. He just has to learn to hit low when he tackles, and he will.

Troy Polamalu had 8 or 9 concussions that he admits to just in the Pro's alone. One more concussion is not going to sideline Ward

I know that concussions are the modern boogeyman in football, and I don't minimize that they can be serious, but I have had several and I know that there are wide degrees of severity. I played football in HS and was an undersized Center, and I don't think there was a single game where I didn't "see stars" at some point of the game, and in some games more than once. I've told the story here about playing against a NT from St Ignatius who outweighed me by 75 pounds and he clocked me in the head with a padded forearm every play. Another kid from Holy Name knocked me ass over tea kettle when he hit me in the facemask with a forearm shiver before the snap because I tried to rotate the ball and get the laces in the right spot for my hand. To add insult to injury, I got flagged, not him, LOL. My point is that even though I know I have had multiple concussions, both in football and outside of it, I have managed to make it into my 60's without cognitive impairment (yes, I know there might be some here who disagree). Anyway, Denzel Ward just needs to work on his tackling technique and he will be fine IMO.

It doesnt look good it is a big concern for a major talent.

I'm like a previous poster. Not thing to water down the concussion but players have had multiple in a year and more than one year amd played without issue after football.
We are very enlightened to the issue now days and should be but having a few isn't a career ender by no means.
Awareness is key now and rightfully so.

I'm like a previous poster. Not trying to water down the concussion but players have had multiple in a year and more than one year amd played without issue after football.
We are very enlightened to the issue now days and should be but having a few isn't a career ender by no means.
Awareness is key now and rightfully so.

I'm more concerned about concussions now than 5-10 years ago for sure, but a lot has to do with the severity as well. Hopefully he sits this game and can recover

He sits this game. unless its not a conclusion

I never counted while playing hockey. I actually remember seeing stars. At 57 I do have times where learning and remembering new stuff is kinda tough. Some of it is just getting older probably...

He needs to learn to stop going head to head with guys that have a 100lbs. on him.

I think his form has a lot to do with it ... he really needs to go low and avoid such head/shoulder impacts

Sit him for the final game and let him heal and make adjustments to his game.

It isn't his place to think he is ready. That is up to medical professionals.

Bottom line he is slight of frame. His target area for making tackles should be below the knees. He can't take on backs, big wide outs, or TE's up high without getting clobbered. If he goes in high, he needs to be behind the runner.

Gregg warned him and us about this back in training camp.

I agree.

no doubt he should sit

He's already achieved what few rookies have and he's a major part of our future plans. Time to heal up completely for next year.

Skip the pro bowl as well. We don't need the knucklehead getting a knucklehead in a stupid game.

Its one of the reasons for ALOT of the rule changes bro ... lawsuits are just starting ...

There also different from person to person ...

I had an ump once that suffered a concussion ... his was real bad ... it happenend two years ago and he still has symptoms .... i still wouldn’t give him even base games if i still assigned ... other assignors are giving him games and it had caused some friction between them and myself ...

Then u look at guys like Jim McMahon and Tony Dorset who can’t even get themselves home some days ... how much did concussions have to do with guys like Moon, Seau and there suicides ... we’ll never know but there brain scans certainly showed they’d suffered multiple concussions each ...

Today guys like Wes Walker (who was forced to retire cause of diminishing skills) and Luke Kuechly ... i feel so sorry for them ... looking at the examples of guys like McMahon and Dorset and the COUNTLESS others ... Luke and Wes have completely destroyed there brains just based off the # of concussions they had ...

There brains are gonna be mush way sooner than they should ... and thats a crying shame ... i get the mentality .. i was that age once also ... but there destroying not only there old age but a lot of there middle age years will be greatly affected by the multiple concussions they’ve been DIAGNOSED with ...

I hope were not heading that way with Mr. Ward for many many reasons .... his 40’s, 50’s and 60’s being a major concern for me ...

Hopefully this is the last one of these ....

And i will say this .. if we let him play this weekend ... HEADS NEED TO ROLL ... i could care less oif he clears or not .. no need to risk another one so soon .. NONE ...

j/c:

I don't see how anyone can't be concerned for a player that has two concussions in one season......the second happening as he recently comes back to the field.

Hoping Ward is sent to IR, and declines to play in the Pro Bowl...

We don't need another Jordan Cameron situation on hand...have coaches work with him all next off season to adjust to the issue.

I agree.

I want to sayabout Ward " I enjoy his Browns career."

Not "I enjoyed his Browns career." And the Dirty Birds increase the chances of rotten luck.
Sitting out the PB as well seems smartest move for his career.

I don’t think he has to sit out the cupcake bowl. Get on the field, let the coach know you’re not going to hit anyone and try to knock down a few passes, then take the NFL’s money for showing up. Even the losers money is a pretty tidy sum.

I personally believe his career is over. Concussions have a cumulative effect and I'm not sure that the next one he gets will do him any favors. Yes, he's get another one, and another, until he stops playing. Showing up for the Pro Bowl would be a fun way for him to finish his career.

Yep, what is this his fourth injury of the season? His durability is my major issue. Like him as a player but doubt he last five years in the league.

He will work with trainers in the offseason to refine his style.

And be fine.

Don't be all doom and gloom.

It's all in the severity. They call concussions so easily these days that if you cough too hard they think you have one. While I am all about players safety I don't think you have much to worry about in today's gentrified football.

Denzel sure looked dazed after that last hit.

I mentioned this in another thread, and I know nothing of concussions, but this looked and he acted like he took a good left hook to the chin. He went down and got up to beat the count but the ref waved the fight off. So if he received a concussion from this, those boxers and mma fighters are idiots for doing what they do as independent contractors.

It’s guesswork because no one knows how Denzel Ward values his cognitive condition.

Ward could retire. If I recall correctly, the Niners had a rookie linebacker retire not too long ago because he had back-to-back concussions. He cited his desire to avoid severe brain damage as being greater than his desire to play on Sundays.

Or Ward could continue to play without much regard for his future beyond football.

Frankly, the vast majority of players choose to continue playing and worry about their diseased brain when the time comes. Most of these guys have been on a single-minded pursuit of football for most of their lives. It’s a safe bet to assume they’re not going to give it up once they’ve got a taste for professional football and the riches that come with it.

jc...

This is not the first time NFL players have faced retirement, due to concussions. There are success stories, now limited by the NFL's bureaucracy.




Mark Kelso, mocked and shunned for his padded helmet in the 1990s, is still fighting to reduce concussions

KEVIN KLEPS 
Sports Business
April 30, 2014 02:30 AM

You would never know Mark Kelso played eight seasons in the NFL. Kelso was listed at 5-foot-11, 181 pounds in his playing days with the Buffalo Bills, and he appears to be 10 pounds lighter now, at age 50. If you have followed the NFL for a long time, you would, however, recognize Kelso if you were given a picture of him wearing a giant “ProCap” on top of his Buffalo Bills helmet.

Kelso suffered four concussions in 1988 and '89. A sign of the times: He played in all 16 games in each season. Prior to the 1990 season, he was given a choice by then-Bills trainer Eddie Abramoski: Wear the ProCap — a padded helmet attachment that, according to Kelso, weighed 14 ounces — or don't play.

“It looked stupid. Absolutely stupid,” Kelso said during a “Confronting the Concussion Crisis” talk Tuesday night, April 29, at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. During Tuesday's keynote address, Kelso told a story about how badly he was mocked by his Bills teammates during his initial practice wearing the ProCap. He said the first time Jim Kelly saw Kelso, lined up as a safety in a scrimmage against the Bills' first-team offense, the former quarterback had to stop the play because he was laughing so hard at Kelso's appearance. When Kelso got home that night in 1990, his wife, Robin, asked him about his day. “It was bad,” Kelso replied. “Really bad.”

To show her what he had endured, Kelso drove his wife to the Bills' facility that night and donned the ProCap. Robin Kelso laughed so hard she fell to the ground, Mark said. And that was part of the problem with the ProCap, which never penetrated the NFL market the way Kelso and the technology's inventor, Bert Straus, hoped it would. “With football players, aesthetics wins out over safety every time,” Kelso said Tuesday night.

Kelso said only two other players wore the ProCap in those days — former 49ers left tackle Steve Wallace, an All-Pro selection in 1992, and Randy Dixon, a guard who started 110 games for the Colts in a nine-year career that concluded in 1995. Kelso intercepted a pass in his first game wearing the ProCap in 1990. He went on to play four seasons with the device, which he credits for extending his career. In 1992, he picked off a career-high seven passes and helped the Bills to their third of four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. In four seasons wearing the ProCap, Kelso said he suffered one concussion, but it occurred when a player who was “100 pounds” heavier kneed him in the side of the head.

Kelso, Straus and others believe the biggest reason the Pro Cap, which is no longer on the market, never became a popular device to help combat concussions is the NFL was about as welcoming to the padded cap as Kelso's Bills teammates were the first time they saw him don his new-look helmet.

This 2013 story by Bloomberg writer John Helyar details the many lengths to which the old-guard NFL allegedly went to squash any technology that competed with Riddell, which, until this season, had been the league's official helmet manufacturer. Kelso and Straus, an Erie, Pa., native, formed a group that invested $200,000 to increase the production of ProCaps in the early 1990s. In the Bloomberg story, Straus tells a story about appearing before the NFL's concussion committee in 1995. Straus said the ProCap reduced impacts of collisions by as much as a third — the result of a study by the biomechanics laboratory at Penn State. But the concussion committee told Straus they believed the Penn State findings confirmed “our greatest concern regarding axial loading and catastrophic neck injuries,” according to Helyar's story.

Kelso, Straus and Richard Nelson, the Penn State lab's founder, strongly disagreed with the league's assessment. In June 1996, the NFL sent its players a memo warning that the “standard helmet manufacturer's warranty may be negated or modified by the use of the ProCap.” It also said players risked “catastrophic neck injuries, including possible death,” by wearing the device. Straus told Helyar that Riddell salesmen provided copies of the memo to youth sports equipment dealers and colleges that used the ProCaps — essentially marking the beginning of the end for the device made famous by an undersized safety for the Buffalo Bills.

Tuesday at Edinboro (full disclosure: I am a 1995 graduate of the university), Kelso said he was working with The Hanson Group, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based materials research company. The group has developed a padded helmet cover that is being used by some youth and college teams in practices. Kelso said South Carolina — and possible Browns draft choice Jadeveon Clowney — donned the helmet tops during the spring and summer. “I'm not worried about them wearing these in games,” Kelso said of the soft shell technology, which looks every bit as bulky as the old ProCaps, “because we're working on the whole helmet, too.” Kelso said it will cost about $2 million to build a helmet with the technology that has been developed by The Hanson Group. He admits he has a vested interest in the pursuit — so much so that he left his longtime administrative position at St. Mary's High School in Lancaster, N.Y., to concentrate all of his efforts to finding a better way to reduce concussions.

But Kelso is adamant that he isn't doing this for the accolades or for business purposes. “I think we have the ability to play the game safely,” he said. “We have a responsibility as adults to help kids.” Kelso coached for 17 years after retiring from the NFL, and he stresses the importance of other practices that can help combat head injuries, such as proper tackling techniques, shoulder pads with an extra layer of padding and even improved nutrition. He would still like to see the soft shell technology make more of a mark in the NFL.

Kelso, who is also a Bills radio analyst, was asked about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during his talk Tuesday at Edinboro. The understated former safety said he couldn't get Goodell to return his calls, but he was able to have dinner with the commissioner five weeks ago — albeit in a large group setting in which he didn't get much one-on-one time.

“We haven't allowed new technology into the market that will help our kids,” he said. Kelso is optimistic he can play a part in changing that. But the battle seems every bit as daunting as some of the matchups Kelso faced as a 180-pound defensive back who was mocked by many of his peers for his extra-large headgear. 

link

Shut him down, see you in training camp.

Thank you for a great season - heal up, we need you.

I read the whole thing Mac, thanks for posting. I think versatile brought up Kelso's helmet a few months back and talked about how it would reduce concussions, but the aesthetic wasn't pleasing to the NFL.

If NASCAR can do reasearch and design a wall that saves lives when you crash your car into said wall going 200mph, then I dont understand why a NFL helmet cant be designed to protect a brain from men roughhousing.

Who was the Bengals DT....Penn St guy....he retired because he feared that breaking his fingers would hamper his ability to play piano?