Wes Welker Gets Busted. Failed Test For Molly Will Cost Four Games

Next up?  Suicide.

I know that might be keeping it a little too real, but I just started this damn article. If you already know where I am going, then you probably already agree.

When I was a kid, we really didn't know the things we know today.  Ten years from now, we might even be able to place a grade level on the concussion that each person experiences like we use to do when I was a kid.  I've had so many low grade concussions, as they used to call them, that I am a walking research study for the ailment.  Most of the kids of my generation can tell you about the amount of stars that they saw while competing in sports, but we played on.

Yeah, I realize I am suppose to be ripping the white guy for getting busted with drugs like the brothers have done so much recently, but I am going Roger Goodell on this one by repeating the message that he silently delivers in his final rulings on most things in this league of unusual punishment.

The littlest head with the biggest helmet might need even more cushion.

It wasn't weed, and the Broncos have plenty of talent to overcome the white boy who is popping molly's, (a party drug similar to ecstasy) but only for four games. If you would like to debate the message that we are sending to our children when our athletes are continually being exposed for using party drugs too much, then I am not sure where to begin.  If you are a family with a perfectly stocked liquor cabinet in your home, then you probably don't get to join in this argument about role modeling for our children, unless you are teaching them how to avoid drinking and driving. Is it absolutely mandatory that we get every detailed release about athletes who party too much, but not enough information about athletes who really have concussion issues? I know that the league does not report the first offense, so we typically are discovering athletes who have failed a previous test, but the transparency of drug usage is light years beyond that of concussion injuries and their impact to the players who get them.

What I didn't know about concussions back when I was often getting them  scares the hell out of me today. Concussion training has been a yearly requirement for nearly a decade for coaches in the Denver area.  Every year that I take the course, I learn new things that make me think back to symptoms that I once experienced, or symptoms that I have witnessed in the players whose care I am entrusted with.   If there is one VERY important lesson that I could share with any person who cares about concussions, it is this.  Concussions can happen when the head looks like it was not even involved.

A sharp blow to the mid-section or a blow in which you jar your body unexpectedly can be felt in the brain.  Take this example. I ran my shoulder into a really clean glass panel.  I missed the door because I was distracted, but the unexpected jar caused a whip effect to my brain.  Whatever grade you might like to assign to it, I had a concussion.  In modern concussion education, the grade stuff is highly frowned upon.  A concussed brain does not have a grade, it has trauma that will require time to heal.  How much time is the mystery that has caused doctors to frown on the grading thing.

If I call it a low-grade concussion than does it automatically mean that I can return to normal activities within a week, since low-grades only require 3-7 days?  The truth about concussions is that me, and Wes Welker, are no longer able to endure brain trauma as well as the average brain that hasn't seen so much trauma.  I might have a better fighting chance than Welker because its been years since I ran into that glass panel.  Did it take years for my brain to fully recover?  Maybe.


Since we just don't know how long it takes for any person to fully recover from concussions, we have to monitor all of the common symptoms (the list is long) and ensure that a patient is symptom free before they are allowed to return to normal activities.  Some of those symptoms are clearly observable (sensitivity to light or constant headaches), but other symptoms can be subtle enough that a Pro Bowl receiver could fake his symptoms in order to return to work more quickly.

If you ask me, Wes Welker has done this way more than I would be comfortable with if I was his mom and dad.  NFL football players have made their reputation on playing with their bell rung, and have won an important lawsuit against the NFL for complicit concealment of the real dangers of doing this repeatedly. While doctors may know more now than they knew then, they always knew it was important to rest the brain when concussions occur, and every NFL team has used doctors to advise them for too long for the NFL to avoid the settlement.  However, with all of that history, and all of that settlement money due to be paid to the players, I am concerned that being honest about concussions is too financially costly, and Wes Welker is all the example you need.

Welker might have delivered the accidental rub block on Aqib Talib last season that ended Talib's injury plagued year, but Welker left that collision with his bell rung once again, even though he caught Talib with a solid shoulder, and not his head.  Why?  Welker has the Liberty Bell in his helmet.  It's cracked and it needs time to rest. Lots of time.  Maybe a year or more in order to restore the crack in his brain, but I will take four games if that's all you can spare (can I get a bye-week in that stretch?).

Seau's family has rejected the NFL settlement in lieu of
wrongful death suit against the NFL.

I am thinking from the mind of the mom and dad who should be thanking their lucky stars that their star, Wes, won't be seeing any for a while and has to sit down to get some help for both of his issues, partying and concussions.  Mostly, I hope they are doing their research about concussions and trying their best to convince Wes that his life is so much more important than any game, even one that pays a whole lot of money to watch men sacrifice their future for the sake of entertaining the masses. Welker's family needs to be forcing him to watch the legendary career and tragic post career of Junior Seau, who made every sacrifice you can imagine in order to be great, including his sanity and ultimately his life.

Junior Seau committed suicide as a result of the uncontrollable symptoms that occur when you continue to play football with a brain that is traumatized.  Eventually, the damage can result in the kind of depression that causes suicides.  One of the most common remedies that self medicating people use when fighting the symptoms of depression, caused by repeated brain trauma, are party drugs that can lift the fog of depression a bit.  In a sport that uses head trauma as a means of achieving a goal, depression and the natural behavioral by-products should be somewhat expected.  There might be a protocol for appearing to give a damn, but there isn't one for insuring repeat concussed players, like Welker, do not circumvent the system and cause himself problems worse than losing his roster spot to a rookie.

Of course it could be possible that none of the players in the league have any connections between their football induced ailments and addictive reactions to them.  They all could be simply partying too much and not taking the importance of a career in football very seriously.  Unfortunately, if there is any connection that we could make between these behaviors and the trauma of the sport, the NFL will be the last to help tell that story.