Former Raiders player Chandler Jones has found himself in the news over the last few months for an array of run-ins with law enforcement in Las Vegas, Arizona, and California. He made headlines again over the weekend by appearing on the Jaxxon Podcast with a controversial take. He claimed that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is not a real condition. He even looped former wide receiver Antonio Brown, stating that they had planned to name a podcast the ‘CTE Podcast’ since many believe they both suffer from the brain disorder.
“Going into your conversation of the CTE thing, I think it’s funny. Me and Antonio Brown were actually going to run a podcast called ‘CTE Podcast’ because they’re saying we both have CTE,” the former All-Pro lineman said. “I don’t know the other two words in the acronym CTE. But I know the ‘T’ stands for trauma and I know it is not blunt force trauma, it also does not mean you got in the head too many times. CTE is not real, I don’t believe it’s real,” Jones said.
A co-host on the show mentioned that we did not hear about CTE back in the day, adding fuel to Jones’ fire that has no true depth.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a brain disorder that is most commonly caused by repeated head injuries. This condition leads to the degeneration and death of nerve cells in the brain, and gets progressively worse over time. Unfortunately, the only way to definitively diagnose CTE is after death, through an autopsy of the brain.
Boston University’s CTE Center in 2023 that found 91.7% of former NFL players were diagnosed with CTE in their pool of 376 players.
The study revealed that the nearly 92% occurrence rate of CTE in former NFL players sharply contrasts with the “extremely low population rate” of CTE in the general public. A study in 2018 looked at 164 brains from the general public and found CTE in only one case, and that person was a former college football player. So, CTE seems to be more common among former NFL players compared to the general population.
Check out the clip of Jones CTE claims below.
