Carson released/retiring

[govandals]

ESPN Seattle is reporting Chris Carson is being released with a failed physical designation. Rapaport is reporting Carson will retire. This is a real bummer, I really enjoyed Carson's play. Take care, Mr. Carson, you'll be missed.

[TriCitySam]

Not a surprise given the injury, it's nice to know he's decided against the risk. THANKS for some great games! Sadly, he only had 3 fully healthy seasons.....I don't think Walker III has signed (but that's kinda how JS does business).

[c_hawkbob]

With this kind of hardware in his neck this comes as no surprise:



Thanks Chris, good luck with what comes next.

[govandals]

Whoa, I heard about that x-ray, but I've never seen it. That's really something.

[Aseahawkfan]

That is good. I don't want to see a guy destroy himself for football. His injury is too dangerous.

[Hawktawk]

Good for Chris . Another excellent draft pick taken out by injuries . Best of luck CC

[Old but Slow]

I hope that he has a healthy life and that his neck won't be a constant problem. He gave it his all.

[obiken]

With this kind of hardware in his neck this comes as no surprise:



Thanks Chris, good luck with what comes next.

Yuck! Omgosh! Good luck Chris!

[trents]

When did Carson suffer this injury? His career has been in limbo so long I can't remember how all this began.

[I-5]

That is scary scary image.

On a different note, how many current and past Seahawks probably have CTE or a mild case (if there's such a thing as mild)? Based on the stats and articles I've read, I'd say probably most or ALL of them.

[obiken]

That is scary scary image.

On a different note, how many current and past Seahawks probably have CTE or a mild case (if there's such a thing as mild)? Based on the stats and articles I've read, I'd say probably most or ALL of them.

Oh that is a dark discussion. I never had no kids but IF I had a son, NO way I would allow him to play the game that I love to death! Go watch the Will Smith film Concussion. CTE starts way earlier than what players can feel. Moreover, how long before boxing changes? Go look at Meldrick Taylor before the Chavez fight, then after, its downright scary!!

[Oly]

I'm with you, obi. CTE is one of the major reasons I've stopped most of my football consumption. It's too much in my blood to quit altogether, but other than Hawks games, I don't watch football on TV (even college football). I teach at a college, and I go to those games, but I'm really conflicted about it. Two of our students who were football players have died by suicide in the past few years, and one was explicitly because he was noticing CTE symptoms already and was so despondent about his future ability to live a good life that he took his early.

[Hawktawk]

Yeah well soldiers get it , boxers etc. it’s an awful potential outcome but there’s kids dying from fentenyl, gunshots , crashing cars . I would worry about my kid if he played . As a matter of fact I coached him in grid kids and when he hit middle school we got him signed up , got his cleats and then he said he didn’t want to play . My wife was furious , demanded that he play since we bought all his stuff but I said no honey . These kids are prepping for the big 9 in a couple years . If his heart is not in it he will get his head taken off . So that was that . It was one of my sadder days as a dad but I wasn’t going to force him for my selfish reasons . Now he’s 26, 6’2” and 265. What might have been .

[RiverDog]

I'm with you, obi. CTE is one of the major reasons I've stopped most of my football consumption. It's too much in my blood to quit altogether, but other than Hawks games, I don't watch football on TV (even college football). I teach at a college, and I go to those games, but I'm really conflicted about it. Two of our students who were football players have died by suicide in the past few years, and one was explicitly because he was noticing CTE symptoms already and was so despondent about his future ability to live a good life that he took his early.

American football gets a bad rap, and that's coming from a guy who had a teammate killed playing football.

There's a lot of 'most dangerous' lists out there so I don't want to reference one and claim this or that sport is more dangerous than football. But I've seen sports like gymnastics, cheerleading, even soccer rated as being more dangerous than football. Plus throw in other individual activities, like dirt bike racing, white water rafting, base jumping, snow skiing, the run of the bulls, etc, and depending on the criteria they use to rank them, you'd be surprised at how low football is rated. American football gets a bad rap because it is so popular.

I'm glad Carson retired. The head and neck area are something you just plain don't mess with. Next to Beast, I'd toss his name in with Shaun Alexander and Chris Warren as being the best running back ever to don a Seahawks uniform.

[Aseahawkfan]

American football gets a bad rap, and that's coming from a guy who had a teammate killed playing football.

There's a lot of 'most dangerous' lists out there so I don't want to reference one and claim this or that sport is more dangerous than football. But I've seen sports like gymnastics, cheerleading, even soccer rated as being more dangerous than football. Plus throw in other individual activities, like dirt bike racing, white water rafting, base jumping, snow skiing, the run of the bulls, etc, and depending on the criteria they use to rank them, you'd be surprised at how low football is rated. American football gets a bad rap because it is so popular.

I'm glad Carson retired. The head and neck area are something you just plain don't mess with. Next to Beast, I'd toss his name in with Shaun Alexander and Chris Warren as being the best running back ever to don a Seahawks uniform.

I'm not much for a padded world. Do things as safely as you can, but don't build a world to be a pillow padded plastic bubble. That's not living or free. I lift weights knowing it will be take a toll on my joints and tendons and I'll suffer little nagging injuries lifting heavy weights, but I feel great when I'm moving heavy weight. Makes you feel alive and strong. Football and athletics period make you feel that way even though you know long-term they will take a toll on you, especially if you play at a high level.

Would I rather get out there and play and enjoy life or hide in my house doing my treadmill or mild walking for my entire life which is probably the safest form of exercise? I'd rather do intense activity that has risk than sit in the padded room.

Main thing is to know when it's time to hang it up. If you're experiencing serious CTE or like Carson a neck injury, time to go or adjust how you're doing things. You should also know going in that football is not going to be kind to your body long-term, much like smoking is pretty obviously going to be terrible for your health. Make your decisions knowing what you're doing. I'm glad there is more information to make better decisions going in.

Doubt even knowing the cost it will ever completely deter people. It's too fun. It's why some people rock climb or mountain climb or deep sea dive or compete in combat sports or football and basketball. You feel so alive, driven, and focused when you're in a dangerous and/or competitive situation, your heart pumping, you against them or against the mountain or the weight bar, and failure is pain or death or worse loss. That's when your barbarian heart is pounding and you feel the primal call that is part of your make up as a human, especially a human male, of kill or be killed. Some people seek that feeling. Some people don't.

[RiverDog]

American football gets a bad rap, and that's coming from a guy who had a teammate killed playing football.

There's a lot of 'most dangerous' lists out there so I don't want to reference one and claim this or that sport is more dangerous than football. But I've seen sports like gymnastics, cheerleading, even soccer rated as being more dangerous than football. Plus throw in other individual activities, like dirt bike racing, white water rafting, base jumping, snow skiing, the run of the bulls, etc, and depending on the criteria they use to rank them, you'd be surprised at how low football is rated. American football gets a bad rap because it is so popular.

I'm glad Carson retired. The head and neck area are something you just plain don't mess with. Next to Beast, I'd toss his name in with Shaun Alexander and Chris Warren as being the best running back ever to don a Seahawks uniform.

I'm not much for a padded world. Do things as safely as you can, but don't build a world to be a pillow padded plastic bubble. That's not living or free. I lift weights knowing it will be take a toll on my joints and tendons and I'll suffer little nagging injuries lifting heavy weights, but I feel great when I'm moving heavy weight. Makes you feel alive and strong. Football and athletics period make you feel that way even though you know long-term they will take a toll on you, especially if you play at a high level.

Would I rather get out there and play and enjoy life or hide in my house doing my treadmill or mild walking for my entire life which is probably the safest form of exercise? I'd rather do intense activity that has risk than sit in the padded room.

Main thing is to know when it's time to hang it up. If you're experiencing serious CTE or like Carson a neck injury, time to go or adjust how you're doing things. You should also know going in that football is not going to be kind to your body long-term, much like smoking is pretty obviously going to be terrible for your health. Make your decisions knowing what you're doing. I'm glad there is more information to make better decisions going in.

Doubt even knowing the cost it will ever completely deter people. It's too fun. It's why some people rock climb or mountain climb or deep sea dive or compete in combat sports or football and basketball. You feel so alive, driven, and focused when you're in a dangerous and/or competitive situation, your heart pumping, you against them or against the mountain or the weight bar, and failure is pain or death or worse loss. That's when your barbarian heart is pounding and you feel the primal call that is part of your make up as a human, especially a human male, of kill or be killed. Some people seek that feeling. Some people don't.

I agree completely. I noted that I had a high school teammate get killed playing football. His parents told us that they were glad that if their son had to die, that he died doing something he loved to do, and although there's never any 'good' way to die, they considered it a lot better than losing him via a drug overdose.

Whitewater rafting is a hobby that I used to do until the guys I used to do it with got old and quit. I haven't seen how it rates amongst the most dangerous activities, but my sense is that it would be a lot higher than football. Just the other day, there was a rafter that drown here in the Tri Cities and given the rate of participation of river rafting vs. football, I'd guess that rafting is far more dangerous. But man, what a thrill it was to go river rafting on a really hot, summer day in some beautiful scenery in Hells Canyon or on the Salmon River! I wouldn't have traded it for a thousand football games.

[Oly]

The HUGE difference with all of the risky stuff listed in this thread--many of which I love--and what I was saying was about (1) the age of the people in the conversation, and (2) the prevalence of some sort of brain injury among football players. I was primarily agreeing with obi about what I'd allow my children to do. I'm 1000% in agreement about a non-padded world and I actually encourage my kids to take more risks, not fewer. From bungee-jumping to tree climbing to riding bikes down steep hills, I encourage my kids to take physical risks. But the kinds of injuries they're likely to get there aren't neurological and therefore more likely to heal and less likely to cause life-long damage. The neuroscience is pretty clear that football is bad for health. I wouldn't be surprised if boxing/MMA are worse, but I don't watch or follow those at all. Regardless, lots of tackle football puts kids at the kind of neurological risks that are just qualitatively different than many of the other stuff y'all are talking about in this thread.

I don't have a problem with adults making these decisions; my guilt at watching them is about helping popularize a sport that will entice kids whose brains are still developing.

Clearly, though, I'm on this forum, so I'm not trying to get all holier-than-thou. It's just that, in my view, I have zero doubt at all that football is more likely to lead to an irreversible outcome than anything else I allow my kids to do. Hell, if they wanted to do motocross I would have no problem with it. I really see football as worse than that.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm not sure it has a worse outcome myself, just that if you are concussed doing soccer or some other activity you tend to stop. I think some of the ways that football was played and the attitude caused a lot of the issues. You gotta respect concussions. And they happen in lots of activities, but few sports have a culture like football. I think that was part of the problem. I'm sure most who have played on this forum know what football culture is like. If you ain't dead, you want to go back in. The legendary stories of Ronnie Lott having his finger cut off and Jack Youngblood telling them to wrap a broken leg fueled the culture. Football culture didn't respect injuries including concussions. Same as combat sports.

I think they can bring it down to a manageable level by teaching them to lead less with the head as they are doing and sitting people with concussions.

I think a lot of the issues were with the culture of football and similar combat sports. Dudes who play these types of sports often thrive on brutality. Even myself as lifting weights often overlooked injuries when I was younger. You're lifting heavy weights, you take the pain and move on. As I got older and wiser, I know when it's serious. That seems to be where they're going in football which should reduce the CTE.

They ignored it for years because of the "real men don't feel pain" culture. But now they know better and are being more proactive about taking care of people who take those kind of hits as well as teaching new tackling techniques.

We'll see in time how much that reduces long-term CTE. I'm old enough to remember how men were raised. I know these younger guys are raised differently. As a man you don't cry in front of people. You suck up pain. You don't show weakness in front of other men. You do whatever you gotta do to take care of your family. If anyone wrongs your woman or your children, you need to handle that meaning the person needs to apologize or you need to beat their ass. You don't let another male intimidate or cow you. They get in your face, it's go time. If you take a beating, get better and stronger.

I still recall running home as a kid and telling my dad these older kids were beating up on myself and my buddy. My dad looked at me and told me to go back and fight. So I did. I even had a couple of older kids tape me to a tree when I was 8 or 9 and they were 13 or 14, but I was taught not to run. My buddy ran and he came back later and got me off that tree. But that was man culture. You gotta fight and you can't run. You gotta endure pain and get up from it. That's the way.

That culture was in football to the extreme. I'm glad they now have the medical evidence to make it better. Even big, dumb jocks don't want brain injuries and likely want to be careful about that. That wasn't there before. It is now. So hopefully will improve athletes post-sport life.

[Oly]

I'm not sure it has a worse outcome myself, just that if you are concussed doing soccer or some other activity you tend to stop. I think some of the ways that football was played and the attitude caused a lot of the issues. You gotta respect concussions. And they happen in lots of activities, but few sports have a culture like football. I think that was part of the problem. I'm sure most who have played on this forum know what football culture is like. If you ain't dead, you want to go back in. The legendary stories of Ronnie Lott having his finger cut off and Jack Youngblood telling them to wrap a broken leg. Football culture didn't respect injuries including concussions. Same as combat sports.

I think they can bring it down to a manageable level by teaching them to lead less with the head as they are doing and sitting people with concussions.

I think a lot of the issues were with the culture of football and similar combat sports. Dudes who play these types of sports often thrive on brutality. Even myself as lifting weights often overlooked injuries when I was younger. You're lifting heavy weights, you take the pain and move on. As I got older and wiser, I know when it's serious. That seems to be where they're going in football which should reduce the CTE.

They ignored it for years because of the "real men don't feel pain" culture. But now they know better and are being more proactive about taking care of people who take those kind of hits as well as teaching new tackling techniques.

We'll see in time how much that reduces long-term CTE. I'm old enough to remember how men were raised. I know these younger guys are raised differently. As a man you don't cry in front of people. You suck up pain. You don't show weakness in front of other men. You do whatever you gotta do to take care of your family. If anyone wrongs your woman or your children, you need to handle that meaning the person needs to apologize or you need to beat their ass. You don't let another male intimidate or cow you. They get in your face, it's go time. If you take a beating, get better and stronger.

I still recall running home as a kid and telling my dad these older kids were beating up on myself and my buddy. My dad looked at me and told me to go back and fight. So I did. I even had a couple of older kids tape me to a tree when I was 8 or 9 and they were 13 or 14, but I was taught not to run. My buddy ran and he came back later and got me off that tree. But that was man culture. You gotta fight and you can't run. You gotta endure pain and get up from it. That's the way.

That culture was in football to the extreme. I'm glad they now have the medical evidence to make it better. Even big, dumb jocks don't want brain injuries and likely want to be careful about that. That wasn't there before. It is now. So hopefully will improve athletes post-sport life.

Good points. How much of the danger is inherent in the game and how much is in the culture? That culture is certainly changing, but is it changing quickly enough? And is the game itself getting safely (with better technique and technology) fast enough? I'm not sure, but I hope you're right. I do love the game.