Legendary NFL Quarterback Brett Favre Speaks Out About the Reality of Concussions in Football

the first time we spoke was back uh in 2018 when I was at NBC and you came on and talked very openly about your own experience with concussions in the NFL and you put the number at just thousands you just said you thought you'd have thousands of concussions over the course of your career well I wouldn't have said that maybe a few years before you and I discussed it and and I think 18 but I had a conversation with Dr Benjamin amalu who uh in the movie concussion many years ago Will Smith betrayed Dr amalu Who actually discovered CTE when he was a coroner I believe uh in the city of Pittsburgh um and he had done these autopsies on what turns out to be four or five maybe Steeler players former Steeler players and discovered CTE but in my conversation with him I I said when is a good time to play tackle football and he said never uh which I thought was you know I thought maybe he would say 21 20 he said there's never a good time for the human to play tag of football but he said I know that's not you know that that's never going to happen but we got to the discussion he said how many concussions do you think you've had and I said three maybe four and he he sort of chuckled and said more like hundreds maybe thousands and I said no three three or four and he said how many times do you think you were tackled or you fell you hit your head on the turf and maybe your ears were were ringing or you you saw stars or fireworks um you maybe were a little fuzzy but you were able able to play you didn't come out of the game you kind of shook it off and I said almost every time I was tackled or I fell uh and so he said well that is a concussion everyone relates concussions to you see a boxer get hit and his knees are buckling or they look rubbery his legs you a player gets tackled he gets up and he stumbles back to the ground we all know that's a concussion and that's what I was relating relating my what I thought concussions uh from a numbers perspective was exactly that where I may have blacked out for for a period of time and he said yeah that's a concussion but we know that the fireworks the ringing in the ears or the fuzziness is also a concussion and he said in in the long run the the small minor concussions if you will and I don't think there is such a thing as a minor concussion but but he said those do the most damage over time and that was really was a wake up all for me to think that I've had hundreds maybe thousands of concussions uh which would be very accurate based on what he said uh is is it's honestly it's scary right I in the film it's very powerful by the way I watched it and it was gripping the whole thing was gripping it's it's an hour and a half it's not it's like you can watch it in a decent amount of time it's not going to take your whole afternoon but you will not turn it off and walk away you will sit there and watch beginning to end and it juxtaposes your story Brett with the story of Tyler sash who you know I me I don't know that much about sports and I didn't know Tyler's story even though he played for the Giants which is our team uh my family's well my not my current family my husband's an eagle fan but my family of origin um and it's absolutely heartbreaking because he had an experience that I think so many American families so many American boys have which is you go into peeee football you play tackle you move up the ranks he was a star athlete he was a star runner he was a star baseball player basketball player and football player and but really stood out of the football field and was breaking records and so on and so forth and then amazingly winds up getting drafted to the NFL playing for the J this is like so many little boys dream that's their dream and this he didn't know the first thing about CTE Brett but unlike you where you know you're in your 50s right and you're like starting to realize there's some signs of like gee I can't remember where my car keys are he didn't really have somebody to make clear to him what was going on things started to deteriorate in terms of his behavior yes memory but also emotional regulation to the point where his family around him was just utterly confused right well he he became something that no one was familiar with um he was everybody's all American certainly in in Iowa uh he he grew up as the most popular athlete maybe in town went to University of Iowa was was heral there and and was loved goes to to the Giants and plays and I think he played three or four years but the thing about concussions that we do know uh and by no means my doctor but I think I can speak for for most doctors relating to this field there's they don't know a whole lot about concussions but one thing that I've I've learned by being a part of this film uh being an an activist for for concussions and safety is that it only takes one concussion you don't have to have multiple or thousands or hundreds of concussions to for lack of a better term go off the deep end um it can happen after one concussion and and that should scare a lot of people uh so you know I mean I think at one time the thought was you have hundreds of concussions you're likely to have something neurologically go wrong short circuit at some point but what we now know is that may be true with multiple or hundreds of concussions but it also may be true for the person who had one and so uh you know as I've talked to people about this you know I'd like to see the NFL um I think they've done a good job with rule changes um they've sunk a lot of money into equipment helmets but the thing about the human head that Dr amalu really is about as simple as he could explain it he used a woodpecker as an example and I I I really didn't know where he was going with it I I sort of laughed but he said a woodpecker hits a pole or a tree constantly never gets a concussion why he said because when the head hits the tree or the pole the brain stops with the head and he said that's very important and he said it stops because it's sort of built in this cocoon or cork type uh enclosure and he said the human head on the other hand when the head stops the brain keeps going and he said and then when the brain hits you know the skull that's when bruising occurs and and up up until that point I never thought about it he said so helmets no matter how good they are they don't stop the brain from moving so when you like my concussions all were I would say from hitting my head on the turf I call it the Whiplash effect you you fall down your head sling shots back you hit the turf the head stops immediately the brain keeps moving and he said helmets will not stop the brain from moving he said the human brain is you know sloshing around in fluid and when you when you hit something a high impact the head stops the brain keeps going we got big problems did you know there's nearly 1 trillion bucks of infrastructure and pandemic funds yet to be spent yes that's right there is a massive amount of dough that this lame duck Administration is pushing hard to spend in its last few months if the president pres is able to push these funds out we could see another prolonged inflation surge just like during Co but there's hope a gold Ira from Birch gold group can be an inflation Hedge for your savings in uncertain times to see how to protect your IRA or 401K get your freeo kit on Gold by texting the word MK to 9898 98 Birch gold makes it seamless to roll over your retirement account while preserving your tax advantage status don't wait for the president's spending spree to potentially tank the dollar further protect your financial future right now text MK to 9898917350 [Music]