Jordan Cameron is 28 years old. He’s just four years removed from an 80-catch, 917-yard, seven-touchdown season. Yet he’s already played his last down of football.
On Friday, Cameron retired from the NFL. His reason? He’s concerned about concussions.
“I started thinking about concussions too much,” Cameron told ESPN. “You can’t play football like that.”
A fourth-round pick out of Southern California, Cameron played for the Browns and Dolphins. In his career, he caught 173 passes for 2,046 yards and 14 touchdowns. According to ESPN, Cameron suffered four concussions in his career.
Cameron told ESPN that he’s medically cleared to play football. He just doesn’t want to anymore.
“If I didn’t get concussions, I’d probably keep playing,” Cameron said. “It’s one of those things. I can’t risk my mental health in the future. I don’t have any symptoms now. I’m perfectly fine. But they can’t tell me with 100 percent certainty that if I keep playing and I get more concussions, that I’m going to be OK.
“I’m not risking that at all. There’s nothing more important than your health. It’s just not worth it to me.”
Cameron cited wanting to be there for his son (who he doesn’t want to play football). He talked about not wanting to risk “having a mental disorder or depression.” He also referenced how concussions are a tough injury to deal with because people can’t see the effects like other injuries.
When asked if he thought the NFL educated him about the issue before he entered the league, this is what he said:
“They didn’t know,” Cameron said. “I want to say I hope they didn’t know the serious implications of these things. I feel like it was just starting, just on the brink of this coming to light and all the seriousness of these things. Now I feel like seven years later people know how serious this can be. Unfortunately it takes people dying to figure that out. That’s the saddest thing in the world to me.”
ESPN’s entire story is worth a read, because Cameron gives plenty of insightful quotes on a difficult issue.
Cameron is hardly the only player to retire at a young age due to concussion and health issues. Just last year, the New York Times reported that the NFL’s research into concussions was incomplete and flawed. In recent years, teams and the league have come under scrutiny for their handling of in-game concussions -- like when Case Keenum was allowed to stay on the field after suffering a clear head injury and when Malcolm Jenkins admitted to hiding a concussion so that he could keep playing.
This past November, Dr. James Andrews, a renowned orthopedic surgeon, said football would never be invented today, because it wouldn’t be allowed.
“It’s a collision sport,” Andrews told Sports Illustrated. “If we started a new sport today and we wrote up the rules and regulations and we called it football, they probably wouldn’t allow it. We’re all trying to do everything we can to make football safer, but that’s the way the sport is: There are always going to be injuries. We’re aware of that, and we’re all working to keep it that way. We want it to continue, believe me.”
In short, it’s not an issue that’s going away anytime soon.
