CTE is a hot button topic in the National Football League right now. People all the way from the commissioner’s office down to fans are talking about CTE and the effects it could go have on football going forward.
Despite it being one of the more popular topics in football, some players are insinuating it’s not being talked about enough.
Retired NFL quarterback Jake Plummer is one of those players and he thinks certain NFL officials need to change what they’re saying entirely.
While speaking with BSN Denver for a series BSN is doing on the NFL’s drug problem, Plummer ripped into Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones for his public comments about CTE.
Here’s the full quote:
“Like Jerry Jones, who says it’s ‘absurd’ that there would be a link between brain trauma, football and CTE,” Plummer adds. “Shame on him for saying that, that billionaire asshole. It’s the worst thing in the world for a guy like that to say. That’s where we’re sitting; grown-ass men are asked to go out there for millions of dollars—which, yeah, it’s a lot of money—bang themselves around and completely fuck their lives over for their 40s and 50s. So yeah, poor football players is what I say. If you’re a grown-ass man, you should be allowed to make grown-ass decisions.”
It’s important to not take that quote out of context however. The ongoing series isn’t about drugs such as marijuana, but instead painkiller, depression, and CTE combatant drugs. That’s what led Plummer to criticize Jones.
Addiction, depression, and CTE are slowly becoming some of the more prevalent disorders and diseases not only affecting former NFL players, but current ones as well. In BSN’s report, Plummer detailed how he has had to watch his friends, former teammates, and colleagues deal with addiction issues involving drugs intended to prevent addiction, depression, and CTE disorders.
“I have a hard time with it because everybody says, ‘Oh, poor NFL millionaires. Oh, you poor people.’ They don’t understand,” Plummer told BSN Denver. “Maybe they should have a little more to say about the owners that are billionaires, they’re not millionaires; they’re billionaires.”
That quote proceeded the larger quote about about Jones and his fellow owners arguably tossing their former players aside.
Plummer then went on to see that CBD — or Cannabidiol — is an important drug he uses now, and should be legal in the NFL. It’s currently banned by the league because it contains cannabis, the plant known for producing THC in marijuana.
“They should be able to say, ‘I’m going to have some CBD and puff on this fatty, relax after a football game and take the pain away,’” Plummer said. “Not get tested for it like Josh Gordon, who now can’t play the game that he’s been playing since he was a kid because he smokes marijuana. It didn’t derail him or cause him to underachieve from what I witnessed. He dominated the league for two straight years, and now he’s out of the league because he chose an alternative form of medicine.”
All of this comes back to the hypocrisy in the league that Plummer believes needs to end. If there are drugs that can fight early affects of CTE, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be allowed in the league. However, they’re sadly not.
