Aaron Hernandez Had Developed Severe CTE by the Time of His Death

His estate has filed suit against the NFL.
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Lawyers for Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriots tight end who was serving a life sentence for murder when he died by suicide last spring, announced today that Hernandez had developed severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, by the time of his death. The researchers who examined his brain diagnosed him with Stage 3 of the disease, which is likely caused by repeated blows to the head over time and is associated with symptoms like depression, instability, anger, and impulsive behavior. This diagnosis means that his 27-year-old brain was more akin to that of a 67-year-old CTE patient. His case, according to his attorney, is "the most severe case they had ever seen in someone of Aaron's age."

In the wake of his diagnosis, Hernandez's estate has sought unspecified damages in a lawsuit filed against the Patriots and the league. A settlement between the NFL and a group of retirees was approved by a federal appeals court last year and created a $1 billion fund for former players found to be suffering from CTE. The Times notes that individuals, like Hernandez, who died after the settlement date are not eligible to receive an award, but given that Hernandez left little to his fiancée and his four-year-old daughter, his attorneys may seek to challenge that exclusion on their behalf.

Our understanding of the devastating effects that football has on those who play it is still developing, but it's become impossible to ponder the future of the NFL—and the implications, for fans, of watching it and cheering for it and paying for it—without wondering if undertaking a cost-benefit analysis that prominently involves the scrambling of other human beings' brains can ever be a worthwhile exercise. And as stories like Zac Easter's make clear that CTE affects not only the health of elderly retirees, but also of young people who should be in the prime of their lives, it's also fair to ask if the dangers of organized tackle football as we know it are even solvable—or if, by the time we encourage an athlete to slow down and be safe and do what's best for him, it might already be too late.

Tuesday's revelation probably comes as little comfort to the families shattered by Hernandez's crimes, and a clinical, objective diagnosis of his medical condition changes nothing about the undoable things he did. It does, however, raise hard questions about why they might have happened—and, if players and fans and teams and sponsors alike truly share a commitment to ensuring that something like this doesn't happen again, the hard choices they'd have to make together to accomplish that.


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