Green Bay Packers receiver Davante Adams suffered a brutal blow to the head Thursday night in a game against the Chicago Bears in Wisconsin.
Adams caught a pass mid-field during the third quarter when he was hit by Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan. Trevathan, who received a personal foul penalty, could possibly face suspension over the seemingly illegal hit.
Adams, No. 17, was taken off the field on a stretcher after the helmet-to-helmet impact. He underwent preliminary tests for head and neck injuries, including the possibility of a concussion, at the stadium.
“Adams is conscious and has movement in all his extremities,” the Packers tweeted after the hit. “He’s been taken to a hospital for further testing.”
“That’s not OK right there,” sportscaster Tony Romo said during a replay of the collision.
Frank Schwab, editor of “Shutdown Corner” on Yahoo Sports, echoed that assessment: “A message needs to be sent that headhunting and trying to injure fellow players isn’t OK with the league.”
As more studies reveal the prevalence of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, in former football players, hits such as the one suffered by Adams are fueling calls for more rule changes in the National Football League. The degenerative brain disease has increasingly been found in postmortem tests on former players who had suffered repeated blows to the head. CTE can cause impulse control problems, memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment and eventually progressive dementia.
Researchers from VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine recently found evidence of CTE in 110 of 111 brains of deceased NFL players.
One of the biggest problems with CTE diagnosis is that scientists have yet to find an effective test for patients who are still living.