Seattle, WA- Joshua Perry decided to call it quits after he had his sixth concussion in his NFL career. Perry released a statement about his retirement on his Twitter account.“It wasn’t from a high velocity, big contact play,” he said. “It was a very pedestrian thing, and that was a huge concern to me.“The last thing I want to do is put the health of my brain and my future well being in jeopardy over a game and a paycheck.”
Since Perry has been in the league, he has not had the opportunity to play a full season, because of concussions that he had sustained early in his career. Perry was with the Chargers and Colts practice squad before the Seahawks made a move to sign him this year. Despite the sudden retirement, many players showed their support for him and were optimistic about his future.
Concussions have been the main issue that the NFL is attempting to crack down on. The NFL put new rules to decrease the number of hits to the head, which could cause CTE later on in life for players. CTE has been linked to concussions during many different studies. “We learn more from science,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said February 5 at his news conference ahead of Super Bowl 50. “We learn more by our own experience and we have made great progress. We continue to make rule changes to our game to make the game safer and protect our players from unnecessary injury, from acts that we see can lead to increased probability of an injury.”
Perry understood that his health was more important than the money of the NFL and decided that was not where he needed to be anymore.
