Former wide receiver Wes Welker suffered at least six documented concussions during his 12-year NFL career, and he admits there were some things he’d do differently as a player, in hindsight.
At the same time, he’s trying not to worry about what’s in store for him in the future as a result of those persistent head injuries.
“I can’t sit here and worry about it; I don’t want to live my life that way,” Welker said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “Is there a possibility [of long-term implications]? Maybe, I don’t know. We’ll have to see how everything kind of happens, I guess.
“I’m going to try to do everything I can to put myself in a position where I’m healthy and hopefully good. If I’m good, then great. At the same time, I’m not going to live my life worrying if my brain is going to explode at any second.”
Welker used to refer to himself as the “poster child” for concussions, and went through a stretch of three in nine months beginning with the start of the 2013 season. And while he was hailed as a player for his toughness and willingness to go across the middle, that also put him in harm’s way.
“I don’t know if I’d really change much -- who I am or how I went about my business -- because a lot of that aggressiveness and the reason [for success] was because of the way I played,” he said. “When I felt like I wasn’t playing that way, I wasn’t playing to my best ability.”
“Do I wish, looking back, [that I] would have gone out of bounds or gotten down, earlier in my career especially? There’s always a warrior mentality, but trying to be smart about some of those things; I mean, yeah, I probably would have. When you don’t have any concussions and you’re just kind of going out there recklessly, you’re 20-something years old, you don’t think about it. You just go play.”
Of course, he has an opportunity to share that wisdom now, as he’s taken a job as an offensive/special teams assistant with the Texans. Hopefully he can convince some of the players he’s working with to do as he says and not as he did.
