Play It Again Sports Widow Signs
'Information technology's Non the Ending He Wanted'
The ex-N.F.L. player Vincent Jackson was found dead in a hotel room days after his one-time team won the Super Bowl. In light of his C.T.E. diagnosis, his widow recounted Jackson'southward pass up.
Lindsey Jackson, who was married to Vincent Jackson, at their home in Tampa, Fla. Credit... Zack Wittman for The New York Times
TAMPA, Fla. — Vincent Jackson had a growing family, a flush banking company account from his sterling 12-year N.F.L. playing career and a thriving portfolio of business investments to keep him decorated. Intelligent, active, philanthropic and eager to delight, he was popular in the Tampa Bay area, where he and his family moved in 2012 when he joined the Buccaneers.
Jackson, it seemed, was an N.F.50. office model, until he was found dead and alone in a hotel room at age 38 in February, just days after his former squad won the Super Basin. Until and then, Jackson had hidden his alcoholism and declining cerebral health from the public. Those conditions, though, had accelerated during the pandemic, which had batty his business concern and pushed him into isolation.
According to the Hillsborough Canton Sheriff's Office, Jackson was establish expressionless on Feb. 15 at the Homewood Suites in Brandon, Fla., a few miles east of Tampa, where hotel staff members said he had been staying since Jan. 11.
On Dec. 22, the Hillsborough County medical examiner said in its autopsy that Jackson died of "chronic alcohol use." The examiner found "alcoholic cardiomyopathy," a eye disease caused by booze abuse; jaundice; renal failure; and "intoxication by ethyl alcohol."
Merely the Jackson family already had a clue to his demise: a diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Doctors at the C.T.E. Center at Boston University had determined that Jackson had a "mild" form of the affliction, which is associated with repeated hits to the head. C.T.East. has an array of symptoms, including memory loss, trouble managing daily chores and mood swings, which Jackson's married woman, Lindsey, said he exhibited with growing frequency in and after the 2016 Northward.F.L. season, his final ane.
"His whole plan in the Northward.F.Fifty. was to prepare himself up to not take these struggles," Lindsey Jackson said in an interview at her Tampa dwelling house. He had done everything to set a svelte retirement from football, she said, adding, "It'south not the ending he wanted."
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The C.T.E. diagnosis will provide only a partial coda for Lindsey Jackson and their four children. Though the family unit has come to grips with his absenteeism in the ten months since his death, many questions will never be answered. C.T.Due east. can only be diagnosed posthumously, then the Jacksons are left to piece together what was going on in his brain during the final years of his life.
Jackson was a three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver and had half-dozen seasons with more than 1,000 yards receiving. Protective of his image, Lindsey Jackson said she had been reluctant to speak about his struggles. Just she agreed to her first interview since his decease, she said, to assist the families of other former players spot and seek handling for C.T.E.'s effects.
"I think the bulletin is, if you lot played for a long time and you're experiencing symptoms, it's very likely that this is what it is," she said this month from her husband's "man cave," where five televisions, a wet bar and a Christmas tree decorated the room. "I didn't know that; Vincent didn't know that. We thought information technology was just concussions, and we'd dear for people to realize it'southward more than that."
She said they sometimes discussed the dangers football presented, notably subsequently he saw "Concussion," the 2015 flick about Dr. Bennet Omalu, who offset diagnosed C.T.E. in former Due north.F.50. players. Vincent Jackson had read studies that showed football players' risk of astringent cerebral decline afterward in life was associated with the length of their careers. He refused to allow their children to play tackle football until they reached loftier school. (Two of the Jackson children play flag football.)
"When I look back at the dissimilar conversations we've had, I feel like he probably knew that there was something going on without actually vocalizing it," Lindsey Jackson said.
Vincent Jackson grew upward in a military family and had a reputation for outworking other players. Teammates nicknamed him Invincible, and he took pride in never making excuses or showing weakness. He shrugged off concerns well-nigh brain injury by proverb he did non absorb many helmet-to-helmet hits considering he played wide receiver. He noted that he never had a diagnosed concussion.
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Diagnosed concussions, nevertheless, are not reliable indicators of C.T.Eastward. About 20 percent of people institute to have C.T.E. had never had a diagnosed concussion, according to doctors at the C.T.East. Heart at Boston University, who analyzed Jackson's brain.
A more direct clan are the thousands of smaller, subconcussive hits that Jackson would accept captivated in his 2 decades of practices and games. Players cope with these hits in any number of means — painkillers, recreational or medical marijuana and other treatments. According to his widow, Vincent Jackson'due south relief was booze. Belatedly in his career, she said, he told her that his encephalon "felt fuzzy" at times and that booze cleared it up.
Dr. Ann McKee, the professor of neurology and pathology at Boston Academy Schoolhouse of Medicine who diagnosed Jackson's C.T.Due east., described the damage to his encephalon in clinical terms. Information technology had "mild frontal lobe cloudburst" and a "split in the internal membrane" that could exist from the trauma of playing football, she said. There were multiple lesions, mostly in the frontal cortex of his brain.
McKee and Lindsey Jackson put that harm into everyday terms. She said that, showtime with his final twelvemonth in the N.F.L., her hubby began to forget conversations. He showed symptoms of depression for well-nigh half-dozen months after leaving the league, and without the structure of the football flavour, he no longer had to temper his drinking. By 2018, when he was 35, his attention span had diminished and he had difficulty solving problems. She said he became paranoid, shutting the blinds when he was home.
Like many former professional athletes, Jackson also grappled with the emotional torment of leaving 1 life filled with euphoric highs and bruising lows every Sunday for another, more sedate existence with time to stew over unresolved aspirations.
While he made the playoffs iv times with the San Diego Chargers, he never played in a Super Bowl, and the Buccaneers never fabricated the postseason and had merely one winning season during his five-flavour tenure with Tampa Bay.
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During his playing days, Jackson learned painfully that he was expendable. A huge image of him reaching to make a take hold of hung on a banner outside Raymond James Stadium, the Buccaneers' dwelling house, afterward his arrival in 2012. When injuries reduced his playing time, the banner was taken down, a gut dial for the player.
"Information technology's a business, and it hurts," Lindsey Jackson said. "Information technology'southward hard for anyone to deal with, I think."
After his contract with the Buccaneers ended subsequently the 2016 flavour, he threw himself, as he had planned, into his restaurants, real estate ventures and philanthropy, including his Jackson in Action 83 Foundation, which provides emotional and educational support for children in military families. Simply like many players, he had a tough time adapting to a life without the alliance of the team.
"You tin can prepare to have another career and make money another mode, merely nil e'er matches that," said Randy Grimes, who played nine pro seasons, all with the Buccaneers, left the Due north.F.L. with an addiction to painkillers and now helps former athletes with substance abuse issues at WhiteSands Treatment Centre in the Tampa Bay area.
The pandemic, though, altered Jackson's routines drastically. He fretted about having to lay off workers. Business meetings were virtual, diluting 1 of his favorite activities, networking. At abode most of the 24-hour interval, there were fewer barriers to grabbing a drink.
The success of his old team, the Buccaneers, who won the Super Bowl the week before he died, was both a source of joy and remorse. The team'southward championship had reminded him of the losing seasons he had endured with the team, Lindsey Jackson said.
When it became obvious to fifty-fifty his children that he did not have his drinking under control, she said, he moved into a hotel about 20 minutes away.
Paradigm
After Vincent Jackson stopped responding to family members, they asked law enforcement on February. x for help locating him. Two days after, sheriff'southward officers found him at the hotel, and "after assessing Jackson's well-beingness," they canceled the missing person'south example. 3 days subsequently that, a housekeeper found Jackson dead in his room.
Lindsey Jackson has gone back to work as a first-grade instructor, and their four children, ages 3 to 8, sprint around the house. Family unit accept stepped in to aid, including Lindsey'due south two sisters and Vincent's parents.
Ornaments dangle from the Christmas tree in the man cave: ceramic disks with photos of Lindsey, Vincent and their children alongside little footballs and football game helmets.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/16/sports/football/vincent-jackson-death-cte.html
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