Ex-Packers TE Finley reveals he suffered 5 concussions during career

Former Green Bay Packers tight end Jermichael Finley revealed his ongoing battle with concussions Tuesday in an essay penned for The Players' Tribune.

Finley's concussion issues date back to his collegiate years and persisted through the end of his tenure with the Packers in 2013. He would officially retire two years later.

I suffered five concussions during my football career. The first came when I was in college at Texas, then I had a couple early in my NFL career that were kind of - I wouldn’t say minor … you just wouldn’t have been able to tell by watching the tape. They kind of went under the radar. I suffered a fourth in 2012 during training camp, and the one against the Bengals in 2013 made five.

The 30-year-old also wrote about a harrowing incident in which he briefly felt like a corpse after being concussed in a game against the Cleveland Browns:

After they got me up to the ICU, they cut my pants and jersey off with a pair of scissors, and then they brought in this machine - I don’t know what it was, but it was loud - to cut the shell of my helmet and shoulder pads off my body. And then I was just lying there, still stinking from the game, straight nude with a white sheet over me, like a dead body. I had no idea how severe my injury was at the time, but as scared as I was, I just kept thinking …

I’m gonna come back from this.

Finley later revealed that after he failed his physical with the Seattle Seahawks, the tight end eventually sought help at a neurological clinic and claims it may have saved his life.

And I honestly believe that if it weren’t for my wife and my kids, I never would have gotten any kind of help, and 10 years from now, I might have ended up one of those former players who put a bullet in his chest.

Finley's story is another horrific account of the perils of professional football, as the NFL tries to address the ongoing issue of brain trauma.