Back in November of 2017, then New Orleans Saints tight end Coby Fleener suffered what would prove to be a season-ending concussion.
Fleener spoke with Don Banks of The Athletic, and he admitted the symptoms are “still there, unfortunately.”
This latest concussion was the fifth of Fleener’s career, and while he says he would like to play again, his attitude to this has been changing as the symptoms continue to be an issue.
“Ummm. I don’t know,” Fleener said, per banks. “That’s a really hard question to answer, because, like I said, if you’d asked me a day or two after it happened, I would have said of course. But now I’m kind of taking it as the cliche’ goes, one day at a time. Tomorrow if I wake up and there are no symptoms, then we approach things differently.”
The Saints released Fleener back in May, and at the time head coach Sean Payton acknowledged that Fleener was still dealing with concussion symptoms. Over a month later, and nothing has changed on this front.
Given what we know about brain trauma, and given some of the more extreme cases in which players continue to play even after having suffered multiple concussions, Fleener would be well advised to strongly consider retiring. We wish him nothing but the best as he continues to deal with this extremely frustrating set of circumstances.