Former NFL linebacker has desperate plea to fans as CTE slowly wipes his memories
Science is often criticized for being unable to truly capture the humanity of what it seeks to describe, beholden as it is to empiricism and a Joe Friday-like dedication to “just the facts.”
When chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is described by a clinical doctor, the symptoms sound horrifying enough. But they don’t truly capture the disease’s effects on an actual person.
When a scientist says healthy brain tissue is replaced by scar tissue-like “tau proteins,” an ordinary person is unlikely to realize what those proteins can do to a person’s ability to remember and feel certain emotions.
Enter Mark Maddox, former Buffalo Bills NFL linebacker, who is living with what is assuredly going to eventually be officially diagnosed with CTE when he dies (the other thing about the disease is that it can’t be officially confirmed, not yet at least, in a living brain).
Memories that should be indelible, in Maddox’s case the biggest comeback in football history when the Bills rallied from down 35-3 in the playoffs against the Houston Oilers to win the game 41-38 in overtime, don’t exist.
Maddox was right in the midst of the action in that historic game, but he doesn’t remember a thing about it.
Bubba McDowell of the Oilers had just taken an interception 58 yards to the house to put Houston up 35-3 and seemingly clinch a game that still had nearly a full half to play.
The Oilers lined up to kick off, and Al Del Greco’s kick hit Maddox in the calf as Maddox had his back to the play. A live ball ensued that, had Houston recovered, would have made the game even more ridiculous.
Maddox turned to try and retrieve the ball, and ended up falling on it at the 50-yard line.
Frank Reich, the Bills’ quarterback and now head coach of the Colts, took it from there, marching his troops into the end zone to make it 35-10. Nobody quite fully appreciated it, but it was the first of five touchdowns that would alter the course of football history forever.
Maddox, then a 24-year-old fighting for his career — and whose daughter had been diagnosed at birth with a separated optic nerve that could have blinded her — put all his pain and all his desperation and his very football soul into getting onto that football come hell or high water.
And when Sean Kirst of the Buffalo News first wrote about that play for the Syracuse Post-Standard in 2013 on the 20th anniversary of the game, Maddox remembered every detail.
Maddox is now a co-plaintiff in a massive class-action lawsuit against the NFL alleging that the league knew about, and covered up, the effects that concussions had on its players all while doing nothing to prevent or properly treat head injuries.
And like one of those old TV clip shows where a character takes a knock on the head, gets amnesia, and needs the rest of the cast to remind him of past happenings, Maddox has started “Memories With Mark” on social media, asking fans, friend and family to remind him of memories that have been replaced in his brain by those nasty little tau proteins at the root of one of the most horrifying injuries in sports.
Lara McKee, a Bills fan from Batavia, New York who runs a social media page for the Wild West Bills Backers in Glendale, Arizona, met Maddox at a watch party in January for the Bills’ first playoff game since 1999.
McKee used her Twitter influence to spread the word about Maddox and his quest to recover the memories so precious to his football life.
Super Bowl Bills Era players, we need your help. Our very own Mark Maddox has given me permission to share this. He’s losing his memories and is hoping that his former friends can send him an email with fond memories, to help him remember. Let’s fill his inbox.@buffalobills pic.twitter.com/d47reokQeq
— Lara Faye (@LaraFaye11) July 14, 2018
Maddox, born in Milwaukee and a collegiate veteran of Northern Michigan University, says he can’t remember anything about the old football life — not the smell of the grass or the sounds of the game down in the trenches. To his tau-laden brain, it’s as if those things never happened.
When Maddox saw a highlight video of a game against the Chargers in which he was all over the highlight reel, he knew that things had gone super-critical. Things that anyone would remember if they were there, impact plays made by an impact player, looked no more familiar to the guy who actually performed them than they would to a fan seeing the video for the first time.
Regarding his inability to remember, Maddox said, “It makes me tear up because I know I should.”
And with the help of social media and the hope that his scrambled brain can find new space and new pathways to store memories when they are brought afresh into his mind, Maddox might just reclaim some of his past glory from the scourge of pro football’s beautiful minds.
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