Brett Favre figures he likely suffered ‘thousands’ of concussions while playing football

Brett Favre owns the NFL record for career interceptions with 336, and he ranks fourth all-time with 508 touchdown passes. But those numbers don’t come close to a metric that Favre believes numbers in the thousands.

That, frighteningly, is the number of concussions Favre thinks he suffered over his 20-year NFL career. 

In a recent interview with Bubba the Love Sponge, Favre said he once thought he only had three concussions. But now, after better understanding concussion symptoms, he thinks he’s injured his brain more than 1,000 times. 

“The thing about concussions is we still don’t know a lot about them,” Favre said. “If you had asked me this 10 years ago, how many concussions I had, I would’ve said three. The reason I would have said three, I thought concussions were where you get knocked out, where you black out for a period of time you don’t know where you are, memory loss, dizzy. A boxer gets knocked and tries to get up, his legs are rubber, that’s a concussion.”

“What we now know is concussions happen all the time,” Favre continued. “You get tackled and your head hits the turf, you see the flashes of light or ringing in your ears, but you’re able to play. Based on that, thousands, had to be, because every time my head hit the turf, there was ringing or stars going, flashbulbs, but I was still able to play.”

Despite his propensity to hold onto the football and take crushing hits, the former Packers signal-caller still holds the NFL’s ironman streak by starting in 297 straight NFL games. The NFL implemented the concussion protocol in 2009, one season before Favre’s last in the league. 

“That’s what’s kind of frightening about the concussion thing,” Favre said. “It’s the ones that seem minor that do the damage, because you’re able to play and keep going, and still today, there’s probably guys that have them, and they’re like, ’I’m not going out.’”

The three-time MVP has previously said he doesn’t think kids should play tackle football until they’re 14 years old. 

“Having kids play before high school is just not worth the risk,” Favre said in a statement last year. ​​​​​”CTE is a terrible disease, and we need to do everything we can to prevent it for the next generation of football players.”