North Carolina State quarterback Grayson McCall is retiring from football, he announced Wednesday after sustaining a head injury during a game earlier this month.
The 23-year-old was carted off the field during N.C. State's Oct. 5 game against Wake Forest after two defenders hit him as he scrambled during the first quarter. During the hit, his helmet came off and he lost control of the ball, then laid on the ground as a defender returned the fumble nearly the entire length of the field.
"I have battled injuries my whole career, but this is one that I cannot come back from," McCall wrote in a post on his Instagram.
"Brain specialists, my family, and I have come to the conclusion that it is in my best interest to hang the cleats up," he continued. "I have done everything I can to continue, but this is where the good Lord has called me to serve in a different space."
McCall's October concussion was his second already this season; he had missed two September games due to an injury sustained on Sept. 14 in a game against Louisiana Tech.
And it was at least the third of McCall's college career. His 2023 season, during which he played with Coastal Carolina, came to an early end last October after a head injury. As McCall tried to slide to the ground on a scramble against Arkansas State, a defender dove to tackle him with a helmet-to-helmet hit that left McCall lying limply on the turf.
At Coastal Carolina, McCall was a three-time Sun Belt Player of the Year. In his college career, he passed for more than 10,000 yards and 91 touchdowns in 46 games across parts of six seasons.
As a child, he wrote, he had "envisioned this crazy dream for myself to grow up and be just like the guys I was watching on TV."
"Unfortunately, my dream has been cut just short," he said. "I always played my hardest and to the best of my ability because I never knew what play would be my last. I have no regrets throughout my career."
In sports, awareness of the danger of concussions has grown dramatically over the past decade. The injury is a risk across youth sports, including in football, hockey, cheerleading and soccer. Concussions and repeated hits to the head are linked to dementia and other forms of neurological damage, including traumatic chronic encephalopathy, better known as CTE.
In football, the country's most popular sport, head injuries and concussions have become familiar topics to the tens of millions of viewers who tune in each Saturday and Sunday to watch college and professional games. At all levels of the sport, concussion protocols developed in consultation with neurologists guide when players are allowed to return to the field.
In the NFL, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa practiced Wednesday for the first time after sustaining the third diagnosed concussion of his professional career last month, an injury that had prompted widespread calls for his retirement given his concussion history.
"I love this game, and I love it to the death of me," Tagovailoa said at a press conference Monday. "There's risk in any and everything, and I'm willing to play the odds."
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