Football season has returned to America. This weekend marks the first major weekend of the 2026 college football season, with stadiums once again filled across the country and millions of Americans watching from home. This coming week, the NFL begins its regular season. At the same time, high school teams are beginning their fall schedules, while younger players across the country are returning to youth and middle school football. For millions of families, this is one of the most anticipated times of the year. Football remains deeply embedded in American culture, from children playing their first organized games to the enormous audiences that will watch college and professional football throughout the fall.

Yet the beginning of another football season should also provide an opportunity to ask questions that extend beyond wins, losses and championships. As another generation of children, adolescents and young adults begins accumulating practices and games involving repetitive head impacts, we still do not fully understand what those exposures may mean decades later. Discussion surrounding chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE, has largely centered on professional football players. That focus may be far too narrow. If repetitive head trauma can produce neurological consequences that persist long after someone stops playing, then CTE is not simply an NFL occupational health problem. It is potentially a public health, mental health and community-safety issue involving a vastly larger population of Americans who played football but never came close to reaching the NFL.

The timing of this discussion is particularly significant because former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez is preparing to plead guilty rather than face a jury over an October 2025 confrontation in downtown Indianapolis that left a 69-year-old truck driver injured and Sanchez hospitalized with multiple stab wounds. According to police and court records, Sanchez, who appeared intoxicated, confronted truck driver Perry Tole near a hotel loading dock. Authorities allege that Sanchez entered Tole’s truck without permission and became physically aggressive. Tole reportedly first used pepper spray and ultimately stabbed Sanchez when Sanchez continued advancing toward him. Prosecutors treated Sanchez, rather than Tole, as the alleged aggressor, and Sanchez was subsequently charged with felony battery and several misdemeanors. His attorneys have now filed a motion indicating that he intends to plead guilty rather than proceed to trial.

The Sanchez case should be evaluated on its own evidence. There is currently no credible public evidence establishing that Sanchez has CTE, and the disease can presently be definitively diagnosed only after death. Nor should a history of playing football become an excuse for criminal conduct. Yet Sanchez’s case arrives alongside a troubling series of arrests involving current and former NFL players and against a growing body of research concerning the long term consequences of repetitive head trauma. Taken together, these developments raise a question worth investigating rather than dismissing: What happens when we stop thinking about football related brain trauma exclusively as a sports medicine problem and begin considering its potential implications for community-safety? More importantly, what happens when we stop limiting that question to professional football players?

The NFL Cases Are Only the Visible Cases

Sanchez is hardly the only current or former NFL player to encounter the criminal justice system during the past 12 months. The cases below involve dramatically different allegations, and their inclusion should not be interpreted as evidence that these individuals have CTE or that football caused their alleged behavior. An arrest is also not a conviction, several of these cases remain pending, and some of the players have expressly denied the allegations against them. Nevertheless, when discussing whether repetitive head trauma warrants greater attention as a potential community-safety concern, the number and seriousness of recent incidents involving people with extensive football histories deserve examination.

Among the current and former NFL players arrested during the past 12 months are:

• Mark Sanchez, former New York Jets quarterback: Arrested following the October 2025 Indianapolis confrontation with 69-year-old truck driver Perry Tole. Prosecutors alleged that Sanchez was the aggressor and charged him with felony battery as well as misdemeanor offenses. Sanchez has now filed a motion indicating that he will plead guilty to at least one charge rather than proceed to trial.
• Antonio Brown, former Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver: Arrested in November 2025 on an attempted murder charge arising from a shooting in Miami. Authorities allege that Brown obtained a handgun and fired at a man following an earlier physical confrontation.
• Josh Jacobs, Green Bay Packers running back: Arrested in May 2026 following an alleged domestic violence incident. Jacobs was initially booked on five allegations, including felony strangulation and suffocation, along with misdemeanor allegations. Jacobs has vehemently denied the allegations. The case is particularly disturbing because allegations surrounding the incident concern violence against an intimate partner and because video evidence reportedly became part of the investigation.
• Jonathon Cooper, Denver Broncos linebacker and pass rusher: Arrested in June 2026 following a domestic dispute. Charges stemming from that incident ultimately included felony second degree assault by strangulation. Cooper was arrested a second time approximately one week later on allegations that he violated a protection order and repeatedly attempted to contact his girlfriend.
• Alaric Jackson, Los Angeles Rams offensive tackle: Arrested in June 2026 on suspicion of felony domestic violence after Los Angeles police responded to a domestic battery call. Jackson was released after posting bond. Importantly, an arrest does not mean that prosecutors ultimately filed or proved criminal charges against him.
• Rashod Bateman, Baltimore Ravens wide receiver: Arrested in June 2026 and charged with misdemeanor battery involving family violence, reckless conduct and criminal damage to property. Authorities alleged that Bateman broke a vehicle window during an incident involving the mother of his child while their infant was inside. His attorney has disputed the characterization of the incident and urged that the judicial process be allowed to proceed.
• Terrion Arnold, former Detroit Lions cornerback: Arrested in June 2026 on eight felony counts, four involving robbery with a firearm or deadly weapon and four involving kidnapping, in connection with an alleged February incident in Florida. Authorities allege that Arnold was involved in an effort to detain and assault people believed to have stolen property. Arnold has categorically denied involvement and maintained his innocence.
• Marcellus Wiley, former Buffalo Bills, San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys and Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end: Arrested in Florida in July 2026 following an alleged domestic incident involving his wife. Wiley has denied that a physical altercation occurred and denied the allegations against him.
• Keenan Allen, Indianapolis Colts wide receiver: Arrested on August 30, 2026, on preliminary misdemeanor allegations involving operating a vehicle while intoxicated. Police investigating a vehicle reportedly observed signs of intoxication before Allen was taken into custody.

This should not be interpreted as a comprehensive census of every current or former football player arrested in the United States during the past year. More importantly, these cases cannot establish a causal relationship between football, CTE and criminal behavior. What they do provide is a reason for researchers to ask whether neurological injury has any relationship to later behavioral outcomes among people with extensive histories of repetitive head impacts. That inquiry must be conducted scientifically rather than rhetorically and should account for alcohol and substance use, mental health histories, socioeconomic circumstances, previous trauma, relationship conflict and the numerous other factors that can contribute to harmful behavior.

Most importantly, however, concentrating on famous NFL cases may direct our attention toward the wrong population. Professional players are visible because their names generate headlines when they are arrested. They represent only a tiny fraction of the Americans who have spent years playing tackle football. If repetitive head impacts have consequences extending decades beyond the playing field, the much larger community-safety question concerns the millions of former Pop Warner, middle school and high school players whose names will never appear in national news stories.

We May Be Looking at the Wrong Population

Most public discussion of CTE has focused on NFL players, which is understandable. Professional players are highly visible, their careers involve repeated collisions at tremendous speed, and their illnesses and deaths attract national attention. Yet professional football players constitute only a tiny fraction of the Americans who have played tackle football. If the underlying concern is cumulative exposure to repetitive head impacts rather than simply participation in the NFL, concentrating primarily on professional athletes may cause us to overlook a vastly larger population.

Before there is an NFL player, there is often a college player. Before the college player, there is a high school player, and before high school there may be middle school and youth football. Some children begin organized tackle football at five, six or seven years old. Most of those children will never play professionally. Many will never play college football. Their football careers will simply end, after which they will become construction workers, police officers, teachers, social workers, accountants, truck drivers, business owners, husbands, fathers and neighbors. They disappear from football statistics while continuing to live in American communities for another 50 or 60 years.

That population could ultimately prove considerably more important to the community-safety discussion than the relatively small population of former NFL players. A person who played tackle football from elementary school through high school may have accumulated years of repetitive head impacts during an important period of neurological development, yet once that person’s athletic career ends there may be no organized system monitoring his long term neurological health. There is no NFL medical program, players’ association or league program following the former high school player into middle age. Unless symptoms become severe enough to attract medical attention, neither the individual nor his family may ever connect later behavioral, cognitive or emotional changes with a history of repetitive head trauma.

Shane Tamura Changes the Conversation

The case of Shane Tamura makes this broader question particularly difficult to dismiss. Tamura was not an NFL player and was not a former professional athlete whose brain had been subjected to years of NFL collisions. He reportedly began playing tackle football at approximately six years old and continued through high school. On July 28, 2025, at age 27, Tamura entered 345 Park Avenue in Manhattan, the building housing the NFL’s headquarters, and opened fire. He killed four people and wounded another before killing himself. Tamura left behind a note expressing his belief that he suffered from CTE and asking that his brain be examined.

The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner subsequently examined Tamura’s brain and announced on September 26, 2025, that neuropathologists had found “unambiguous diagnostic evidence” of low stage CTE. That finding does not establish that CTE caused Tamura to commit mass murder. The medical examiner appropriately cautioned that scientific understanding of the physical and mental manifestations of CTE continues to develop, and Tamura reportedly had a history of mental health difficulties. Human violence is rarely attributable to a single cause, and it would be scientifically irresponsible to transform one postmortem diagnosis into a simple explanation for an extraordinarily complicated act.

Nevertheless, Tamura’s case should fundamentally broaden the public discussion. Here was a 27-year-old man who never played professional football and reportedly never played college football but had played tackle football from childhood through high school and was subsequently found to have CTE. The appropriate response is not to declare that CTE caused his violence. The appropriate response is to ask how many other people who played youth, middle school and high school football may have sustained neurological damage that neither they nor their families recognize. We currently do not know the answer, and that lack of knowledge is itself a community-safety concern.

The Invisible Population May Number in the Millions

The community-safety implications become much larger once the focus moves beyond professional football. NFL players represent an unusually visible and relatively easy population to identify. Their playing histories are documented, their injuries often appear in medical and league records, and many remain connected to organizations capable of providing medical services after retirement. The former middle school or high school player is entirely different. Once football ends, his exposure history effectively disappears into the general population.

Consider what this means over multiple generations. Millions of American boys and men have participated in tackle football at some point during childhood or adolescence. Many played for years without ever reaching college athletics. Some participated during eras when concussions were poorly understood, when players were encouraged to “shake it off,” and when repetitive subconcussive impacts received almost no attention. These men are now spread throughout American communities, ranging in age from their twenties to their seventies and beyond.

We do not currently know how many are experiencing neurological consequences associated with their earlier exposure. We do not know how frequently those consequences may manifest as depression, memory impairment, emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, substance misuse, difficulty controlling anger or other behavioral changes. Most importantly for community-safety, we do not know whether some combination of neurological injury and other social, psychological or environmental factors may increase risks for certain forms of harmful behavior. Those questions should not be answered through speculation, but neither should they remain unasked simply because the affected population never played professional football.

CTE Is Not an Explanation for Every Violent Act

Any serious discussion of CTE and community-safety requires clear boundaries. We should not diagnose Mark Sanchez, Josh Jacobs, Antonio Brown, Darron Lee or any other living football player from newspaper reports. CTE currently requires postmortem examination for definitive diagnosis, and criminal behavior by someone who once played football is not evidence that the individual has the disease. Millions of people have played football without committing violent crimes, just as many people suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders never become violent.

The scientific question is considerably more nuanced. CTE has been associated with cognitive, mood and behavioral problems, while researchers continue investigating precisely how those symptoms develop and how they interact with other factors. Violence itself is multifactorial. Neurological injury may coexist with alcohol or drug misuse, mental illness, childhood trauma, relationship conflict, economic instability and numerous other variables. A community-safety framework should therefore resist the temptation to identify one universal cause while remaining willing to examine potentially preventable risk factors.

The relevant question is not whether CTE “makes football players violent.” That formulation is both scientifically unsupported and unnecessarily stigmatizing. A better question is whether repetitive football related head trauma can produce neurological vulnerabilities in some people that, when combined with other individual and environmental risk factors, contribute to behavioral or mental health problems with consequences for families and communities. That is an empirical question, and it deserves sustained investigation.

Community-Safety Means Asking What Happened Before the Crisis

Community-safety is not about finding excuses for harmful behavior. Perry Tole had every right to go to work without allegedly being confronted and attacked by a much younger and physically powerful former professional athlete. Victims of domestic violence have a right to protection regardless of whether an alleged offender once played football. People accused of crimes remain entitled to due process, while people harmed by violence deserve protection, accountability and support.

Community-safety nevertheless requires us to ask what could have been identified before a violent encounter occurred. That is why housing instability can become a community-safety issue, why untreated mental illness can become a community-safety issue, why substance misuse can become a community-safety issue and why access to education and employment can become community-safety issues. The purpose is not to excuse behavior after someone has been harmed. The purpose is to understand conditions that can be addressed before harm occurs.

If participation in tackle football exposes some children and adolescents to neurological injuries whose consequences can follow them for decades, then those consequences do not remain on the football field. They enter homes, marriages, workplaces, schools, automobiles and neighborhoods. They become issues for health care providers, social workers, families, behavioral health systems and potentially the criminal justice system. As another football season begins, that is the question worth carrying beyond the stadium. We need longitudinal research following youth football participants well into adulthood, research comparing people with different lengths and intensities of exposure, and research examining whether histories of repetitive head trauma are disproportionately represented among populations experiencing particular behavioral, psychiatric or criminal justice outcomes. We need that research without prejudging what it will find.

Until those questions are answered, CTE cannot responsibly remain merely an NFL problem. It is potentially a public health issue, a childhood development issue, a mental health issue and, increasingly, a community-safety issue.

Sources Cited

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2015). Tackling in youth football. Pediatrics, 136(5).

Associated Press. (2026, September 3). Ex-Fox Sports analyst Mark Sanchez plans guilty plea to charges stemming from fight outside hotel.

New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner. (2025, September 26). Statement from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner on neuropathology findings for the perpetrator of mass shooting at 345 Park Avenue.

Wong, R. H., Wong, A. K., & Bailes, J. E. (2014). Frequency, magnitude, and distribution of head impacts in Pop Warner football: The cumulative burden. Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, 118, 1–4.

American Journal of Epidemiology. (2022). Research examining the relationship between level of American football participation and diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Additional reporting consulted includes Associated Press, Reuters, CBS News, NFL.com, The Washington Post and local criminal justice reporting concerning the individual cases discussed above.