San Francisco 49ers: Sifting Through the Aftermath of Chris Borland's Retirement

Chris Borland’s shock decision to retire at age 24, as first reported on Outside the Lines, speaking to ESPN.com's Mark Fainaru-Wada, is stunning.

This is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented—never has a young player with so much success in year one and a clear starting role waiting for him retired because of the potential for injuries.  You have one-hit wonders, such as former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Greg Cook, who suffered injuries and were forced to call it a career early, but nothing like this.

The San Francisco 49ers couldn’t have seen this coming.  In a period of eight days, they went from having the best inside linebacking corps in football to it being a position of clear need, with Patrick Willis and Borland hanging it up.

The loss of Borland might actually hurt more than Willis—to compete in the NFL in the salary-cap era, you need to have quality players being paid less than market value, like Borland was.  However, this really isn’t about on-field ramifications—not yet, anyway.  This is about the health and safety of NFL players.

Billy Hurst/Associated Press/Associated Press

I can’t blame Borland for making the decision, even as I find it incredible that he made it.  The decision about whether or not I would play professional football was an easy one—I have neither the genetics nor the work ethic to come anywhere near the NFL.

I imagine the same is true for the majority of readers.  We dream about making the NFL one day, thinking how great it would be to win a Super Bowl or break records, without having to consider the physical toll it would take on our bodies.

Borland, like any other NFL player, does have to take that into account.  In his interview with Outside the Lines, Borland cited the cases of players such as Mike Webster, Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling, all of whom were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy stemming from head injuries during their playing days.

That’s just a short list, as well—the NFL will face another reminder of the potential long-term effects of playing the game when Junior Seau is posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame this August.  That’s not even getting into the severe, crippling non-brain injuries many former players have had to deal with.

With all of those stories of suicides, brain injuries and post-career handicaps, it’s easy to see why someone would wonder if playing in the NFL is worth it.

Scrolling through Wikipedia’s list of players who had been diagnosed with CTE or other concussion-related injuries is a sobering experience.  Is the glory, success and prestige of being an elite football player worth the potential long-term after-effects?  It’s a decision that every potential NFL player will have to make at some point in his career.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

The NFL released a statement in the wake of Borland’s announcement, saying that football is “safer than ever.”  This is technically correct.  Better medical equipment, better diagnostics and better rules have all been implemented.  A slow shift in the culture of the game has also begun, as the long-term effect of concussions has come to be better understood.

While there are still plenty of coaches and trainers out there who were raised in the “rub some dirt on it” mentality, that will slowly leave the game as a more enlightened generation moves into those roles.  These shifts don’t happen overnight.

That doesn’t, however, mean that football is suddenly safe.  If anything, the debate over the game has intensified because the awareness and perception of the dangers of playing the game have grown much, much faster than any safety measures could possibly be implemented.

The game is safer than it was in, say, the 1970s, but it’s perceived as more dangerous because no one really talked about how dangerous it was back then.

Imagine that whatever it is you love to do carried the risk of long-term physical or mental problems.  Imagine that whatever you’re doing right now might directly lead to you having Alzheimer’s or ALS in 30 years.  Imagine that it would wreak havoc on your joints and ligaments, leading to you barely being able to walk.

I can’t blame Borland at all for looking at that potential future and deciding to get out with his health intact, even if I selfishly regret that we won’t get to see such a talented young player excel for the next decade in the NFL.

Dan Grossi/Associated Press/Associated Press

I don’t know what will happen long term with the NFL.  My gut feeling is that better treatment options and safety equipment will be developed over the next generation or so that will keep football going strong.  That’s been the history of the game from day one—the 1930s saw leather helmets and facemasks added and the 1940s saw helmets become mandatory and so forth.

You can look at any decade of the game and see rules and equipment being added to help protect players' safety, in addition to the general improvements in medicine and preventative training that have been made.  The game will change but not in ways it hasn’t already.

I don’t believe that we’re going to see an epidemic of players leaving the game or that it will become a shadow of itself, like boxing has become from its heyday as America’s most popular sport.

I have no idea what safety ideas will be implemented in the future—going back to multiple bye weeks per team?  Limiting the number of plays a player can play?  Putting weight limits to reduce the amount of force being thrown around?—but the history of the game has shown that things will be done to improve players' safety.

I also don’t exactly think Borland’s model is going to become a common one for NFL players.  It’s hard for me to imagine most people dedicating so much of their life to the game, from peewee football through the grueling slogs of high school and college and then finally achieving the dream of the NFL, only to hang it up after one season.

That’s likely what’s hardest to understand about Borland’s decision—how someone can take something he’s put so much time into and leave it just when those dreams are becoming realized.  It does become more understandable when considering the recent CTE studies and the attention they’ve drawn, not to mention Borland’s own experience playing through “what he believed to be a concussion,” according to Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru.  But even then, the timing still appears to be the most bizarre aspect of this story.

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

Instead, I think you’ll see two divergent models of potential players springing up over the next generation.  I think you’ll see more people retiring early in the manner that Patrick Willis did—at age 30 or so, after a solid NFL career, as opposed to some of the 15- or 16-year careers that we’ve seen.

At a certain point, there are diminishing returns to being an NFL star.  I can see players, being happy with their success in their 20s, deciding to not subject their bodies to another 5-10 years of punishment and retiring at the top of their game.

I think you will also see more and more young players deciding not to go into football at younger ages—basically, ending their NFL careers before they have a chance to get that far.  Plenty of players will still play the game because they love it, but with more and more medical facts and stories being circulated, it makes the decision to start playing football a tougher one.

We’re not going to run out of people wanting to play in the NFL anytime soon or anything like that—the game isn’t dying on the vine.  There are thousands of players who’d love to be in the NFL, and it’s not like active players are retiring by the dozen or top college prospects are deciding not to continue into the NFL.

It’ll be subtle and gradual changes in the types of players making their way through the system and in the length of their careers once they get there more than a catastrophic loss of talent.

So, no, I don’t think we’ll see a wave of Chris Borlands making it to the league and then retiring.  That doesn’t make his decision any easier to take for 49ers fans, but this decision wasn’t made for them or for his ex-teammates.

This was Borland's decision regarding his own health, and at the end of the day, you have to respect the ability to make a difficult and informed decision like that.  I wish Chris Borland nothing but the best in his post-football life.

Bryan Knowles is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers.  Follow him @BryKno on Twitter.