DeAndre Levy Responds to Jim Irsay's Comments on the Risks of Playing Football

Detroit Lions linebacker DeAndre Levy took issue with Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay's comments regarding the dangers of football Monday.

Levy posted on Instagram about Irsay's remarks and called him out:

Daniel Kaplan of SportsBusiness Journal wrote down excerpts from an interview his outlet conducted with Irsay at the NFL owners' meetings. The subject matter focused on health and safety issues for players, which is when Irsay opened up and left himself vulnerable to criticism.

Irsay noted researchers still have a lot to learn about safety issues, implying they have not concluded enough to vilify the NFL for dismissing brain-injury consequences:

"

I believe this: that the game has always been a risk, you know, and the way certain people are. Look at it. You take an aspirin, I take an aspirin, it might give you extreme side effects of illness and your body ... may reject it, where I would be fine.

So there is so much we don't know. ... To try to tie football, like I said, to suicides or murders or what have you, I believe that is just so absurd as well and it is harmful to other diseases, harmful to things like ... when you get into the use of steroids, when you get into substance abuse, you get into the illness of alcohol and addiction.

It's a shame that gets missed, because there [are] very deadly diseases there, for instance, like alcoholism and addiction. That gets pushed to the side and [a person] says, 'Oh, no. Football.' To me, that's really absurd.

"

Kaplan followed his report with some key context on a leadership position Irsay occupies:

The last part of the aforementioned excerpt makes Levy's comments noteworthy, though. The NFL suspended Irsay for six games and fined him $500,000 in September 2014 as he battled painkiller abuse and was convicted of driving while intoxicated.

After being rewarded with a four-year contract extension prior to the 2015 campaign, Levy appeared in only one game last season because of a hip injury that required surgery, so the 29-year-old understands the physical dangers that loom on the NFL gridiron.

With regard to head injuries specifically, though—in contrast to Irsay's comments—the NFL acknowledged earlier this month for the first time that there is a link between chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and football-related head trauma.

Time and more extensive studies will tell the significance of the punishment football players take and how it correlates to the degenerative brain disease. However, a 2015 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University from last year found 87 of 91 ex-NFL players had CTE.

It's easy to oppose Irsay's seemingly antiquated stance on the situation, but Levy didn't have to resort to a personal attack in disagreeing with him.