John Urschel would have been in Cincinnati right now, perhaps as the Ravens’ starting center for their season-opener against the Bengals.
Instead, Urschel will be on the campus of MIT doing math. And, no, he won’t be watching.
Urschel called Ravens Head Coach John Harbaugh to inform him that he was retiring, at age 26, just a couple of hours before the team’s first training camp practice on July 27.
It also came two days after the results of the most in-depth study on the relationship between playing football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was released in The New York Times, revealing that of 111 NFL players’ brains, 110 had signs of brain damage.