“Brain is a little confused:” Former Steelers WR Markus Wheaton shares a creepy history of injury

The touchdowns. The big games. The cheers of the crowd. Every NFL recipient dreams of this. In the best case, the former Pittsburgh Steelers WR Markus Wheaton made these games. But his career was unfortunately defined more by injuries than by receptions. The fame of playing football is gone. The injuries? They stay.

Wheaton opened less traveled on the street last month in an open interview and discussed a difficult NFL career, which he still felt.

“Too many to count,” said Wheaton when hosting Tiffany Rosenbaum how many injuries he suffered. “Too many to count. There were many operations at the back. There were concessions, right? So my brain is a little confused. I have to deal with this everyday life.”

Wheaton did not state the challenges with which he still faces today, but the long -lasting effects of concealing the brain are now known. Memory loss, mood swings and CTE, which led to the death of many players, including the Hall of Fame Center Mike Webster, were all the results of the football game.

It is not clear how many head injuries have suffered Wheaton in his career, but he used the pluralized “concussion” in an interview. In 2012, after a collision with medium air against Washington State, he was installed in the state of Oregon in the crew of the brain.

“When I shook it out, I knew what was going on, but at the moment I was dazed,” he said at the time after the game.

Despite the injury, Wheaton played against Arizona State in the next competition of Oregon State. Every concussion is different, but players generally miss the players at least one week of action. If you return from a concussion too early and suffer additional hits on the head, the injury can increase because Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The consequences were the most serious, but far from the only injury that Markus Wheaton had suffered. According to Haie, he had the following injuries:

– several finger breaks
– shoulder excuses
– torn Labrum
– torn groin area
– Knee coloring

Wheaton, a selection of the Steelers in the third round in 2013, said the injury he suffered in 2017, published by the Steelers and signed by the Chicago Bears, was most frustrating.

“I go to catch a ball and my little finger, the bone comes out of my little finger,” he said. “And I look at my hand and my pinky is to the side. There is blood and I take my glove out. And I am how shit. And it ate me damn. “

Wheaton only explained the injury to his “fragile” label and planted doubts about the bear who had just signed him.

“I called my father,” he said, after he had informed himself from doctors that he had to be operated on. “I don't cry much. I don't think I ever cry. But it hit me hard. I was so frustrated. It ate me.” That was probably the worst thing I was mentally when it came to the injuries.

He performed with the bears in 11 games this year, but only caught three passes before he hardly played the following season. The Philadelphia Eagles took a plane on him in 2019, but cut it off in September. Wheaton quoted bad mental health – “I was confused” – as the reason why he retired. He is now investing in real estate and is the managing director of a landscape construction company in Arizona.

Markus Wheaton performed in only 59 of them in six NFL games and possible 96 games. When he played in the field and his 2015 performance against the Seattle Seahawks in 2015 from a Steelers' receiver to the best in this century. But he will remain a “what” because of these injuries. The silver strip is Wheaton has a much better understanding of his head injuries than the players in front of him and enables him to get future help he needs.