Rashean Mathis After Concussion Ended His Season: 'I Know There's Life After Football'
By Ashley Scoby
@AshleyScoby
Lions cornerback Rashean Mathis says he is symptom free now, after being put on injured reserve Saturday with a concussion, thus ending his season. The 35-year-old's future in the game is also still up in the air.
Mathis' concussion was undiagnosed for more than a week, at least partially because he didn't start showing symptoms until several days after the Vikings game in which he was first examined for a head injury. When the team arrived in London, Mathis began having headaches, then missed the game against the Chiefs that week with what was described by the team as "illness."
According to Mathis, he never experienced memory loss during the Vikings game or anything other than those headaches.
"If I was, I wouldn't have went back out there and played," he said. "I know there's life after football, and I take that very seriously. I joke all the time I want to be on the golf course playing when I'm 80 years old, not laying in bed. That's a true statement, even though I say it jokingly. I feel the organization handled it great."
Mathis also took exception to several reporters' use of the term "brain injury" to describe his situation. Although a concussion is "technically a brain injury," he said, that phrasing, combined with the news he was out for the season, created unnecessary panic from family, friends and fans.
Mathis' mother called him crying when she first heard the news of her son being put on IR, and originally thought his situation was more serious than a concussion.
"I do think they're serious and I think we should treat them as such, and I think the Lions organization treated it as such," he said. "I just wanted to publicly say it's a concussion, technically a brain injury. But I'm not going brain dead."
Mathis has chosen to stay in Detroit and remain with the team, even after being put on IR.
"For me to pack up and go back to Florida, that's not showing guys the right way to go," he said. "That's not professional. Could I do it? Yes, and no one amongst my peers would probably frown upon it, but to show them the right way to handle business as a whole, I think that's the bigger picture. That's the picture I'm looking at; that's the picture I'm trying to paint and let them know this is a professional sport."
That big picture might come into even starker contrast now for Mathis. Now in his 13th season in the NFL, Mathis said he previously had one diagnosed concussion, and one "questionable" concussion.
But regardless of the head injuries he has suffered, he said his future in the league is something he thought about even before he came to training camp this year. A decision of whether he'll be on the field next year will come much further down the road.
"Before I even stepped on the field this year, I considered it," he said. "So this happens, yeah – as a professional, I'd be naïve not to think about those types of things. There's life after football and you have to think about those things. When that time comes, a decision will be made. I'm here now."
