Former QB Kevin Kolb still feels the pain in retirement

Frank Schwab, Yahoo:

Players like Kevin Kolb leave our consciousness pretty fast. One year they're playing, the next they're not, and we rarely think about them again.
But Kolb still thinks about football. He has no choice. The lingering symptoms from concussions are with him every waking moment, he said.

Kevin Kolb was the 36th pick of the second round in the 2007 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. Kevin had dreams of being an NFL starting quarterback. Following the trade of QB Donovan McNabb to the Washington Redskins by the Eagles, Kevin took over as the starter in 2010. In the home opener against the Green Bay Packers, Kevin suffered his first concussion when he was sacked by LB Clay Matthews.

In 2012 while playing for the Arizona Cardinals, Kevin suffered two more concussions. Not all of the concussions were due to violent collisions. Peter King, MMQB:

The Redskins defender just ran by me at the end of a routine scramble and caught my helmet with his knee. I went numb from my neck down for about three seconds, but I stayed in the game. I didn’t know what it was or how serious it would turn out to be. It couldn’t be happening again.

The fourth concussion for Kevin came when he was playing for the Buffalo Bills in 2013. On his 29th birthday, Kolb suffered a severe concussion in a preseason game against the Washington Redskins. He did not return to the playing field in 2013.

Career highlight is Kolb becoming the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for more than 300 yards in each of his first two career starts. He is also the first QB called for an illegal horse collar tackle. A lifetime 78.9 QB rating with three NFL teams in six years is pretty impressive.

Following his release by the Buffalo Bills on March 11, 2014, the "Kevin Kolb" era was over.


Frank Schwab, Yahoo:

"With concussions, sometimes you don’t know what is a symptom and what is not. But some symptoms are impossible to ignore," Kolb wrote. "The ringing is like someone shooting a shotgun right next to my ear, every second of every day. It doesn’t go away.

On July 1, 2014, Kolb was arrested in Willacy County, Texas, for boating while intoxicated. Let us hope he can deal with his concussion issues. Kevin is just only 30 years old.


Paul Murphy is a freelance writer from New Hampshire.

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