Advertisement

Stampeders' draft pick Tyler Varga retires from NFL at 22 over concussions

Dave Furst interviews Colts Running Back Tyler Varga

There have been plenty of CFL players retiring over concussions, and now there's a CFL draft pick who's walking away from football at age 22 after a long battle with head injuries. That would be Finnish-Canadian running back Tyler Varga, who the Calgary Stampeders chose 19th overall in the 2015 CFL draft after strong college careers at Western (2011) and Yale (2012-2014). Varga was the fourth-ranked CFL prospect that year and would have gone much higher if he hadn't already signed with the NFL's Indianapolis Colts as an undrafted free agent, and he then went on to overcome the substantial odds and make the Colts' roster, seeing game action last September. However, he suffered a concussion on kickoff coverage in Week Three against Tennessee and had symptoms for four months. Here's what he told Zak Keefer of The Indianapolis Star in May about how that concussion initially affected him:

He remembers calling his parents on the bus ride after the game, waking up the next morning feeling like he had the flu, then ignoring it and showing up for work anyway. He lifted weights. He practiced. He went home and went to bed.

“I wanted to believe I was just sick,” he says.

He wasn’t. The following day, Tuesday, was when Varga was forced to come to grips with what was wrong. He’d been denying the obvious to himself, ignoring the signs — the fatigue, the dizziness, the confusion. It was the Colts’ off day. Varga was apartment shopping. He toured four complexes that afternoon, then, sitting in the parking lot after he walked out of the last one, it hit him: He couldn’t remember being inside any of the apartments. Something was wrong.“It was pretty scary at that point,” Varga says. “I mean, I was in one of the apartments like five minutes earlier.”

Keefer's whole piece is a good read on how that concussion affected Varga and how some of the team's suggested treatments were potentially problematic. At that point in May, though, Varga was symptom-free and looking forward to trying to make the Colts again, and head coach Chuck Pagano told reporters Wednesday that Varga had looked great in their organized team activities:

Joe Linta, Varga's agent, told Maya Sweedler of The Yale Daily News this change of plans happened because Varga was worried about what would happen if he had another concussion.

Joe Linta ’83, Varga’s agent, said the decision to return for a second year or retire had been weighing on the running back for “the last couple weeks,” and that the concussion he suffered last year was a factor in the decision. In an Indianapolis Star feature this past May, Varga noted that effects of his injury, which included dizziness, confusion and fatigue, lasted as long as four months.

“He just decided that he wanted to move on with his life, and the risk of another traumatic injury was too great,” Linta said. “He knows the career and life he’ll have off the field, and he didn’t want to take any more risk.”

Varga, who earned a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale, has been open about his desire to attend medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon. He was not immediately available for comment Tuesday on his short-term future plans.

So, it looks like there's a bright future ahead for Varga outside of football, and his decision to retire is certainly understandable, especially given how severely that concussion affected him. His retirement does mark the end of one of the more unique football stories in some time, though. As Roger Kelly wrote at American Football International last fall, Varga had a remarkably unusual path to the NFL:

He was born in Sweden, holds a Canadian and Finnish passport, speaks English, French and Swedish and has deep Croatian roots and now he is playing in the NFL.

Tyler Varga is the first Canadian/Finnish/Swedish/Croatian player with those bonafide roots to make it to the NFL.

...He was born in Stockholm, Sweden but his mother Hannale Sundberg is Finnish and her family still lives in Finland. So he has a Finnish passport. His father John Varga is Croatian and the couple subsequently moved back to Canada (John had moved to Canada when he was 10) when Tyler was an infant.

Both John and Hannale are elite athletes in their own right, John a bodybuilder (he was Mr. Ontario) and Hannale a bodybuilder, rugby player (played on Sweden’s national team) and alpine skier, and it seems they have passed on their genes to Tyler. The 5-foot-11, 225-pound tailback sports a superhero-like physique and began his own sporting life as a competitive gymnast. He narrowly avoided a leg amputation after a serious football injury as a teen, and overcame it to play at the University of Western Ontario and then at Yale.

He electrified the Ivy League, while also earning an evolutionary biology degree, striving toward a career in orthopedic medicine at a university more known for producing billionaires, doctors and U.S presidents than pro athletes.

We'll see what the future holds for Varga outside of sports, but his retirement should be yet one more sign that both CFL and NFL teams need to be incredibly focused on reducing concussions and properly treating them when they do occur. The numbers of talented athletes walking away from football thanks to head injury concerns are only going to rise, and both leagues need to do whatever they can both to reduce the risk of concussions and take care of those players who do suffer concussions.