Comedian and social media personality Druski is facing criticism from a former NFL player over a viral sketch mocking football‘s head injury crisis. The backlash arrived the same week a new study quantified how common chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease found in individuals exposed to repetitive brain trauma, actually is among former players.
The video, titled “Athletes Get Concussions & Lose Their Minds,” follows a fictional running back named Ray Price. He is knocked to the ground during a play early in the clip, then shown leading police on a car chase, harassing a woman on camera, and banging his head against a locker. A mock social media caption reads that a teammate’s brain resembled a doorknob.
Price tells reporters at a mock press conference that he cannot remember his favorite play from his career. A reporter asks about his history of concussions, and the skit cuts away before he answers.
Druski, ranked by Rolling Stone as the No. 1 creator in America in 2026, captioned the post, “Athletes get concussions and lose their minds.”
Newsweek reached out to Druski’s representatives for comment on Thursday.
New Study Finds CTE in 1 of Every 4 NFL Players
The controversy comes just a week after the medical journal BMJ, one of the oldest and most widely cited publications in the world, published a study offering the most comprehensive estimate yet of how many former NFL players develop CTE.
Dr. Daniel Daneshvar of Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham led the research with Dr. Jesse Mez of Boston University. They examined every former NFL player who died between 2008 and 2021, with a core analysis covering 878 deaths recorded from 2016 to 2021, a period when brain donations became more common.
Families donated 235 of those 878 brains for examination. Researchers found evidence of CTE in 215, or roughly 92 percent.
Because donated brains are more likely to come from families who already suspected their relatives had symptoms, researchers used a conservative assumption: every player whose brain went unexamined had been entirely healthy. Even under that scenario, the minimum prevalence was 24.5 percent, or about one in four players.
The NFL currently has 1,696 players across 32 active rosters. Applying that 24.5 percent rate means at least 400 of them could eventually develop CTE.
David Michaels, who led OSHA under President Barack Obama and now teaches at George Washington University, compared the numbers to asbestos exposure and lung disease, or a lifetime spent in coal mines and the resulting risk of black lung. “I’ve never seen anything comparable,” he said of the rate of neurodegenerative disease among NFL players.
CTE has been part of the public conversation around football for two decades, since Dr. Bennet Omalu first identified it in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster in 2002. Will Smith played Omalu in the 2015 film “Concussion,” which dramatized the discovery and the NFL’s early resistance to the research.
Last year, an incident in Midtown Manhattan brought the disease back into the headlines. On July 28, 2025, 27-year-old Shane Tamura killed four people inside 345 Park Avenue before shooting himself. Investigators believe he was trying to reach the NFL’s offices on the fifth floor but entered the wrong elevator bank. Tamura left a note asking that his brain be studied, writing that “the League knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximize profits.”
New York City’s chief medical examiner later confirmed that Tamura had low-stage CTE, though he had never played beyond high school.
T.J. Ward and Others React to Druski’s Skit
Former NFL safety T.J. Ward criticized the skit on Speakeasy, the podcast he co-hosts. Ward, a Super Bowl 50 champion with the Denver Broncos, played 10 seasons in the league and made three Pro Bowl appearances with the Browns and Broncos. He said he has watched former teammates and colleagues deteriorate from the disease.
“You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with cancer,” Ward said. “You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with dementia, you wouldn’t make fun of somebody with AIDS.” He argued CTE gets singled out for mockery in a way other terminal illnesses don’t.
Holly Robinson Peete, the actress married to former NFL quarterback Rodney Peete, responded on Instagram. She wrote that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair took a softer line, acknowledging the disease is a real risk of the sport’s physicality without condemning the sketch.
The NFL said in a statement that it continues working to make the game safer, pointing to efforts to reduce concussions and head impacts and to expand mental health resources for players. The NFL Players Association, responding to the study rather than the skit, called the findings a sobering reminder that football carries risks with lasting consequences for players and their families, and said the results should prompt action across the sport.
Why CTE Can Only Be Diagnosed After Death
Repeated hits to the head can cause CTE. Over time, those impacts can lead to a buildup of tau protein that damages brain cells, causing memory loss, mood changes, poor judgment and impulsive or erratic behavior. In severe cases, CTE is strongly linked to dementia.
According to Daneshvar, the biggest risk factor is the total force of head impacts a person experiences over a lifetime, including hits before reaching the NFL. He said reducing that exposure does not necessarily require changing the sport itself. Limiting tackle football at younger ages and reducing contact during practices could make a significant difference, he said.
There is currently no test that can diagnose CTE in a living person. Pathologists can confirm it only through an autopsy, by examining brain tissue for tau deposits. Researchers tested a blood marker called plasma p-tau217 this year but found it unreliable for detecting CTE in living patients. The marker can still help rule out other conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Without a way to diagnose CTE during life, players and their families have few clear answers as symptoms progress. It also makes treatment decisions more difficult and can complicate decisions about whether a player should continue playing.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Gray R. Thomas
