Just the facts, man: Corey Linsley, who was placed on the injured reserve list last season with a non-emergent heart-related issue – a dilated aortic root – is retiring after a decorated, decade-long career as an NFL center.
That’s the load-bearing pillar of truth in the center of the room, the unmovable fact of the matter – though I suppose, like anything, how you perceive even the most self-evident of truths depends on where you’re standing.
What’s impressive about Linsley is that no matter what angle he takes, he seems to be seeing it the right way. So it’s no shock when Dr. Eugene Yim, the Chargers’ head physician and sports medicine specialist with Hoag, tells me he’s “one of the most thoughtful and sophisticated athletes I’ve ever worked with.”
The at-the-end-of-the-day deal is this: The 32-year-old Linsley just had the thing he loved doing – the thing he was really good at doing, and very well-compensated for doing – yanked unexpectedly away from him.
And he’s reportedly agreed to restructure his contract, reducing his salary from $11.5 million to the minimum for the 2024 season, giving the Chargers – for whom he played for the past three seasons – about $10 million more in cap room to work with.
And, yes, Linsley is “happy” about this. “Relieved.” And why not? He’s got four kids, so he’s thinking mostly of the benefits of the diagnosis, more than what it cost him. And it boils down to this: “This is more beneficial to my family than any contract would’ve been,” he said last week.
But still. Come inspect this turn of events from right up close, feel him when he says he’ll miss it, football having been a heavy part of his life for so long. So it also feels fair for him to say: You know what would have been really bad …
“It would’ve been tragic,” he said, “if this had been early on in my career.”
Doctors didn’t find it earlier, though; they didn’t know to look. So the 2014 fifth-round draft pick out of Ohio State played 10 NFL seasons, 132 games, starting every one. He gained acclaim as one of the best centers in the game, became a Pro Bowler and earned an All-Pro nod – and the designation as the league’s highest-paid center, thanks to the five-year, $62.5 million contract with the Chargers in 2021.
So the timing could have been worse, but would that actually have been better? These are the sorts of questions this installation of new information has Linsley pondering. “I wish I had done it sooner,” he said. “Who knows? I may have gotten lucky.
“Or,” he ventured, “maybe there’s a chance that if I would’ve caught it sooner, I’d still be playing? Who knows.”
What he does know is what he’ll teach his kids Seamus, Killian, Quinn and Ruth: Be proactive with your health.
Yes, he’ll preach work ethic and discipline, point to the best players he got to go to battle with and stress that it was their dedication and passion that made them so special. But he’ll also make sure his kids know never to be afraid to seek medical advice from people like Yim, the passionate and dedicated superstars in their field. Linsley will make sure his sons and daughter know that the truly tough thing is to not block out possible bad news, especially if it pertains to their health.
In Linsley’s case, a team of detective doctors discovered his dilated aortic root – potentially life-threatening because when that part of the heart becomes enlarged, there’s a risk of it rupturing or tearing – only after they started investigating symptoms caused by his atrial fibrillation (afib) early last season.
“What I was feeling and still a little bit today is a result from the ablation that I had for my afib, which is unrelated to the thing that caused me to stop playing – which is my dilated aortic root,” is how Linsley explained what was explained to him. “And the dilation is an all-or-nothing thing, either you’re going to the hospital because something’s bad … or you don’t feel anything at all.”
The symptoms of his afib might not have been directly due to the dilated aortic root, but they’re what spurred the inquiry in the first place. “Honestly,” Linsley said, “it was serendipitous that it led to us finding this underlying issue.”
But that discovery process started when he asked for medical expertise after he started feeling unlike himself on the field.
“I would be in shape,” he said, “but when it came to practice or games, because of the intensity and the adrenalin and everything, and the added stress level of the game, there are times I would be fine. But sometimes, on the fourth play, I’d be out of breath. It was a very weird experience that I obviously never felt before.
“I had noticed it in the summer leading up to training camp, so I just hoped it would resolve itself. And when it didn’t … I actually went in to come up with a plan to see if maybe I could lighten my training load and hopefully that would help out. But then it was all for naught because they found this (the dilated aortic root).”
The prescribed treatment for Linsley: Stop doing his specific job. The heavy weights? Get away from those, both the ones he’d lift and the amount he carried on his frame.
“Live a healthier lifestyle,” they told him.
“Not that I was living poorly before, it’s just, how sustainable is being nearly 300 pounds for the rest of your life?” said Linsley, whose workouts have become more cardio- and aerobic-based and who now weighs between 230 and 235 pounds. It’s a hugely noticeable change for lots of reasons, including how much better his ankles and back feel every day when he wakes up.
“Week by week, day by day, I’m seeing what feels best, what’s sustainable,” he said. “That’s kind of where I’m at right now; it’s a new little project for me to do, something I’d never had to do before.”
And as he’s come to terms with the reality of his situation, it’s become clear his good fortune outweighs any misfortune by a ton.
“Definitely, I’ll miss it, and I’ll always miss it,” Linsley said. “But there’s been a lot of reflection, and there’s a lot of appreciation. It’s all good in the end.”
By: OC Register
