Ex-QB Jake Plummer Slams Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones For Denying Link Between NFL And CTE

Former Arizona Cardinals and Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer did not shy away from using strong language to call out Jerry Jones after the Dallas Cowboys owner denied the existence of a link between football and CTE.

Ex-QB Jake Plummer Slams Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones For Denying Link Between NFL And CTE

“Shame on him for saying that, that billionaire ass—-,” Plummer recently told BSN Denver. “It’s the worst thing in the world for a guy like that to say.”

The 41-year-old QB retired 10 years ago, but has witnessed the effects of the game in former teammates.

Jones, meanwhile, does not believe there is any substantial evidence that demonstrates playing football can cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the neurodegenerative brain disease that has affected several NFL players in the past and that has been the subject of controversy in recent months.

“We don’t have that knowledge and background and scientifically, so there’s no way in the world to say you have a relationship relative to anything here,” the Cowboys owner said in March. “There’s no research. There’s no data.”

Jones’ comments came at the NFL owners meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, just over a week after the league’s top health leader, Jeff Miller, said there was “certainly” a link between playing football and various forms of brain trauma like CTE.

Nevertheless, Jones stood by his assertion, stating, “No, that’s absurd. … There’s no data that in any way creates a knowledge. There’s no way that you could have made a comment that there is an association and some type of assertion.”

Plummer stated he believes former NFL players don’t elicit a lot of sympathy from fans because of their fortune and fame.

“I have a hard time with it because everybody says, ‘Oh, poor NFL millionaires. Oh, you poor people.’ They don’t understand,” Plummer said. “Maybe they should have a little more to say about the owners that are billionaires, they’re not millionaires; they’re billionaires.”

Plummer now advocates for the use of cannabidiol (CBD), an extract from cannabis.

“They should be able to say, ‘I’m going to have some CBD and puff on this fatty, relax after a football game and take the pain away,’” Plummer said. “Not get tested for it like Josh Gordon, who now can’t play the game that he’s been playing since he was a kid because he smokes marijuana. It didn’t derail him or cause him to underachieve from what I witnessed. He dominated the league for two straight years, and now he’s out of the league because he chose an alternative form of medicine.”

“Grown-ass men are asked to go out there for millions of dollars — which, yeah, it’s a lot of money — bang themselves around and completely f— their lives over for their 40s and 50s,” Plummer continued. “So yeah, poor football players is what I say. If you’re a grown-ass man, you should be allowed to make grown-ass decisions.”

Plummer played for 10 years in the NFL, tallying a 69-67 record between Arizona and Denver. He was selected by the Cardinals as the 49th pick in the second round of the 1997 NFL Draft, and spent six seasons in Arizona before being traded to the Broncos.

Caption: Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer launches one way down field as the Denver Broncos defeated the Oakland Raiders by a score of 17 to 13 at McAfee Coliseum, Oakland, California, November 12, 2006. (Photo by Robert B. Stanton/NFLPhotoLibrary)