Raiders old guard struggles with concussion, CTE issue

OAKLAND -- Two teammates recently joined Raiders legend George Atkinson in pledging their brains to Boston's Concussion Legacy Foundation to help further research on the effects of head trauma and playing football.

The impetus to speak out came in the wake of the death of their famous quarterback Ken Stabler, whose family revealed this year that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease found in a growing number of athletes.The disease, known as CTE, can only accurately be confirmed in the brains of the deceased, although physicians hope to soon develop an effective way to identify it in the living.