Jordan Devey’s story originally began with a setback. As a kid, he was already pushing his physical limits when an Osgood-Schlatter diagnosis abruptly sidelined his dreams. Doctors asked him to stop playing temporarily. So, he’d simply watch the game from the sidelines, unaware that years later, the biggest football stage would come calling.

But success came at a cost. Despite getting to the higher rungs of professional football, troubles never really left. In July 2026, Devey tragically died by suicide at the age of 38. Following his passing, Devey’s family shared that he had been facing intense mental health troubles, reportedly rooted in CTE, after retirement. The conversations, however, reached a fever pitch when another NFL player decided to chime in with a pointed take.

“How many more NFL player suicides will it take for the NFL to actually do something?,” former NFL player Breiden Fehoko wrote on X. “Players don’t even feel comfortable getting help within their own organizations. They claim “your information won’t be shared” that’s a lie. As soon as you go to the team clinician, they’re telling the whole front office “you’re crazy.” All these NFLPA help hotlines don’t help sh-t. It’s just a person on the other end of the phone collecting a check. 

“I’ll keep speaking out because mental health issues SUCK, and if you’ve been in this business you know how dark and lonely it gets. These coaches don’t care, these GMs don’t care, and these owners definitely don’t GAF.”

As per Devey’s family, he didn’t share much about his mental health struggles with his family. His mother, Leslie Devey, mentioned:

“We’re only beginning to understand that he was fighting a battle that he very well kept hidden from everyone. We know it has been ongoing pretty serious for the last two years. Jordan was very much not willing to share his burdens with others but take on others’ burdens.”

Devey’s father even mentioned how Lesle, Devey’s wife, was unaware of the problems he was dealing with. However, both parents were of the opinion that CTE contributed to his struggles, something many former football players have experienced. And they have every reason to believe so. As shared by Leslie, her husband had reportedly been showing signs and symptoms after taking painful hits over the seven seasons he played in the NFL. In fact, she also revealed that Jordan had been doing his research on symptoms of CTE before his unfortunate death, days before the couple’s 15th anniversary.

His research directly pointed toward suspected trauma built across a career with the Patriots, the San Francisco 49ers, the Chiefs, the Oakland Raiders, and the Buffalo Bills. Logging 44 career appearances and 21 starts, violent contacts, opening running lanes and blocking defenders ultimately meant absorbing massive, cumulative hits.

In fact, as per a study published this month by Mass General Brigham, Boston University and the Concussion & CTE Foundation, NFL players were four times more likely to lose their lives to neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Parkinson’s as compared to the general population. 

The research studied as many as 19,824 players between 1960 and 2019, and the results deeply disturbed co-senior author Dr. Daniel Daneshvar, who said: 

“This is the clearest population-level evidence we have ever had that NFL players are dying due to neurodegenerative disease at real and measurably higher rates.”

Interestingly, the study’s findings match an ESPN survey in 2025. The survey had concluded that former NFL players were more likely to experience disabilities and mental health issues than the average population.

On similar lines, the Boston University CTE Center had some terrifying statistics to share in 2023. Out of the 376 former NFL players they got to study, 345 suffered from CTE. To put things into perspective, that’s 91.7% of them diagnosed with the disease. No wonder Devey’s family believed he had it, too. However, testing for it won’t be possible because of the way he passed.

Jordan Devey is survived by his wife and four children.

Devey would volunteer as a coach for his children’s teams and at Eagle High School. The kids considered him a role model, owing to his dedication to serving the community. 

The same community is now helping the Devey family. A GoFundMe was created to help the family with finances and funeral expenses.