Lions running back Jahvid Best hasn’t given up hope that his NFL career can continue, despite multiple concussions that cut short his 2011 season and ended his 2012 season before it began.
Shortly after the Lions announced that Best won’t play this season, his agent, Tony Fleming, told the Detroit Free Press that Best isn’t giving up hope that he will eventually be medically cleared.
“He obviously still wants to play, we’re just in a climate now in the NFL where everybody’s extra cautious,” Fleming said. “Everybody is concerned about Jahvid and his health and his future, so they’re just going to be very cautious and they’re not going to clear him until he’s ready.”
There were concerns about Best’s concussion history even before the Lions chose him in the first round of the 2010 NFL draft. Best suffered two concussions in his final year at Cal, the second of which required him to be stretchered off the field and hospitalized. When the Lions shut Best down following his second concussion of the 2011 season, the concerns about his ability to play intensified.
So while Fleming says that he and Best are hopeful that he’ll eventually make his return, at this point it seems unlikely -- considering all the caution about concussions in the NFL -- that any doctor will clear him to play.