Anybody see the Marcellus Wiley interview? Damn, that was straight from the heart. You can tell from the interview that he was really good friends with Junior and touched by him as a human and a player.
The development in head injury research over the past few years is extremely worrisome, and you have to wonder just how badly players are jeopordizing their health by playing football. Other than taking care of retired players more effectively and closely monitoring head injuries, I'm not really sure what the NFL is supposed to do about this. It's not overly far fetched anymore to think that football in this country will soon rapidly diminish in popularity if the NFL cannot balance the sensitive line between violence/entertainment and the safety of these players.
Nobody knows for sure what the source of death was, but the fact that he shot himself in the chest usually indicates a desire to preserve the brain for examination. I sure hope that isn't the case, but if it turns out this was a suicide and that he was driven to that point largely due to the violent nature of football, this is going to really raise some eyebrows and hover over the NFL for quite some time.
R.I.P. Junior.