Former North Carolina lineman who died in November had C.T.E.

Even before former North Carolina offensive lineman Ryan Hoffman died in November, his sister wondered if he had C.T.E. (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a brain disease caused by repeated hits to the head.

It turns out her suspicions were right.

Hoffman, who was homeless and battling addiction and mental illness when he died at age 41, did have C.T.E., his family told Juliet Macur of the New York Times. Hoffman’s brain was examined by researchers at Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation and informed the family of their findings on Friday.

From the Times:

Researchers at Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation on Friday notified Hoffman’s family that an analysis of his brain showed evidence of C.T.E., or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repeated hits to the head.

For the Hoffmans, it was the answer to the mystery of Ryan Hoffman’s continuing problems, which included jail time and joblessness — troubles that defined his life after a successful college career on a team ranked in the top 10.

“I wanted to know exactly what happened to my brother, and I just knew football did it,” his sister, Kira Soto, told me Monday in a phone call as she began to cry. “I’ve been looking into this for 15 years and defended him when people said it was just the drugs and judged him for something he couldn’t help, something that he struggled with. Well, we know now. We know.”

Hoffman was previously profiled by the Times in March 2015. He told Macur that he began to have dangerous thoughts and struggled with memory in 1997, when he was a senior at UNC. Once his football career came to an end (he went undrafted), Hoffman dealt with headaches and had difficulty falling asleep, among a bevy of other issues.

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“Something is wrong with my brain,” Hoffman said.

From the Times:

After graduation, Hoffman moved into his father’s house in Florida, jobless and without direction. He struggled to sleep. He complained of headaches and dizziness and of hearing loud noises like shotgun blasts inside his head and of seeing flashing lights. In college, Hoffman’s worst offenses were speeding tickets and fishing without a license. Now he was getting into fistfights on a regular basis, getting arrested, stealing, using marijuana, abusing Valium.

Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They prescribed Xanax and Adderall, and diagnosed a laundry list of psychological disorders: depression, schizoaffective disorder, manic depression, borderline personality disorder, anger impulse control disorder.

Dr. Ann McKee, the chief of neuropathology at the V.A. Boston Healthcare System and professor of neurology and pathology at Boston University School of Medicine, has a 0 to 4 scale she uses when assessing cases of C.T.E. McKee told the Times Hoffman’s brain “had Stage 2 C.T.E.,” the same severity of NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012.

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Hoffman died on November 16 when he “rode his bike into oncoming traffic on a poorly lighted road in Haines City, Fla.” Hoffman was hit by a car head-on and died on the way to the hospital. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.

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Sam Cooper is a contributor for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!

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