Jordan Devey, an offensive lineman who carved out an eight-year NFL career across five teams and earned a Super Bowl ring with the Patriots, has died at 38. His family told Jeremy Tombs of Fox 13 Salt Lake City that Devey died by suicide, and that they believe he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
No diagnosis of CTE has been confirmed. The degenerative brain disease, linked to repeated head impacts, can only be definitively diagnosed through post-mortem examination. The family’s belief, as relayed by Tombs, is not a medical finding — but it lands in a conversation the football world keeps having whether it wants to or not.
Devey went undrafted out of Memphis in 2013 and initially signed with the Ravens, who released him before the season. He caught on with New England, spending 2013 and 2014 on the Patriots’ roster. He was part of the organization when it won Super Bowl XLIX to close the 2014 season, capping his second year in Foxborough.
From there it was a journeyman’s road — the kind that tests a man’s resolve more than any opponent. San Francisco in 2015. Kansas City from 2016 through 2018. Oakland in 2019, Buffalo in 2020. Forty-four regular-season appearances, twenty-one starts. Five locker rooms, five playbooks, five sets of coaches to impress. That’s not glamour; that’s grit.
The interior of the offensive line is where the game is ugliest. Guards and centers trade body blows on every snap — helmet-to-helmet collisions that don’t make highlight reels but accumulate over thousands of practices and games. Devey played that position for nearly a decade at the highest level. What that toll does to a man’s brain is a question the sport still cannot answer cleanly, and families keep answering it the hardest way possible.
Devey’s parents spoke to Fox 13 about their son’s decline, though the full scope of their account was not available in the reporting reviewed. NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk, citing Tombs’s reporting, confirmed the cause of death and the family’s belief about CTE.
The NFL has not yet publicly commented on Devey’s death.
Devey is the latest former player whose passing has reignited concern over the long-term neurological effects of professional football. The league has acknowledged a connection between the sport and CTE in past settlements and has funded research into the disease, but the gap between institutional acknowledgment and what families experience remains wide.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Sources
- NBC Sports / Pro Football Talk
- ESPN
- Fox 13 Salt Lake City (Jeremy Tombs) — original reporting cited by both outlets above