Raiders TE Lee Smith believes his father, ex-NFL player, had CTE

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — No autopsy today can confirm what Lee Smith believes he already knows.

Football, toward the end, changed his father.

The Raiders’ tight end is a second-generation NFL player. His father, Daryle Smith, was an offensive lineman in the league from 1987 to 1992. Daryle died in 2010 from pancreatic issues at age 46.

Afterward, his brain was not studied to determine if he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative brain disease linked to subconcussive hits that exist in certain sports. Knowledge of the illness was less mainstream then, Lee said. And it’s too late now.

Ashes rest inside a home office in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“There ain’t no brain left,” Lee said. “It’s just a bunch of dust.”

Lee returns this weekend to his home state, facing the Tennessee Titans on Sunday in the season opener. The Raiders’ veteran, regarded as an elite blocker at his position, credits his father’s rugged parenting style for molding him into the player he’s become. He can reconcile his own career in a sport that, he believes, affected his father late in life.

Daryle blocked at Tennessee from 1983 to 1986.

He went undrafted and entered the NFL in 1987; Lee was born that November. Daryle spent two years with the Dallas Cowboys before continuing with the Cleveland Browns in 1989 and Philadelphia Eagles from 1990 to 1992. Four seasons followed in the Canadian Football League.

In that football era, training camp consisted of grueling, two-a-day padded practices. There was minimal oversight to the contact level between players.

Lee, 29, speaks with pride about his father and his own rural upbringing.

“He was able to make it in this business,” he said. “I was raised by a guy who grew up in the country where I’m from. A big, tough dude who beat the hell out of me, and I didn’t even deserve it half the time. My father never knew his father. He was just a good ol’ boy from a trailer park in Powell, Tennessee. … If you were ever soft or sensitive, he’d let you know about it. He didn’t care who was around. You had to have thick skin, growing up with my dad.”

Sunday marks the start of Lee’s seventh NFL season. He maintains a strong reverence toward his father.

That is despite a difficult final period.

“He just wasn’t himself,” Smith said. “That’s all there is to it. He just wasn’t himself. I had a wonderful, wonderful childhood. I never heard my dad say a curse word. I never saw my dad drink a beer. I never saw him do nothing. We were like the (stuff) you see on TV.

“The end was the exact opposite. I won’t get into it. God rest his soul; he’s not here to defend himself. But it wasn’t him. He wasn’t himself.”

Daryle died Feb. 11, 2010.

He lived long enough to see Lee marry Alisha, his high school sweetheart and wife of 10 years. But his death came before the couple’s second child, their first of two daughters, was born. His death also predated Lee’s entry in the NFL as a 2011 fifth-round draft pick of the New England Patriots. Lee and Alisha’s second of two sons was born during his rookie training camp.

While there is no medical proof Daryle had CTE, Lee believes that to be the case.

He is hopeful his own fate will be different.

Gone are the two-a-day padded practices Daryle endured over the course of his career. Gone is the culture that glorified collisions; weekly TV segments that spliced together big hits, such as ESPN’s “Jacked Up!,” were discontinued long ago. Stiff penalties are now imposed on players who deliver head-to-head hits. The 2015 film “Concussion” focused on the topic of brain injury in football.

Players today are more protected during the offseason.

The Raiders annually base their training camp at a Marriott hotel in Napa, California. Lee called it a “country club” compared to what his dad knew. Since 2011, the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement prohibits teams from holding multiple padded practices on the same day.

“I think it’s on all of our minds,” Lee said of the long-term effects of football. “I can’t lie. But we know the risks. Every one of us would sign a waiver right now. We know we get hit in the head. I had two broken ankles. It is what it is. It’s a wonderful life that I’m able to provide for my family. I get to see just how blessed my wife is, my kids are. Every once in a while, do I think about it? Sure.

“But I see (former NFL players like Raiders coach) Jack Del Rio out here and (offensive line coach) Mike Tice, (wide receivers coach) Rob Moore and (running backs coach) Bernie Parmalee. They seem to be doing pretty dang good. They’re good men with good lives, and they can put a sentence together. Hopefully, I’m lucky like them, I guess. … Hopefully, I came into the league at the right time.”

Contact reporter Michael Gehlken at mgehlken@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GehlkenNFL on Twitter.