What led to Jim Duncan's NFL career loss? Theories pile up from those who knew him best
Jan. 26—
Return Man is a podcast and 7-part series brought to you by the
He had recently proposed to her while singing, "You Are My Sunshine." But instead of a big wedding involving their families, Duncan and Young were married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse in
Duncan died seven months later in the Lancaster police station amid murky circumstances, a victim of one gunshot wound to the head. The station was only a few hundred feet from the courthouse where the couple married. Duncan's death raised public questions about his mental state — questions that Young had raised privately with her mother and sister,
"They were in
CTE diagnosis was decades away
News reports from that time state that Duncan suffered what appeared to be serious head injuries during both the 1970 and 1971
She would have had no way of knowing then about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the brain disease caused by repetitive blows to the head — not necessarily concussions — that's increasingly connected to playing football. CTE wouldn't be recognized by doctors and scientists for at least another three decades.
According to
Those sensitive temporal lobe cells are almost always damaged in a traumatic brain injury (multiple traumatic brain injuries can lead to CTE). When temporal lobe cells are damaged, it can change a person's behavior, sometimes in a very negative way. Damage to the temporal lobe often explains why domestic violence and paranoia commonly surface in brain-injured former football players.
"They get a short fuse, easily aggravated, highly irritable," Victoroff said. "They start pounding on their wives, who they've always adored. They start getting in bar fights, which they never did before."
Duncan and Young moved in with Duncan's mother in
When Young first heard of CTE about a decade ago, alarm bells clanged in her mind.
"That was possibly what was wrong with my husband because of a lot of personal things that I choose not to share," said Young, who is remarried and now is
Duncan hospitalized in SC
She described one startling episode of erratic behavior to a reporter but didn't want the details published. Young later heard Duncan say the incident occurred because he saw her "talking to the man in the window."
The incident — which occurred between April and
Young indicated that there were several other similar incidents that she had a hard time understanding. They were completely out of character for Duncan, who called her by the nickname, Puddin. After each incident, she would approach him the following morning to talk about what happened. And each time she was unnerved when he didn't remember.
Young's two-week hiatus in
"Your subject may have experienced significant changes in his ability to understand what was threatening and not threatening, understand what he should be fearful of, what he should respond with extreme violent behavior to," said Victoroff. "And all of that would be a normal, natural and expected reaction to multiple concussions."
None of Duncan's
Money problems in
Word got to the Saints in the spring of 1972 that Duncan was not completely focused on football and New Orleans coach J.D. Roberts flew to
Money was at the forefront of Duncan's thoughts. He had reportedly lost somewhere between
"He blamed football for all of his financial problems," Roberts later told a reporter.
Duncan was impressed enough by Roberts' actions to report to the Saints' mini-camp in mid-April. The team gave him a
Duncan showed up out of shape, then left the camp early to return home and "oversee some personal problems," according to one New Orleans newspaper.
"He came to our workouts but he was so depressed he didn't want to play," Saints executive
During his time in
"The people at Baltimore thought there was something wrong with my head," Duncan told reporters after joining the Saints in 1972. "What really was wrong was that I had lost
News reports that Duncan had been ripped off seemed to stem from his failed business venture with
"It didn't ultimately work out," Acker said in 2018. "I can't remember all the details but it didn't come together. He lost some money and I lost some money."
Did Acker rip off Duncan? No way, says Acker. He also disputed that Duncan lost a large amount of money in the wig business.
"That was no 'lot of money' involved. I'm pretty sure that he didn't spend any money that I didn't know about," Acker said. "And all we did was we began to modify a shop in a little strip mall, a storefront. There wasn't a whole lot of money involved in doing that, and that was about the extent of it. We might have bought some wigs, but not a whole lot. I bought as many lunches and dinners as he did."
Duncan worked at
His primary earnings came from pro football.
Duncan made
"He wasn't perfect," said Duncan's sister-in-law,
Duncan bought his mother a house — it's not completely clear how he paid for it — when he was drafted in 1968. He lived well in
For the first time in his life, Duncan was a joyously wasteful eater and drinker. And he took care of his family. When he moved back to Lancaster after being traded to New Orleans, he bought the
It's not clear if Duncan's family knew how much money he actually made.
"He never cared nothing about money," his mother told
Could
In the 21st century, it's hard to imagine a psychiatrist treating an
It wouldn't happen because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, a 1996 law that safeguards personal medical information. But when Dr.
Sorum's expert opinion of
When Duncan arrived in
"I like New Orleans a lot," he told the Times-Picayune newspaper. "Enough to want to make it my home. Maybe my bad luck is behind me now. I might take another try at a business there."
But Roberts worried that a blow to Duncan's head had affected him mentally. So the Saints coach sent his new player to see Sorum late that summer.
"I would like to have treated him," Sorum told the Inquirer. "But by the time I saw him, he did seem to be resolving his problems. He seemed to be on the road to recovery. Had he continued to play football, I think he would have worked things out and made a complete recovery."
The hope in
"I didn't think I'd ever play football again," he said. "I lay awake in that hospital for three weeks thinking and wondering about it and asking myself could I make it back.
"When I was lying in that hospital, I made my mind up right then and there to never worry about anything again. If I can do something then I'll do it. If not ... OK. But I'm not going to worry. And this whole thing has helped me to concentrate more on football and not on any pressures from competing for a job."
Rumors of drug addition
Duncan spoke openly with reporters, but there was one topic he never addressed.
Ask
"Drugs," he said in 2018.
Grant, who called Duncan by the nickname, Speedy, says Duncan was entangled with heroin by the summer of 1971.
"He knew it could wreck a life," said Grant, "because it had already begun to wreck his."
Some Colts knew Duncan as a pot-smoker. Fullback
"It would have been a lot easier to hide back in those days," said
Duncan's family and friends didn't appear to be aware of any heroin problem and his wife said she never saw him use drugs. In
If it was true, "he would have kind of sealed me from it," said Elroy, Duncan's brother. "He wouldn't have told me because he didn't want me to see him in any light other than a great light. There is nothing bad that I could tell you about Butch, other than he just loved women."
Baltimore traded Grant to Washington in the summer of 1971, but he and Duncan were reunited in
Like the CTE hypothesis, Duncan's drug issues are almost impossible to prove. He had no criminal record in any of the three states he lived.
But Grant insists that drugs contributed to Duncan's unraveling.
"I was trying to keep an eye on him," Grant said. "One afternoon it just got to him. And I guess the young man who was working in the cafeteria over there, you know the street sign language on drugs, they went back and forth and Speedy says, 'I gotta go, I gotta go.' And I said, 'Nah, Speedy, don't do it.' So he went and he scored (drugs). That was the only time that I actually ever saw him do it there.
"I would say six or seven weeks after that he was dead."
Cut from
Shortly after Sorum's psychiatric exam, Duncan collapsed while walking to a training camp dormitory in early August and was hospitalized for two weeks because of a bleeding ulcer. He missed three weeks of action, and defensive coordinator
The Saints cut him on
Duncan's
"In the week he was with us," Shula told the
One of the best moments of Duncan's life had occurred in Miami's
Less than two years later, Duncan sat on a bench in the same stadium as the
The
"I have the feeling that if it hadn't been for football," Champion later said, "what happened to
Have questions or comments about Return Man? Reach The Herald at 803-281-2840 or [email protected].
BEHIND OUR REPORTING
Why did we report this story?
On multiple occasions I have been asked some version of "why are you digging this up all these years later?"
My main motivation was trying to fill in
This story is still relevant because it entails many of the issues American society continues to grapple with: drugs, escaping poverty, the financial issues of young adults, race relations, and community-law enforcement relations.
As
Read more by clicking the arrow in the top right corner of this box.
Where did the idea come from?
I covered high school football for The Herald and have written often about how this area of
I was looking up a list of
That Internet search set me off on a journey to learn more about how Duncan went from the
How did we report the story?
Over more than two years I made dozens of trips to
I submitted numerous Freedom of Information Act requests — many of which came back empty — and spent numerous hours at the
___
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