His Year: Chris Johnson 2009

Welcome back to the Gridiron Deep Dive everybody, where it’s a sad one today.In case you somehow haven’t heard, on June 29, former NFL RB Chris Johnson took to Good Morning America to reveal his diagnosis with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This is a nervous system disorder, affecting motor neurons in the brain, the nerves responsible for voluntary muscle movements. As these neurons degenerate and die, they stop sending signals to the muscles, leading to atrophy.The disease is not always immediately fatal, but in 90 percent of all cases, muscles atrophy so badly the human body can no longer sustain itself, most often via weakness to the point of failure in muscles used to either breathe or swallow, within five years of the first showing of symptoms. Regrettably, Chris Johnson appears to be rapidly progressing towards this outcome, as he already no longer has the ability to speak, communicating with a computer speech generator, thankfully…