The Miami football team has the depth to absorb the loss from the sudden retirement of redshirt freshman Jason Blissett on Monday night. Blissett went into depth on Instagram speaking about the impact concussion have had on him and his life. The concussions were the major reason behind Blissett medically retiring from football.
Miami returns all of their defensive tackles in 2021 and signed five-star Leonard Taylor and three-star Allan Haye to add on the interior of the defensive line. Blissett had seven tackles for Miami in 2020 and finishes his career with nine tackles and one tackle for loss. Blissett would have challenged for playing time in 2021.
Making his reasons behind the retirement was courageous by Blissett. The New York native went into detail in a six-minute video his reasoning behind the decision to retire. By making his story public, Blissett reaches out to the thousands of college football players that they are not alone.
David Wilson of the Miami Herald transcribed part of what was behind the decision by Blissett to retire. In just his second season of college, Blissett showed incredible maturity by realizing that he is not alone and what the changes of multiple concussions have done to his body. Blisset wants to reach out to other athletes.
"“I’ve been struggling a lot with my own head injuries and if you’ve known me, followed me since high school I’ve had multiple concussions and stuff like that…It’s obviously something very common in the football world and it definitely does take a toll on you mentally, emotionally as far as your relationships go with everybody.I can’t work out no more. It’s hard for me to lift and stuff like that…It’s just been hard to do everything, really. I just don’t feel like the same person…Football is a burden right now that I can’t deal with and it hurts. It really does hurt a lot. It hurts to walk away from it.I’m making this to really just reach out to other athletes in collegiate level, high school level, even the young ones who have dreams of actually going somewhere one day with this…Football has done a lot for me and it’s put me in a position to meet a lot of people, experience a lot of things, make a lot of friends and all that, but there’s a lot that comes with it that doesn’t get talked enough about with this”"
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Blissett was a versatile player on the defensive line who could play tackle and end. The Miami football team will still go three deep at DT without Blissett who would have likely been behind Senior Jon Ford, junior Nesta Silvera and redshirt freshman Jared Harrison-Hunte competing for the fourth spot in the rotation.
Taylor is the most talented player on the Miami football roster and expected to be the favorite as the fourth DT in the rotation. The Hurricanes will also have redshirt sophomore Jason Miller, redshirt freshman Jalar Holley and freshmen Elijah Roberts and Quentin Williams on the interior of the FL in 2021.