Did Druski Go Too Far With His CTE Skit? Why The Internet Is Getting Really Sensitive About It

Druski's exaggerated sketches often poke fun at recognizable stereotypes, sometimes sparking controversy.
Druski's CTE sketch was criticized by some athletes as insensitive.

10th Annual Culture Creators Innovators & Leaders Awards Brunch — Source: Prince Williams / Getty

At this point, making the internet uncomfortable is practically part of Druski’s job description. Born Drew Desbordes, the comedian went from shooting skits after moving back home with his mother to becoming one of the biggest comedy stars the internet has produced. His impressions of overzealous frat boys, shady record executives, TSA workers, megachurch pastors and just about every oddly specific person you’ve encountered in real life helped turn him into a social media heavyweight.

Coulda Been Records eventually became an entire franchise, while appearances alongside Drake, Jack Harlow and other stars pushed him further into the mainstream. This summer, he even became the youngest person ever to host the BET Awards. BET chronicled his unlikely rise from Instagram skits to the BET stage, while the Webby Award credited his content with generating more than 1 billion views.

Part of what has made Druski so successful is that almost nobody is safe from becoming a character. His exaggerated Kyle Rogger character pokes fun at a certain type of suburban white guy; his viral megachurch pastor sketch went after prosperity-preaching church culture; and Coulda Been Records has spent years lampooning rappers, music executives and aspiring artists. Even his 2026 BET Awards hosting gig included jokes about everything from celebrity culture to religion. The formula usually works because Druski takes something people recognize, turns every stereotype up to 100 and lets the audience decide whether to laugh or feel attacked. Complex recently ranked some of the comedian’s most memorable sketches, and controversy has almost become another ingredient in the recipe.

However, his newest video stepped into much darker territory. Posted Wednesday, Aug. 26, under the caption “Athletes get Concussions & LOSE THEIR MINDS,” the high-production sketch follows Druski as fictional football star Ray Price, whose life begins unraveling after repeated blows to the head. Price takes a violent hit that sends his helmet flying before the skit jumps through increasingly disturbing episodes: erratic behavior, banging his head against a wall, a high-speed police chase in a gold Ferrari, an encounter at a woman’s home, a short-lived rap career, and finally a press conference where he struggles to remember basic information before his handlers shut down questions about his brain health. The parody appears to borrow from or reference recognizable incidents involving players including Tua Tagovailoa, Antonio Brown, Richard Sherman, Ray Rice, Kadarius Toney and Cameron Skattbo, among others — which made the jokes feel much less fictional to football fans.

That realism is exactly where Druski lost some athletes. Former Broncos safety and Super Bowl champion T.J. Ward ripped the sketch during an appearance on Speakeasy, arguing that CTE is treated differently from virtually every other serious disease. “You wouldn’t make fun of someone with cancer, dementia, or AIDS,” Ward said while explaining why he couldn’t laugh along. Former NBA All-Star Michael Redd also criticized Druski, writing that CTE is one of the things professional athletes fear most, saying, “You don’t build a bit around that.” Former NFL offensive tackle Kyle Long joked that Druski’s CTE skit had landed on plenty of players’ bad sides, while sports medicine physician Brian Sutterer simply asked, “We’re supposed to laugh at this?”

The timing probably made the blowback even stronger. Just one day before Druski posted his CTE skit, The BMJ published new research estimating that at least 1 in 4 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE. Researchers identified the disease in 215 of the 235 donated brains they were able to examine from 878 former players who died during that period, establishing a minimum prevalence of roughly 25% across the entire group.

CTE is associated with repeated head impacts and can involve memory problems, impaired judgment, mood changes, aggression, depression, and eventually dementia; it currently can only be definitively diagnosed after death. For retired players who watched teammates struggle with those symptoms — or wonder what years of collisions could eventually mean for themselves — Druski isn’t necessarily spoofing some abstract medical condition. He is joking about something they genuinely fear.

But that’s also where the argument gets complicated. Plenty of viewers thought the skit was hilarious, and others argued that Druski may have accidentally done more to put CTE in front of millions of people than another carefully worded medical PSA ever could. For example, former Raiders linebacker Will Compton reacted to the video with a long string of laughing emojis. Other viewers interpreted the sketch less as “look how funny people with brain damage are” and more as an indictment of a football culture that watched players take devastating hits, celebrates them, moves on, and then acts shocked when some former players struggle later in life. Former football player Vincent McDonald told theGrio that the video showed behaviors and consequences people regularly see and simply scroll past. In that reading, the joke isn’t necessarily CTE itself — the absurdity is how normalized everything surrounding it has become.

And that leaves the same question comedy has always wrestled with: Who gets to decide what is too far? Druski has built his career making fun of people, communities and uncomfortable situations, and expecting that same comedian to suddenly become harmless whenever a subject gets sensitive would fundamentally change what he does. Comedy has always used exaggeration, discomfort, and even tragedy to make people laugh, feel angry, or sometimes both at once. That doesn’t mean Ward, Redd, or anyone personally affected by head trauma has to find this funny either. Maybe that tension is why the sketch has exploded the way it has.

Druski made millions laugh, pissed off plenty of athletes, and got people arguing about CTE days after an alarming new study on the disease was released. Whether that makes the video irresponsible or strangely effective probably depends on what someone believes comedy is supposed to do in the first place.

See more social media reactions below.