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Detroit Lions defensive tackle Haloti Ngata briefly considered retirement this offseason before deciding to come back for a 12th NFL season.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

ALLEN PARK -- Haloti Ngata was fresh off his 11th NFL season and second with the Detroit Lions. The defensive tackle was 33 years old and 330 pounds, and he felt it both in his joints and muscles. But he thought he wanted to keep going.

It was the thought he wanted checked.

For two weeks this offseason, Ngata took part in a neurological program at the Core Institute in Brighton, Michigan. Doctors scanned his brain and tested his psychological functions, including when he was working out and when he was asleep.

It's something he'd never had done before. When his agent, Mike McCartney of Priority Sports, suggested it, his interest piqued.

"It was just to make sure with all the stuff that's going on with the brain stuff throughout the league," Ngata said. "You hear that stuff, and for me especially, I don't want to have problems when I'm older. I want to be able to raise my kids and be able to play with them when they're older and beat them in wrestling matches and stuff when they're teenagers."

This was Ngata the sports dad talking. In the process of becoming a father to three boys as well as their coach, he's found there's more to worry about than whether he can command a double team on a Sunday and still hit the weights hard two days later.

Plenty of other players have hung it up earlier. Calvin Johnson was the star in Detroit before he abruptly called it a career at the age of 30 following a number of physical injuries. Others have directly cited the fear of blows to the head. One of them, former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, was just a 23-year-old in his second year in the league.

Some players don't ever find out the impact they endured in that area; their family does instead. Tests for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative disease resulting from repeated blows to the brain, don't occur until after a player has died.

But Ngata figured out he had options to check on plenty of his functions while he's still playing. He joked that they showed he's street smart but not book smart.

The message he got from the doctor was clear:

"'The brain is good to go. Keep on hitting,'" he said.

And so Ngata is back for his third season with the Lions, which happens to be his contract year. His dead cap has dropped from $28 million last year to $5.5 million this season, but he also happens to play in one of the biggest areas of need on the team, one they left unadressed until the sixth round in last weekend's draft.

Ngata played 13 games last season, recording 22 tackles, 1.5 sacks and three pass deflections. The five-time Pro Bowler hasn't played all 16 games in a season since 2011, but he has logged at least 12 games in all 11 pro campaigns.

He found the 2015 move from Baltimore's two-gapping three-man front to Detroit's blow-and-go four-man push to be more tiring in that it demands better physical shape, but he said the toll on his joints and muscles has been lighter as he's dropped weight.

He'll now look to lead a Lions interior that welcomed three new free agents in Akeem Spence, Jordan Hill and the versatile Cornelius Washington. Second-year defensive tackle A'Shawn Robinson continues to trend toward being a full-time player as well, and they all are looking to improve on last year's No. 30 ranking in sacks.

Ngata will be at the center of it again, just as he thought he would be before he had his brain checked. How long it lasts is like so much else.

"It all depends," he said. "If I'm banged up at the end of the year, you start to think about (retirement).

"But if you feel great, with the way that (coach Jim) Caldwell takes care of us here, I feel like I could play forever. It's always year to year."