I became an NFL fan many, many moons ago, when I'd watch the Washington Redskins play on the one colored TV we had in the house, sitting in the rec room alongside my dad. You could call my dad a fair weather Redskins fan, not because he overall ran hot and cold on the team – he was a devoted 'Skins fan – but because he ran hot and cold every second of every game. They often "lost" the game during the very first drive, only to go on and actually win the game (see: Redskins win in Super Bowl XXII).
These were the days of Billy Kilmer and Sonny Jurgensen, who gave way to Joe Theismann and John Riggins. We loved our players and we loathed the Dallas Cowboys.
I remember one memorable Redskins vs. Cowboys game where Dallas QB Danny White laid out cold after being sacked by Redskins defensive end Dexter Manley. It was the 1982 NFC Championship game, and the announcers said something like White had his "bell rung" or his "clock cleaned." What he actually had was a concussion and he was forced to leave the game. "Concussion protocols" didn't exist back then.
We all moved on, because hard hits and brutal tackles were just business as usual in the NFL.
Decades later, we're finding out that all of those terrifying hits and even the routine collisions endured by NFL players can take a devastating toll. And the number of former players affected is way larger than was previously known.
A new study published Tuesday in The BMJ puts some hard numbers behind that toll, and they're difficult to take in.
Researchers looked at former NFL players who died between the years 2016 and 2021, and found that at least one in four of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. CTE is a degenerative brain disease that's been linked to repeated blows to the head.
Here are the startling numbers: of the 235 donated brains researchers were actually able to examine, a staggering 91.4 percent of them showed signs of CTE.
At least a quarter of ex-NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a much higher rate than is seen in the general population, a study released Tuesday showed. CTE is a brain disease linked to repeated blows to the head.… pic.twitter.com/vvWV0JKUYi
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 25, 2026
Prior to this study, researchers had somewhat of a "selection bias" because most the brains they were given were donated by families who suspected their deceased loved one had CTE. So, the researchers decided to approach the issue from the opposite direction, essentially giving the NFL the biggest possible benefit of the doubt.
Here's what they found.
If you suppose that every single one of the 643 former players whose brains weren't examined didn't have CTE at all – and 215 out of the total 878 players who died did have confirmed CTE – then 24.5 percent, nearly one in four, did die from it.
And that number could be on the lower end of the spectrum.
The news gets even worse. According to CBS News, 61.3 percent of the brain donors who were found to have CTE also met clinical criteria for dementia. Among those with late-stage CTE, the most severe stage of the disease, that number rose to more than 90 percent.
Some of the late NFL players who were diagnosed with CTE after their deaths include Frank Gifford, Junior Seau, Ken Stabler, and Aaron Hernandez.
These men put their bodies – and, as we now know, their brains – through extraordinary punishment for years.
The NFL has taken significant steps in recent years to make the game safer – from stricter concussion protocols to limits on contact in practice and equipment improvement. But this study is a stark reminder that there may be only so much the league can do when repeated collisions are built into the game itself.
