Columbia Sports Journalism

The NFL and thousands of former players agree on the concussion suit

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“The way coaches would say, ‘You got your bell rung’ or ‘You got dinged’ would diminish whatever injury you actually had,” said Bob Avellini, ex-quarterback for the Chicago Bears. “It was just, ‘Here, take some smelling salts.'”

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Depression, combined with a lengthy list of injuries and surgeries, motivated Jim Cheyunski, 67, and his wife Patricia to join more than 4,000 plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the NFL in federal court in Philadelphia.

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Eric Crabtree says he is physically fine; his scars from fifteen years of taking hits on the football field are on the inside. Since 2004 Crabtree has battled with severe depression, which resulted in the end of his marriage and, he said, several suicide attempts.

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Karl Mecklenburg played 12 seasons for the Broncos through the 1980s and ‘90s. For him, it is his memory that has betrayed him. “On a bad day, I end up places and don’t remember what I was trying to do. I’ll go out to the garage and can’t remember why I was there, what I was going to get or what I was planning to do,” he said.

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Paul Rochester still has the New York Jets helmet he wore during Super Bowl III. It sits atop a shelf in his office with a dent, the size of a child’s fist, just above where his right frontal lobe would once have been protected. The battered helmet signifies physicality.

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Memory loss is just one of the problems Floyd Little, who played professionally for the Denver Broncos, said he deals with as a result of head injuries he suffered during his Hall-of-Fame career.

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Joe DeLamielleure looks like he could still play in the NFL. The 6-foot-3 Hall of Fame guard has a brick wall for a chest, tree trunks for legs, and arms bulging with muscle. He’s in great shape at 62, reminding fans of the days when he blocked for O.J. Simpson on the offensive line of the Buffalo Bills.

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John Banaszak said he doesn’t have time to think about the days he was hospitalized in 2009 when there was bleeding in his brain four years ago, or whether the concussions he received while playing in the National Football League in the 1970’s will cause brain damage.

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In the Spring of 1977 Greg Meisner received a football scholarship to attend the University of Pittsburgh where he played defensive tackle on a national championship team that would place 11 players in the first five rounds of the 1981 NFL draft, including three in the first round. Meisner went in the third round, and called his class “the best to come out of one college program.”

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