The helmet-to-helmet shot knocked Tony Dorsett out cold in the second quarter of a 1984 Cowboys-Eagles game, the hardest hit he ever took during his Hall of Fame NFL career.
“It was like a freight train hitting a Volkswagen,” Dorsett says now.
“Did they know it was a concussion?” he asks rhetorically. “They thought I was half-dead.”
And yet, he says, after being examined in the locker room – a light shined in his eyes; queries such as who sat next to him on the Cowboys’ bus ride to the stadium – Dorsett returned to the field and gained 99 yards in the second half. Mainly, he says, by running plays the wrong way, because he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do.
“That ain’t the first time I was knocked out or been dazed over the course of my career, and now I’m suffering for it,” the 57-year-old former tailback says. “And the NFL is trying to deny it.”
Dorsett traces several health problems to concussions during a career that lasted from 1977-88, and he has joined more than 300 former players – including three other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and at least 32 first- or second-team All-Pro selections – in suing the NFL, its teams and, in some cases, helmet maker Riddell. More should have been done in the past to warn about the dangers of concussions, their lawyers argue, and more can be done now and in the future to help retired players deal with mental and physical problems they attribute to their days in the NFL.
In interviews conducted by the AP over the past two months with a dozen plaintiffs, what emerged was, at best, a depiction of a culture of indifference on the part of the league and its teams toward concussions and other injuries.
Players complain that they carried owners to their profits, in an industry that now has more than $9 billion in annual revenues, without the safety nets of guaranteed contracts or lifetime medical insurance.
Head injuries are a major topic of conversation every day of the season. With the Super Bowl as a global stage, the NFL will air a one-minute TV commercial during Sunday’s game highlighting rules changes through the years that have made the sport safer.
The owners of the teams playing for the Lombardi Trophy in Indianapolis – Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots and John Mara of the New York Giants – acknowledge the issue’s significance.
“There’s more of a focus on it now, without question, and I think that’s a good thing, and I think it’ll continue to be a focus. Because none of us want to put players in perilous situations like that,” Mara says. “I don’t want to see guys that are on this team, 20 years from now, with debilitating injuries, no matter what they are.”
Dorsett had surgery on both his knees, and problems with his left arm and right wrist. He says then-Cowboys coach Tom Landry once told him he could play despite a broken bone in his back. Not even the flak jacket Dorsett says he wore beneath his jersey could bring relief, the injury so painful that “tears would just start flowing out of my eyes, profusely and uncontrollably” during practices.
Dennis Harrah, a Los Angeles Rams offensive lineman from 1975-87 and an All-Pro in 1986, shared Drosett’s resentment and despair.
“They’re just waiting until we die,” he says of the NFL. “They’re just waiting for us old guys until we pass – to quit complaining, and we die.”