News

Another oft-concussed ex-NFLer commits suicide

(CBS/AP) ATLANTA – Former Atlanta Falcons safety Ray Easterling, who helped lead the team’s vaunted defense in the 1970s and later filed a high-profile lawsuit against the NFL targeting the league’s handling of concussion-related injuries, has died. He was 62. Easterling died in his home in Richmond, Va., after...

Alex Karras latest to sue NFL over head injuries

Associated Press – USA Today To a generation of TV and film fans, Alex Karras will forever be the loving adoptive dad on the 1980s sitcom Webster or the big guy who punched a horse in 1974′s Blazing Saddles. Before his acting days, he was a football star, a...

Saints’ price only start of what NFL will pay

by Art Thiel Lost in the news of the Final Four, the start of baseball season, the Ryan Leaf wretchedness and, in Seattle, the hubbub around a proposed arena, was word that former Washington State quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien is losing a bit of his mind....

Gregg Williams Audio Tape Adds Fuel to Concussion Lawsuits

As if the New Orleans Saints bounty program wasn’t enough to create problems for the NFL, the recent release of an audio tape by filmmaker Sean Pamphilon is definitely going to create them. With the stack of concussion lawsuits growing against the NFL, this may just add fuel to...

For NFL, head injuries should be a top-of-mind issue

By Tracee Hamilton, Friday, March 30, 12:16 PM The NFL has been busy this spring, staking its claim to a moral high ground. We are all spinning from all the spin coming out of the commissioner’s office, all of which ends up with the same message: Trust us. We...

NFL concussion lawsuits keep adding former players

Associated Press Mark Rypien is a Super Bowl MVP and champion, a former quarterback for the Washington Redskins and other teams who reached football’s pinnacle and now wonders at what cost. His memory failing him, the 49-year-old Rypien tape-records significant conversations with his girlfriend, he explains, “So we can...

Former Redskins QB Mark Rypien, grappling with memory loss and other head injury symptoms, wants to make the NFL safer

By Mike Jones, Published: March 29 As a quarterback in the NFL, Mark Rypien knew well that he put himself at risk of serious injury every time he stepped on the field. He’d seen players suffer broken bones, muscle tears and sprains. But if you asked Rypien about concussions...

‘They’re not unrelated’: Attention to concussions, player safety fed NFL bounty punishment

By Associated Press, Published: March 22 When Hall of Fame tailback Tony Dorsett was getting slammed to the turf in the 1970s, or Super Bowl-winning QB Joe Theismann’s leg was being gruesomely broken by Lawrence Taylor in the 1980s, it was just football. Now things are different. Scientific studies...

Explaining Roger Goodell’s actions NFL concussion issue, burgeoning lawsuits, provide discipline backstory

By Mark Kreidler | Special to ESPN.com The Saints docudrama is a scandal in the purest sense of the word. It contains almost all of the classic elements — wrongdoing, disgrace, a general loss of faith — and, as a bonus, designated bad guys in Sean Payton, Gregg Williams...

Falcons and NFL sue former players over workers’ comp

The National Football League and the Atlanta Falcons are suing nine former Falcons players to force them to litigate workers’ compensation cases in Georgia rather than in California, where dozens of current and former NFL players have sought compensation for injuries sustained from playing football. The eight-page suit, filed...