For The First Time, NFL Official Links Football With CTE
BALTIMORE (WJZ)--Nearly 300 concussion suffered by NFL players last year alone.
Now, for the first time, a league official admits the link between the sport and potential brain injury.
Meghan McCorkell has more.
Hit after hit NFL players take a pounding week after week.
Now, for the first time a league executive admits a link between football and a degenerative brain disease called CTE.
"Certainly Dr. McKee's research shows that a number of retired NFL players were diagnosed with CTE, so the answer to that question is certainly yes," said Jeff Miller, NFL Sr. Vice President.
"All these years, decades, decades they said no," said former Baltimore Colt, Bruce Laird.
Laird played professionally for 14 years and says this is a big change of course for the league.
"Anytime you ask about multiple concussions leading to any head trauma, no there is no evidence, no there's nothing to back that up," he said.
Last season alone, 271 concussions were diagnosed in players.
Baltimore players have been at the forefront of the concussion discussion for years.
Former Ravens center Matt Birk has agreed to donate his brain after he dies to scientists studying sports brain injuries.
"What concerns me is the repeated trauma. I've had three concussions," Birk said in 2009.
And former Baltimore Colt John Mackey suffered from dementia for ten years before his death in 2011. His brain tested positive for CTE.
"It is all related to CTE, which I'm sure I have in my own brain. I'm pretty sure I got it," Laird said.
It's a fear Laird says he has to live with after playing the game he loved without knowing the dangers associated with it.
90 out of 94 NFL players who've donated their brains to a CTE research study have tested positive for the disease.
The NFL recently agreed to settle a billion dollar concussion lawsuit with former players.
This latest admission could call that settlement into question.
