01/31/2024

The NFL Concussion Settlement's Broken Promises

Strict guidelines have led to denials for hundreds of players

When Irv Cross applied for money from the NFL concussion settlement in 2018, his dementia was obvious to anyone who spent more than a few minutes with him.

At 78, the former NFL player and trailblazing sports broadcaster struggled to speak coherently, forgot to change his clothes and suffered from urinary incontinence, his wife told doctors. Cross had been diagnosed with dementia by another doctor months before he was evaluated by two NFL settlement doctors, his medical records show.

But the settlement doctors concluded they couldn’t diagnose Cross with anything, their reports state. While Cross’s symptoms met the standard definition for dementia in American medicine, they agreed, his test scores didn’t meet the NFL settlement’s definition.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.