At least 24.5 percent of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE, according to a new study published in The BMJ.
The numbers are stark. Of 878 former players who died in that five-year span, 215 were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the progressive brain disease linked to repetitive head trauma. The real toll could be even higher. Brains from 643 players were never examined, leaving a vast unknown, one that casts a long shadow over the sport’s future.
The Statistics No One Can Ignore
For every four NFL players who died in that period, at least one had CTE. That’s not a marginal risk, it’s a crisis, say experts cited in the report.
David Michaels, a former head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), called the CTE rate among former NFL players “astoundingly high.” Another former OSHA official went further, labeling it “apocalyptically high.” He added, “We never see things that are this dire.”
Despite the scale of the crisis, no federal workplace safety agency has stepped in. Doug Parker, a former OSHA chief, was blunt: “I don’t think that this would be abided in any industry.” Current OSHA management, in response, stated that, “In most cases, OSHA does not take enforcement action with regard to professional athletes.”
For the families of the deceased, and for those still playing, the numbers are not just statistics. They are reminders of teammates lost and the possibilities of fates yet to come.
The NFL and NFLPA Respond: A Call to Action
The NFL, facing another wave of scrutiny, issued a statement insisting the league “continuously strives to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts.” The league stressed its commitment to providing resources to support the physical and mental well-being of its community.
The players’ union, the NFLPA, struck a more somber tone. The new study, it said, “is a sobering reminder that football carries real risks, and those risks can have lasting consequences for players and their families.” In the union’s view, “The findings should serve as a call to action across the entire football ecosystem.”
The drama is not just in the medical findings. It is in the tension between the league’s drive for spectacle and the growing awareness of what that spectacle costs. Every week, players line up knowing the risks. Some will pay the price, and some already have.
The Human Cost and What Comes Next
The most chilling detail may be this: CTE, for now, can only be diagnosed after death. The dead cannot speak, but their brains tell the story, a story of unseen injuries, mounting over careers, ending in diagnoses that come too late for treatment or prevention.
The looming specter of a day when CTE can be diagnosed in the living could change everything. If a player learned, mid-career, that he was developing CTE, the decision to keep playing would be more than a question of love for the game. It would become a matter of life and death.
The numbers from the BMJ study are not just a warning, they are a turning point. As the debate over football’s future intensifies, the fate of the sport may depend on how the NFL, its players, and the public respond to the realities revealed by the dead.
As the NFL faces its next season, the question of how many more players will join that grim statistic remains unanswered.
