For decades, the roar of the crowd has obscured a quieter reckoning happening inside the minds of the men who played America's most popular sport. A study published in the British Medical Journal now places that reckoning in stark relief: the majority of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 likely carried chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease born of repeated blows accumulated not merely on professional fields, but across a lifetime of play beginning in childhood. The findings invite a society that has long celebrated football to weigh the full cost of tha
Study finds CTE in majority of deceased NFL players, far exceeding prior estimates
Hundreds of deceased former NFL players suffered from degenerative brain disease, with long-term neurological consequences affecting quality of life and mortality.
The bulk of the damage didn't happen on Sundays—it accumulated over decades
Mark
Why does it matter that we can only diagnose CTE after death? Why not find it while these players are still alive?
Mimi
Because CTE is a pathological condition—you have to see the actual damage in the brain tissue under a microscope. There's no blood test, no scan that can catch it definitively while someone is living. We can see the effects—memory loss, mood changes, cognitive decline—but not the disease itself.
Mark
So these men lived with symptoms they couldn't get a diagnosis for?
Mimi
Exactly. They experienced the consequences—dementia, depression, behavioral changes—but couldn't know for certain what was causing it. That's part of what makes this so tragic. The disease was there the whole time, but invisible.
Mark
The study says the damage starts in youth football. Should we be concerned about kids playing the sport?
Mimi
The researchers are saying that's where the conversation needs to happen. Every hit adds up. A ten-year-old taking impacts in Pop Warner, a high school player, a college player—by the time they reach the NFL, the cumulative load is enormous. The question is whether we can reduce that load earlier.
Mark
But the NFL says they're already doing things to make the game safer. Why isn't that enough?
Mimi
Because most of the damage happens before players ever reach the NFL. The league can't control what happens in youth leagues or high schools. The researchers are saying the prevention needs to start there, at every level, not just at the top.
Mark
What does the settlement money actually do for these former players?
Mimi
It provides compensation and access to medical resources. But money doesn't reverse brain damage. For many of these men, it's too late. The settlement acknowledges the harm, but it can't undo it.
Il Polso
- A landmark BMJ study finds that between 24.5% and 97.7% of deceased NFL players from a six-year window had CTE, a range that reveals both the scale of the crisis and the limits of what science can yet confirm.
- Former NFL players are dying from neurodegenerative diseases at four times the rate of the general population, with dementia widespread among those whose brains were examined — a generation of men whose final years were marked by cognitive collapse.
- Researchers stress that the damage did not begin in the NFL: the thousands of head impacts absorbed in youth leagues, high school, and college football laid the neurological groundwork long before any professional contract was signed.
- The NFL points to a billion-dollar legal settlement, reduced contact in practices, and existing safety protocols as evidence of accountability, but critics argue these measures address the symptom rather than the source.
- Scientists are now urging the league to extend prevention efforts across every level of the sport, framing this not as a professional football problem but as a public health crisis rooted in how the game is played from childhood onward.
For decades, the roar of the crowd has obscured a quieter reckoning happening inside the minds of the men who played America's most popular sport. A study published in the British Medical Journal now places that reckoning in stark relief: the majority of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 likely carried chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease born of repeated blows accumulated not merely on professional fields, but across a lifetime of play beginning in childhood. The findings invite a society that has long celebrated football to weigh the full cost of that celebration — and to ask who bears it.
A study published this summer in the British Medical Journal has delivered findings that are difficult to set aside. Researchers examined 878 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021. Of those, 235 had donated their brains to science — and 215 of those brains showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease caused by repeated head impacts that can only be confirmed after death.
The numbers stretch well beyond what earlier research had suggested. At minimum, 24.5 percent of all NFL players who died in that period had CTE. At maximum, the figure reaches 97.7 percent. The gap reflects the uncertainty of studying a population where brain donation is voluntary and incomplete — but it also signals how vast the problem may be. Lead author Daniel Daneshvar of Harvard Medical School noted that NFL players die from neurodegenerative diseases at roughly four times the rate of the general population, with dementia common among those examined.
Perhaps the study's most consequential finding concerns where the damage begins. The head impacts responsible for CTE did not accumulate primarily on professional fields — they built up over decades in youth leagues, high school programs, and college football. By the time these men reached the NFL, their brains had already absorbed years of collisions.
The league has taken some steps: a 2011 collective bargaining agreement reduced contact practices, and a billion-dollar settlement was reached with thousands of former players in 2016. An NFL spokesperson cited ongoing safety strategies and player health resources in response to the new findings. But the researchers are asking for more — specifically, prevention measures that reach all the way down to youth and high school football, where the cumulative burden quietly begins.
A study published this summer in the British Medical Journal has delivered a stark finding: the majority of former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 likely suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head. The research examined 878 deceased former players from that six-year window. Of those, 235 had donated their brains to science. The results were sobering. Two hundred fifteen of those 235 brains showed signs of CTE—a disease that can only be definitively diagnosed after death, when researchers can examine the organ directly.
The numbers tell a story that extends far beyond what previous research has suggested. Using conservative calculations, the researchers determined that at minimum, 24.5 percent of all NFL players who died during that period had CTE. But the actual figure could be dramatically higher. Their maximum estimate reaches 97.7 percent—nearly every player in the sample. That gap between the minimum and maximum reflects the uncertainty inherent in studying a population where only a fraction of the deceased donated their brains, but it also underscores how widespread the problem may be.
Daniel Daneshvar, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the study's lead author, framed the findings in the context of a larger health crisis. NFL players, he noted, die from neurodegenerative diseases at roughly four times the rate of the general population. The disease burden is real and measurable. Dementia was also common among the brain donors, suggesting that cognitive decline was a widespread experience among these men in their final years.
What makes the research particularly significant is where Daneshvar and his colleagues say the damage originates. The bulk of the head impacts that produced this disease did not happen on Sunday afternoons in NFL stadiums. They accumulated over decades—in youth leagues, in high school football programs, in college football. By the time these men reached the professional level, their brains had already absorbed thousands of collisions. The NFL level simply added to a burden that had been building since childhood.
The league has made some efforts to address the problem. A 2011 collective bargaining agreement limited contact practices. In 2016, following a protracted legal battle, the NFL agreed to a settlement worth one billion dollars with more than five thousand former players. An NFL spokesperson responded to the new study by emphasizing the league's commitment to safety, citing strategies designed to reduce concussions and head impacts, and noting that the organization provides resources to help former players address health concerns.
But the researchers are calling for more. They have urged the NFL to implement prevention measures that reach across all levels of the sport—not just the professional ranks, but the youth and high school programs where the cumulative damage begins. The question now is whether the league will treat this as a call to action or as one more study in a long line of research documenting a problem that has proven difficult to solve.
Citazioni salienti
The bulk of the head impacts that these former NFL players experienced didn't occur at the NFL level. They occurred at the collegiate level and at the high school level and in many cases the youth level.— Daniel Daneshvar, Harvard Medical School
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