Hall of Fame running back Jerome Bettis thinks the NFL did players a disservice by failing to deal honestly with them about concussions.
“You definitely feel as though you were taken advantage of in a way that you weren’t given that information, and you always want to have the choice of knowing, and when that is taken away from you, you feel as though you were taken advantage of,” Bettis told the Associated Press.
Bettis, who spent 13 years in the NFL, said anyone who played a career as long as his is going to get a concussion at some point.
“I don’t think you’ll find many guys that had a long career, played 10-plus years, that didn’t have a concussion,” he said.
Bettis was speaking at an event in Israel where NFL players toured a neurotechnology company that is researching better ways to diagnose concussions. Bettis believes both that the NFL needs to get better at diagnosing concussions and that the league needs to be more honest with players about what they find.