Former Browns QB Bernie Kosar talks about having over 100 concussions, and protecting today's youth

Former Cleveland Browns quarterback was a guest on FOX News, in a segment that focused on changing the game of football to try to protect today's youth from CTE and traumatic brain injuries. The full interview is below, and it also contains insight from Chris Nowinski, CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

Nowinski highlighted that its not just the number of concussions that players have, but the constant and repetitive hits that these players absorb over and over again that are having these long-term effects down the road. He mentioned that eliminating kickoffs would be a positive step toward helping, and for some reason, the thought of doing so never quite resonated as fully as it should have until I heard him say that: it's a play that barely impacts a game, yet you have these special teams running full speed at each other in opposite directions to take on blocks a handful of times per game. Is is worth it?

Kosar then jumps in for the second half of the interview. When asked how many concussions he suffered in his career, he said it was over 100, to go along with 15 seizures. He said it took 25 years, and times when he was on 50 pills at once, just to get him back to a point to where he could have a coherent conversation and enunciate multiple syllable words. That brings me back to when I used to love Bernie Kosar calling preseason games in the early 2000s, but I remember his speech being slurred and some fans often wondering or joking that he must have been drunk. He has a clear difference in speech now, and while it's remarkable how he has able to improve, I'm sure it wasn't without a lot of struggles that still probably persist to this day.