Dick Vermeil and former Eagles speak out on the devastating impact of concussions and their fight for fair compensation
Eagles players from the 1980 Super Bowl team and their coach talk about their special bond and the struggles to get compensated through the NFL’s concussion settlement.
The 1980 Philadelphia Eagles were the first in franchise history to appear in a Super Bowl.
Though they lost Super Bowl XV to the Oakland Raiders, 27-10, the squad has remained beloved for decades by Eagles fans.
There was little sense among players in that era that the concussions and sub-concussive hits they routinely endured in practices and games might later lead to serious health problems.
“How many concussions? Daily. I was getting them daily, said former right tackle Jerry Sisemore. “Now I’m starting to stumble a lot. I get lost.”
“I never thought that it was a head problem,” former running back Wilbert Montgomery recalled when discussing the bouts of anger that followed him after his career.
But an Inquirer investigation, The Final Penalty, found that of the 1980 team’s 22 starters, 12 developed neurocognitive problems, including dementia and chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, a rare, degenerative brain disease. In the video, several main figures from that story — former Eagles head coach Dick Vermeil; former right tackle Jerry Sisemore; Marylou Robinson, wife of late linebacker Frank LeMaster; and Robert Stern, co-founder of Boston University’s CTE Center — discuss the impact of brain injuries on the lives of football players and their fight for the compensation they believe they deserve through the NFL’s concussion settlement program.
“I get upset that the wives and the players, within this environment, are being put through such an almost demeaning routine,” Vermeil said.
“It pisses me off. Yeah, it really does. I’m here, in a successful life, because of those guys. I didn’t play a snap, and I feel a real responsibility to represent them [to get] what they deserve.”