Former NFL quarterback Craig Morton filed a federal lawsuit this week claiming that the league failed to protect its players from repeated head injuries, which have contributed to negative long-term health effects.
In an 84-page lawsuit, Morton, who played 18 seasons with the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, and Denver Broncos between 1965 and 1982, and other former players argue that the NFL "ignored, minimized, disputed, and actively suppressed broader awareness of the link between sub-concussive and concussive injuries in football and the chronic
neuro-cognitive damage, illnesses, and decline suffered by former players," USA Today reported.
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Morton, 70, is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
In August, the NFL agreed to a $765 million settlement with thousands of former players who alleged that the hard-hitting concussions they suffered during their time in the league led to serious complications later in life like dementia and Alzheimer's. But the settlement is still awaiting a federal judge's approval and did not require the NFL to admit fault.
Morton was sacked 405 times over the course of his career, according to USA Today.
"I've got numbness of the feet,
shoulder problems, neck issues," Morton told the Denver Post back in October. "If I think about it, I'm in pain, so I'd just as soon leave it alone. I would like to think a lot of the issues have to do with concussions, but I don't know if I ever was diagnosed with a concussion, because you had never heard of it. You just went back. You'd see stars, but if I could get up and get back to the huddle, I played."
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