Brad Culpepper, who played tackle for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears, is the lead plaintiff in a concussion lawsuit with 25 other players against the NFL filed Monday.
There are 70 such lawsuits against the league. Eighteen hundred former players are involved.
Culpepper is now a personal injury lawyer in Tampa. He told the Tampa Bay Times that the issue is what did the NFL know at the time players were getting head injuries, what did they do about it?
"It's a matter of what knowledge the NFL had and maybe knowledge they should've had, and the protocol in which they used to help the players when a head injury was diagnosed,"
Culpepper won't talk about the nature of any problems he's had after suffering concussions during his time in the NFL.
But he told the Times that it's clear the League has changed its approach to concussions since he played, enacting new rules to try to prevent concussions and instituting policies on how to handle players after they've suffered a concussion.
And, Culpepper says, players today certainly are made aware of the dangers of concussions. He wasn't.
"There were no warnings. It wasn't like they sat a player down and said, 'Look, if you get a concussion or you get numerous concussions, this could scramble your brain for good.' "
