Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease

August 27, 2026

A football on an American football field.

(NYT) – The actual prevalence, researchers said, may be much higher.

New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.

Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.

The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E. (Read More)

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