NEW ORLEANS — The NFL plans to have an independent neurologist on the sidelines of every game starting next season, but that isn’t keeping the players from continuing to question the league’s devotion to safety.
Speaking yesterday at Super Bowl XLVII just hours after the NFL Network revealed the league’s plan, the NFL Players Association stepped up its criticism while reserving particular ire for the Chargers’ embattled team physician.
Union president Dominique Foxworth said player safety for the owners “sits well behind increasing the bottom line,” using as evidence the recent introduction of a full-season slate of Thursday games and the league’s continuing desire to expand the overall regular-season schedule to 18 games.
The resulting mistrust, Foxworth added, helps to explain why the NFL and the union have not been able to agree on HGH testing despite growing pressure from Congress and world doping officials.
The union also released a surprising survey yesterday it said showed a whopping 78 percent of players don’t trust their team’s medical staff and a mere 43 percent rate their club’s training staff as “good.”
The survey was released along with an announcement by the NFLPA it is creating a $100 million program in conjunction with Harvard University that will study the long-range health of 1,000 former players.
Union chief DeMaurice Smith claims the league has stymied the NFLPA’s request for a chief safety officer, although the decision to have an independent neurologist was deemed a step in the right direction by the union.
The move by the NFL appeared to be in response to several high-profile incidents in recent seasons in which Browns’ quarterback Colt McCoy and other players who absorbed debilitating, concussion-inducing hits were allowed to return to the game.
The independence of team doctors in general is a long-running and touchy subject for the union, but the decision to single out Chargers’ doctor David Chao yesterday was a dramatic escalation.
The NFLPA is asking the league to have Chao removed after he recently lost a malpractice lawsuit and his license came under scrutiny by the California state medical board.