Ex-Browns QB Bernie Kosar details injury past that includes being in a coma, seizures

As America’s most popular sport, football comes with plenty of glory.

Enjoy success on the field and the adulation washes over star players. In Northeast Ohio, multiply that effect by a thousand.

In Cleveland Browns lore, the most popular player of the last 35 years, Bernie Kosar, understands that about the sport that brought him fame. He’s also still dealing with the repercussions long after his playing career ended.

There were rumors around the area about Kosar’s health after his retirement from the NFL. He finally opened up about it on a report on Fox 8 Monday night where he revealed the severity of his post-career issues than included wasting a “good seven, eight years in massive darkness and massive pain.”

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Kosar said he suffered seizures during his playing days and numerous concussions at one point being in a coma for 96 hours after one of his last ones.

The interview with Ed and Peggy Gallek offered a fascinating view of the NFL’s recent past and why it’s become easier to sympathize with players for whom game safety and mental health wellness have become more of a focus.

Drafted in the 1985 NFL Supplemental Draft, the Boardman native played 12 years in the league until ending his career with the Miami Dolphins after the 1996 season. He led the Browns to three AFC Championship Games in four years and was at the helm of two of franchise's legendary games of the 1980s.

The 1987 championship game against the Denver Broncos at old Cleveland Municipal Stadium that featured "The Drive," which began John Elway's legend and the championship game the next year where he led a furious Browns comeback against the Broncos that ended when running back Earnest Byner fumbled into the end zone and Broncos defensive back Jeremiah Castille recovered the ball.

“Back then, you couldn't get a concussion and call yourself [out], sit out two weeks or three weeks and keep your job. What are those?” he said. “Coach used to give us some salt and we go back in.”

Kosar revealed that he sought redress through the NFL concussion fund, but eventually abandoned the monetary pursuit in favor of self-healing and that’s where his focus is.

“I haven't drank or did a pill in five and a half years,” he said.

Healing himself, he said, has become an obsession and it’s the basics of nutrition – healthy eating, hydration – that have helped him stay on the right path.

“Give other things a shot first,” he said of his methods. “And this is the most holistic way of almost regenerating or at least slowing down the deterioration.”

He said he wants to help others.

“I used to think I was put on this earth to be the quarterback,” he said, “and actually kind of feel a lot of what's happened with this as almost a responsibility to learn how to cognitively really help and get yourself better. Not just myself, but other players and people.”

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Former Browns QB Bernie Kosar opens up about scary injury past