Philadelphia was freezing but not as cold as attitudes to player compensation for head injuries. Teeth-chattering winds whipped across every pocket of the city on Jan. 11, 1981, down to Veterans Stadium, where thousands of tightly packed fans, thrumming with manic energy, were fixated on the unforgiving playing field.
There, the Philadelphia Eagles were hosting the NFC championship game and fighting for a ticket to Super Bowl XV. Standing in their way were the favored Dallas Cowboys — America’s Team, Tom Landry and his fedora, perennial Super Bowl contenders.
Five years earlier, the Eagles had been a laughingstock, buried under the wreckage of nine consecutive seasons without a winning record. To rescue the franchise, the team had hired a young college head coach whose Hollywood smile hid a simmering intensity: Dick Vermeil.
Vermeil took handfuls of mid- and late-round draft picks and infused them with an ethos of more, more, more: They would practice harder than their peers, watch endless film, strategize late into the night. That work ethic produced a core of offensive and defensive starters who rarely missed a game in an era when linemen, in particular, endured constant helmet-to-helmet collisions.
Striking an opponent’s head and leaving him dazed was just part of the battle that began when the ball was snapped; there was little understanding that such impact caused actual brain injuries. Right tackle Jerry Sisemore would later sum up the style of play:
“Kill the head, and the body dies.”
Early in the championship game, a Cowboys punt gave the Eagles’ offense the ball for the first time. For several days, there had been speculation that the team might be without its star running back, Wilbert Montgomery. The Eagles had told reporters that he was nursing a knee injury.
Recently, though, Montgomery told The Inquirer that he’d been reeling from something far more serious.
During practice that week, “I got knocked out,” he said. “It was probably the worst concussion I ever had.”
When the Eagles offensive starters lined up for that first drive, among the mix of white-and-green jerseys was No. 31: Montgomery. On second down, quarterback Ron Jaworski turned and tucked the football into Montgomery’s hands.
“How many concussions? Daily. I was getting them daily. Now I’m starting to stumble a lot. I get lost.”Jerry Sisemore
Sisemore and center Guy Morriss, who started more than 150 games together for the Eagles, overpowered the Cowboys’ defensive line and opened a lane for Montgomery.
He rumbled 42 yards across the Vet’s stiff AstroTurf field and into the end zone, a dagger through the Cowboys’ heart. Montgomery would rush for 194 yards altogether that afternoon; the Eagles vanquished the Cowboys, 20-7, and advanced to their first Super Bowl, an enduring moment of triumph for the team and the city.
Forty-three years later, the toll of the perpetual brain-jarring hits that those Eagles endured has come into focus. The Inquirer spoke with a dozen of the 1980 Super Bowl team’s 22 starters, and with relatives of two who have died, and found that 12 of the 14, or 86%, developed a range of cognitive issues after retirement — from memory loss and depression to personality changes and movement disorders.
The former Eagles attribute their health problems to the concussions and sub-concussive hits that they suffered while playing. (The NFL long denied such a connection but has, in recent years, changed its stance, and acknowledged a link between football and degenerative brain diseases.)
