Giants' Mara says NFL isn't hiding from CTE, concussion issue

New York Giants co-owner and CEO John Mara says the NFL isn't shying away from addressing concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease that's been found in numerous former players.

"I don't think we're hiding from it," Mara said Sunday, according to ESPN's Ian O'Connor. "I know a lot of people have accused us of hiding from it in the past, but I certainly don't think that's the case anymore. ... It's something we have to keep pouring money into and keep studying because it's not going away.

"You don't want to put your players at a greater risk than you already understand they're taking. You've got to do whatever you can to protect them. We need to understand why concussions are up because you hate to see it. It's the No. 1 challenge going forward, and everything else we talk about this week is secondary to that."

Concussions in the 2015 season were up nearly 32 percent over the previous season, according to data released in January.

NFL senior vice president and chief security offer Jeffrey Miller admitted Monday that there's a link between football and CTE, the first time a senior league official admitted a connection on record.

Over 4,500 former players sued the league for failing to protect them from concussions and brain damage, drawing a $765-million settlement that was approved last April.

Mara said the league is spending millions on concussion research.

"We understand more than we did years ago, but we're still not even close to having the knowledge that we need to have going forward. That's why we're spending millions of dollars in research and trying to understand more about this issue. That's why we have the leading experts, we think, in the country on our health and safety committee. So we have a long way to go on that issue."

CTE can only be diagnosed after death and has only been found in people who have suffered head trauma.