Former Jaguars and Patriots running back Fred Taylor fired off a series of tweets on Wednesday about discovering longstanding injuries during a recent medical exam and wondered whether the “neutral doctors” used by the NFL to screen players seeking benefits “overlooked” those problems.
That led Taylor to be denied “line of duty” benefits available to NFL players, but Taylor followed up on Thursday to say that the reason for going public wasn’t meant to be a criticism of the medical care he received during his playing career. Taylor explained that the point he was trying to make got muddled in the 140-character world of Twitter and that his intention were to raise issues for players to keep in mind when their careers come to an end.
“This is more of an attempt to see things be avoided,” Taylor told Mike DiRocco of ESPN.com. “Guys before me improved the game. Guys before me improved the healthcare. The league is great. They have a lot of benefits for us, a lot of resources. I salute them for what they’ve done, but at the same time there’s other things that could be done. I’m not saying league screwed me and did this. I never said that and I’m not looking for money. I’m not looking for a fight. How can we make this better?”
Taylor told DiRocco he eventually qualified for the “line of duty” benefits, something that wasn’t clear in his Twitter posts along with the “neutral doctors” being approved by the NFL and the NFLPA, and that he’d like to see the NFLPA look into doing something similar to the National Basketball Players Association when it comes to extending health insurance to retired players with three years of service time. Taylor also said that he’d “play football 100 times again” and wishes he “could go buy different body parts” in order to continue his playing career.