Kevin Turner spent his life’s last six years convinced he was dying as a result of ALS. He was wrong, and so were his doctors.
Turner played eight seasons in the NFL as a fullback for the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, from 1992 to 1999. He built his college career at the University of Alabama, where he helped the Crimson Tide win a national championship in 1992.
After retirement, his health began to decline. In 2010, doctors diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevin Turner died on March 24, 2016, at the age of only 46, in Vestavia Hills. Alabama.
On November 3, 2016, researchers at the CTE Center at Boston University announced a different finding. They said Turner didn’t have ALS. He had one of the most severe cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy that they had ever documented in a football player.
Dr. Ann McKee (director of the BU CTE Center) delivered the news and more details at a press conference. She told the audience, which included Turner’s parents and relatives of other formerly CTE-diagnosed players, “This is not ALS; this is CTE,” calling the severity of his disease extraordinary and unprecedented for an athlete who died in his 40s.
CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) and ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) can look nearly identical from the outside. Both attack motor neurons and cause muscle weakness, paralysis, and eventually death. That overlap explains why Turner’s doctors diagnosed him with ALS while he was alive.
CTE can only be confirmed after death, through a brain autopsy. In Turner’s case, McKee’s team found that CTE had destroyed the motor cortex of his brain at a young age, producing symptoms that mimicked ALS so closely that even experienced clinicians missed the real cause.
Researchers pointed to Turner’s history as the likely reason his case was so severe. He started playing tackle football at age five and played for 25 seasons total, through high school, college, and the pros. BU professor Robert Cantu said the extreme severity of Turner’s disease connected directly to that early start, when his brain was still developing and more vulnerable to repeated trauma.
Turner wasn’t the only misdiagnosed case. McKee said her team had reviewed 17 athletes originally believed to have died of ALS and found that CTE was the real cause in each one. One example: Ron Perryman, former Boston College linebacker, who passed away in 2011 only 42 old, also received ALS diagnosis and treatment that was later overturned after autopsy.
Turner spent his final years advocating for brain injury awareness. He served as the lead plaintiff in a major lawsuit that former players filed against the NFL over concussion risks, a case that led to a $765 million settlement. He also founded the Kevin Turner Foundation to research the link between repeated head trauma and motor neuron disease, and he pledged his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation the same year he received his ALS diagnosis.
His father, Raymond Turner, used the findings to call on the NFL to do more for player safety. “It’s a big-money thing, I realize that,” he said. “But they can make it safer.”
Turner’s case became part of a larger body of evidence connecting football and CTE. By the time BU announced its findings on Turner, the center had diagnosed CTE in 91 deceased former players. The disease has since been found in the vast majority of donated NFL brains studied, reinforcing the link between repetitive head impacts and long-term neurological damage.