New documentary shows NFL Pro Bowler Haselrig's battle with football-related brain injuries

Nov. 16—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Frail, angry, confused and dying, Carlton Haselrig rolled around on his bed, twisting in the blankets and sheets, screaming profanities, before sitting up and crying out a desperate plea: "Help me, Dad! Father!"

But it was in vain. His father was not there to help. Fred Haselrig had passed away a few years earlier.

Carlton Haselrig's wife, Michelle Haselrig, recorded the footage and many other similar incidents to show people the struggles her husband endured in his last months.

The bull of a man who physically imposed his will on opponents on the way to six individual NCAA wrestling titles at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and National Football League Pro Bowl honors as an offensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers was gone, betrayed by his brain that bore the damage from his days of athletic dominance.

The scene is one of the most powerful images from a 25-minute documentary titled "Bloodsport," the latest installment of Al Jazeera English's investigative news show, "Fault Lines."

The episode explores Haselrig's battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a currently incurable disease caused by repeated blows to the head, and his wife's attempt to receive financial compensation from the NFL.

It is set to be released on Wednesday at aljazeera.com/program/fault-lines.

"I've had it described to me what the disorientation and rage and delusion that accompanies CTE (is like)," said Isaac Solotaroff, director of "Bloodsport." "I never saw it firsthand the way that I did with these videos that Michelle filmed with Carlton — and, as she said, 'I did it because no one was going to believe me if I didn't do it.' She just couldn't believe how far he had fallen in such a short period of time.

"This is the most honest depiction of what CTE looks like that I've ever seen. That's what went through my mind when I saw it, and, of course, my heart broke for Michelle."

Michelle Haselrig was uncertain about sharing the personal video, but ultimately decided it was a "necessary" part of the story.

'Blunt force'

Haselrig, as a guard on the Steelers' offensive line, collided with other players thousands of times during his NFL career, from 1990 to 1993 and in 1995.

In the documentary, his uncle, Bruce Haselrig, shows the helmet his nephew wore during his last season with Pittsburgh. It is scarred with deep gouges, including some across the iconic Steelers logo.

Bruce Haselrig tapped the front of the No. 77 helmet and quietly said, "Boom."

"When I looked at it and saw it initially, I thought about his brain, his head being bruised because of the blunt force that he got playing that position," Bruce Haselrig said in the documentary.

The helmet provides a tangible sign of the sustained punishment to Haselrig's head.

"I don't think Carlton had any documented concussions when he was playing for the Steelers, but you can see how much head trauma he was sustaining that would be considered sub-concussive head trauma," Solotaroff said.

Haselrig fought substance abuse issues, found himself in legal trouble, and suffered serious mental and physical ailments at times during his life. He felt many of the problems were caused from repeated head trauma.

The family donated his brain to Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center for research. CTE can only be confirmed postmortem.

In 2017, Carlton Haselrig took cognitive impairment tests to see if he qualified for a financial award as part of a settlement by the NFL to compensate former players who suffered brain injuries as a result of their playing time.

The tests — as originally scored — showed that Haselrig had no issues with executive functioning, learning, memory, language or visual perceptual processing. So he was denied money.

And, according to his wife, Haselrig used that supposed clean bill of health as the basis for how he approached his medical care, including when he developed cirrhosis toward the end of his life.

"That day that I recorded (the video of Haselrig in bed), while he was screaming, he had to go to the doctor and didn't want to go, because the NFL told him nothing was wrong with him," Michelle Haselrig said during an interview.

"And I tried to explain to him, 'Look at you. We already made the appointment. You need to go. You know what I mean? You're going.' As a wife, I put my foot down that day. Unfortunately, it was too late. He was, as you see, very angry. I didn't know he was going to yell for his father, his grandfather. I didn't know he was going to do that at all.

"And when I saw it, I was like 'Wow. Oh, my goodness.' I just was scared, and I knew that wasn't him, and it was sad to watch."

Haselrig died in 2020 at age 54.

"Race-norming" played a role in Haselrig being denied a financial settlement.

The process of scoring former NFL players' cognitive impairment tests assumed that Black players had lower cognitive functions than non-Black players to begin with, and thus were expected to score lower on the tests.

"I was so sad because he should have gotten that money in 2017," Michelle Haselrig said. "He didn't get to benefit from the fruits of his labor. He worked hard for that money — very hard."

She said her husband "believed what the NFL told him, and they told him a lie."

"It was untrue," she said. "How can a person be OK when they're washing their clothes and they put the clothes in the freezer? My husband put his clothes in the freezer and thought it was the washer."

Solotaroff said the diagnosis "emboldened his denial" and possibly "exacerbated how fast he went."

In "Bloodsport," Dr. Eric Watson, a neuropsychologist with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, used the same software as the NFL did to show how Haselrig, if he had been classified as "white," would have been determined to have some degree of "impairment" in multiple categories, including "moderate to severe" and "severe" in two cases.

"It's almost like a completely different person," Watson said.

Michelle Haselrig said her husband had "absolutely not" been told his scores would be adjusted because he was Black.

She has refiled a claim, believing "the score was tainted," and is now playing the "waiting game" to see what the league will determine.

Beyond just attempting to get settlement money, Michelle Haselrig fondly recalls her husband, the father of her children and one of the most accomplished athletes ever to come from Johnstown.

"I love my husband very much," she said, "and I'm very proud of him. But I'm also sad what happened to him, and I will fight for him to the day I die."