A Former Bengal’s Super Bowl Injury Taught Him How to Fight Football’s Other Ravages

CINCINNATI — Tim Krumrie walked into the restaurant carrying a black Bengals cap and a shirt emblazoned with the brand of the Tremendous Bowl he didn’t end. His left leg — the one he fractured in three locations, in maybe the grisliest damage in Tremendous Bowl historical past — is all healed. After all it’s. It has been 33 years.

The extra noticeable appendage is his palms. Krumrie doesn’t shake folks’s palms a lot as he engulfs them in a clamp. They hoisted 75-pound anvils within the Bengals’ weight room. They grappled with double-teaming offensive linemen. They pushed a snowblower by the Wisconsin slush within the winter of 1989, mere weeks after surgeons implanted the 15-inch stabilizing nail inside his tibia.

Final week, from throughout a half-circle sales space, Krumrie prolonged those self same palms. One cradled his iPhone, the opposite swiped by pictures till he discovered photos of his mind, captured in August 2015. Splotches of blue, stains of inexperienced.

These colours, revealed by nuclear imaging that exhibits how blood programs by tissue, indicated a scarcity of blood move to affected areas of the mind. His physician, having solely learn the scan, requested Krumrie whether or not he had been having temper swings and stability points, sleeping difficulties and reminiscence loss — signs frequent amongst gamers who hit, and have been hit, as usually as Krumrie did throughout his 12 years within the N.FL.

Sure, Krumrie mentioned, he did.

For him and different N.F.L. retirees, blows to the top — or “getting dinged,” Krumrie’s most popular euphemism — have been simply an inconvenience throughout his taking part in days. Their accumulation, although, has meted out a brutal reality: mind trauma. Krumrie has acknowledged the results of his excellent profession and accepted them. He has additionally resolved to destigmatize speaking about mind accidents.

“It’s a humbling expertise to say, ‘Hey, I’ve an issue,’” mentioned Krumrie, a two-time All-Professional nostril sort out. “You’re alleged to be a troublesome man. That is actuality. My actuality is I see that and I acknowledge that and I handle that. Identical to my leg, I addressed it. And I gained.”

Krumrie harbors no regrets towards soccer’s position in his well being. He would break his different leg, he mentioned, merely to play in one other Tremendous Bowl — not even to avenge Cincinnati’s loss to San Francisco on the finish of the 1988 season. All these soccer video games, he gained or misplaced. Both he tackled the working again or he didn’t. These have been binary propositions. The mind, when broken, doesn’t totally heal. So Krumrie (pronounced KRUM-rye) has managed his signs by adhering to routines.

He stopped consuming Weight loss program Coke and alcohol. He reads every single day — books about Jerry Rice, Vince Lombardi and Brett Favre, who, Krumrie famous, got here to start out in Inexperienced Bay, in 1992, as a result of Packers quarterback Don Majkowski injured his ankle on a Krumrie sack.

Earlier than journeys to the market, he images what he wants to purchase. He writes Put up-it reminders. Krumrie additionally continues to put on, for upkeep, a tool he likened to a soccer helmet with out a face masks. It transmits infrared gentle into his cranium to enhance blood move.

After the primary of 30 therapies, he mentioned, names and reminiscences flooded again. His palms flipped to a different set of photos, taken the final time he had the nuclear imaging, known as a Spect scan, in December 2015. Significantly better. Extra grey crammed the display. The blemishes, although nonetheless current, had receded some.

“Some guys can’t speak about it,” Krumrie mentioned. “Am I a troublesome man? Put me in a hoop with anyone — at this time. That mind-set continues to be there. Can I do it? No. However my thoughts says I can.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer detailed this section of his life in December 2017, a couple of months earlier than he and his spouse, Cheryl Krumrie, left Steamboat Springs, Colo., the place they liked to ski and snowshoe and bike, and relocated to the Cincinnati space. Again to the embrace of outdated pals. Again to the acquainted.

“We may encompass Tim with folks he’s identified for a very very long time and who’re accepting and keen to let that stuff go by,” Cheryl mentioned of the transfer. “And he feels very secure round them, like he doesn’t must faux he’s one thing he’s not.”

Solely those that know Tim Krumrie nicely, she mentioned, sense a distinction. He nonetheless conveys the identical traits that outlined him in his football-playing prime. “Timmy may eat nails and spit them out,” Jason Buck, a former Bengals teammate, mentioned — now, at 61. Krumrie works out for 2 hours every single day. A staccato chuckle punctuates tales and sentences.

The Bengals’ turnabout from 4-11-1 to A.F.C. champions has invigorated Krumrie, although he nonetheless forgets issues, like he did en path to the Arrowhead Stadium complicated forward of this yr’s A.F.C. championship recreation. As he and Cheryl drove previous Kansas Metropolis’s coaching facility, she requested if he remembered it, since he coached there for 4 years. Nope, he mentioned.

However on different days, he’ll recall anecdotes and names and phrases that he thought had been misplaced eternally.

“He has stayed fairly regular,” Cheryl mentioned. “And I’m pleased with that, as a result of there’s no getting higher. There’s no recreating and making the mind proper once more. I’m simply seeking to keep in the identical place. Being establishment is ok with me.”

When Evan McPherson’s extra time subject purpose propelled the Bengals to the A.F.C. title, the Krumries, company of N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, rejoiced. In a quiet second within the suite, their son, Dexter, advised Cheryl {that a} Bengals win within the Tremendous Bowl in opposition to the Los Angeles Rams would offer Tim Krumrie with closure.

When Cheryl relayed that, Krumrie mentioned he was going to cry: He hadn’t thought of it like that. He was simply trying ahead to scouting the Rams’ place teams to see how the Bengals measured up. He was sure they might beat Kansas Metropolis, however knew he couldn’t management the end result.

“I stay every single day for every single day,” Krumrie mentioned. “I get up, it’s daylight, it’s an excellent day.”