Bernie Kosar’s NFL career made him a Cleveland icon, but the years since retirement have brought a very different fight. The former Browns quarterback has also become open about the health problems that followed him.
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In a video shared by iRegMed Clinic Miami, Kosar detailed a health decline severe enough that doctors once gave him a hard timeline on how much longer his mind would function normally.
“I was told nine years ago I have five years left of cognitive brain function,” Kosar said. “I couldn’t enunciate, articulate, communicate any multiple-syllable words.”
That history goes well beyond the symptoms he described in the new video. Kosar has previously spoken about the toll of repeated concussions and seizures. He said he had dealt with 15 seizures, two of which put him in comas lasting 72 and 96 hours. He also reported more than 40 surgeries and 80 broken bones in an interview with News 5 Cleveland.
His health challenges later included cirrhosis and Parkinson’s disease, which he discussed with Cleveland Magazine in 2024. The liver disease ultimately led to his name being added to the transplant waiting list.
Around the same period, he described a frightening episode after attending the Browns’ December 2023 game against the New York Jets, saying his body gave out and he later required a massive blood transfusion because his hemoglobin was dangerously low.
After more than a year on the waiting list, Kosar underwent a liver transplant at University Hospitals in Cleveland on November 17, 2025. The surgery came after internal bleeding and multiple procedures, as well as an earlier transplant attempt that was delayed when the donor organ was found to be infected. Kosar later told fans he was feeling good after the operation.
The brain-related issues have remained part of his story, too. Kosar has publicly discussed traumatic brain injuries, possible CTE-related deterioration and Parkinsonian symptoms. His latest comments, however, focus on what he believes has helped him function better.
“TBI or CTE or some of the deterioration that we’re having as NFL players, unfortunately, is real, and I was massively having those type issues. So for me to hear about iRegMed and the regenerative concepts that they do here, especially with the gold serum, has been incredibly amazing for me in terms of my belief. Modulating inflammation in the brain comes with this cognitive improvement that I’m seeing with myself.”
What makes Kosar’s account particularly striking is that he has been discussing this improvement for years rather than presenting it as a sudden change. In a 2023 interview with News 5 Cleveland, he said he had already been told that he had five years of cognitive function left and described the steps he was taking to improve his health. At the time, he credited a holistic diet, high-dose vitamins, and other therapies as part of that effort.
Kosar’s football résumé makes his health battle even more significant. The Browns drafted him in the 1985 supplemental draft, and he spent nine seasons in Cleveland, leading the team to three AFC Championship Games. He later won a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys in 1993 before retiring from the NFL in 1996, finishing his career stint with the Miami Dolphins.
Yet the way Kosar talks about his health now is noticeably different from the frightening prognosis he received years ago.
“I almost feel like now it’s a responsibility to kind of show people. Yeah. Show you what could happen, but then I’m starting now to like kind of show the protocols and some of the life-changing things so that people don’t have to suffer, you know, like I was suffering,” Kosar told Steele this August.
Nearly three decades later, he is using that same public platform to speak openly about the health battle that once left him struggling to communicate, while encouraging others to take their own symptoms seriously.