Thurman Thomas, the Hall of Fame running back who helped lead the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowls in the early 1990s, has at last disclosed the toll football took on his body and brain ... and the story isn't a pretty one.

Speaking to the District School Board of Niagara’s International Concussion Summit in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Thomas for the first time offered a sobering breakdown of the way that repeated head trauma has affected his life. “Still to this day, I can’t control my mood swings," he said, per the Niagara Fals Review.

"On so many days, I have to apologize to my family for them. I thank God that I have a family that understands the things that I’ve been through over my 13-year (professional) career, and even after my 14 or 15 years that I’ve been retired. They all understand that with my mood swings, sometimes I just can’t help it.”

Thomas became aware of the severity of the problem a couple of years ago, when he was driving a route he followed every day and suddenly realized, “I didn’t know where I was and I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to make the most difficult call I’ve ever made.

I had to pull over on the highway, call my wife, and explain to her the events that just happened. She said, ‘you need to come back home.’ I knew that there was a problem.”

The former Bills back recounted the stories of his first concussion, when he got blindsided by a Broncos defender ("Before I got to the ground, everything just went pitch black. My eyes are open, but I can’t see anything. About seven or eight seconds go by, it clears up again") to the time quarterback Jim Kelly appeared concussed and ran five straight handoffs to Thomas.

Thomas, who played 13 seasons and rushed for more than 12,000 yards, received the news from his doctor: his brain was “similar to someone who has fallen off the top of a house, on to the front of his head, or going through a windshield of a car several times."

That would be enough to give most people pause. Thomas has found himself in the middle of a conundrum common to many old players: how do you reconcile the fact that the game which has given you so much has also taken so much from you?

“One thing that I realized is that discussing the effects of concussions and the reality of the situation doesn’t make me less of a man, less tough, less loyal to the National Football League, a less love for the game,” he said. “All it means is that I’m not an ignorant fool, and that I don’t ignore factual evidence that this is happening to not only football players, but (other athletes).”

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