Bernie Kosar Braces for His Toughest Opponent Yet

Bernie Kosar’s liver transplant is imminent, and his emotions are coming in waves, like Denver Broncos blitzers during an AFC Championship Game.

The beloved former Cleveland Browns quarterback, 61, has been on the transplant list for more than a year. As the surgery nears, he’s caught between anticipation and anxiety, not to mention the tragedy involved for it to take place, a thought he prefers remain unspoken.

Besides cirrhosis that is prompting a full liver transplant at University Hospitals, Kosar is battling what he calls “early-stage Parkinson’s or Parkinsonian symptoms and early-stage dementia.”

“You’re cognitively and physically not capable. You’re being asked to do things by people that healthy, normal people would have a hard time doing, let alone someone who’s got to go through this,” Kosar says. “That balancing act is catching up with me.”

Buoyed by his inclusion in Browns preseason broadcast interviews and documentaries, Kosar showed none of that mental confusion at the mention of his chance to sit down on camera with starting quarterback Joe Flacco, 40, before the exhibition finale against the Los Angeles Rams.

Kosar, Flacco and Dan Marino made the playoffs in their first three years in the league. Flacco was drafted 18th overall by the Baltimore Ravens in 2008, Marino was picked 27th by the Miami Dolphins in 1983, and Kosar taken first in the supplemental draft in 1985 out of the University of Miami. They are also among an elite group of 23 NFL quarterbacks to start a playoff game as a rookie in the common draft era (since the 1967 season).

“My Alzheimer’s, dementia things are getting better because I go to him, ‘Bro, me, him and Marino were the only three guys to be in the playoffs the first [three] years,’” Kosar says of what he told Flacco. “I got to hang with Marino and that artistic arm. The way Joe Flacco throws is artistic, too. I’m like, ‘Man, I couldn’t be more proud to be in that group with you guys.’ 

“But man, [Flacco’s] 45,697 yards and 256 touchdown passes, that’s pretty impressive stats.” 

Amazingly, considering past mental struggles he attributes to 100 concussions (diagnosed and undiagnosed), Kosar nailed the yardage total and was off by only one touchdown pass on Flacco, who has 257 in his career. 

To prepare for the transplant, Kosar is undergoing medical procedures to decrease fluid buildup as his liver fails. But he believes lifestyle changes he made over the last several years have helped during the process.

“I’m really so thankful that the stuff I started doing eight years ago — this holistic, functional medicine, food is our medicine, the stomach-brain connectivity — massively is saving me to kind of get me through those peaks and valleys of it,” he says, from a phone interview in his car. “In today’s society, when you’re on an emotional rollercoaster and you’re in peaks and valleys, you end up getting incredibly medicated. To be able to manage those rollercoasters of emotions and those horrible-type diagnoses without really medication, I’m so thankful that I started finding this. … Now to be a day or two, possibly from a transplant, to drive on the turnpike — it is Bluetooth, it is hands free — to be cognitively free … It’s confirming the stuff I’m doing, it’s saving me. I’m looking forward to implementing these holistic principles into my rehab when the chance does come around.”

Kosar thanks Browns co-owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam for connecting him with University Hospitals, the team’s official health care partner. 

“What the Haslams have done, for them to medically be helping me with University Hospital, top shelf,” Kosar says. “Then kind of a secondary therapeutic benefit, to have been out at practice and to be around football and training camp and to feel like an old man, 40 years ago being those young quarterbacks [Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders], that was super helpful with getting better.”

Kosar is also grateful for the support he’s received from fans and former teammates, including those at Boardman High School, as he faces his own mortality.

“The fans are amazing,” he says.

Trying to carry the energy he received at training camp, Kosar hopes he will undergo surgery by the second week of September. University does not perform partial transplants, he said.

“I do have an idea where I am on the list. I’m on the list that you can get a call any minute,” he says. “We’re waiting.”

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