NFL names Sills chief medical officer, cuts ties with Pellman
As the NFL moves forward with its new chief medical officer, controversial Elliot Pellman’s work with the league is finally, officially done.
“He’s retiring,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of health and safety, told USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday at the league meetings.
The NFL announced Pellman’s retirement plans to owners last July in a memo outlining its intention to hire a highly credentialed physician for a new full-time role as chief medical officer — a job filled this week with the hiring of Allen Sills, a neurosurgeon who has specialized in treating athletes.
A person with knowledge of the situation told USA TODAY Sports at the time that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made the decision that Pellman should retire, and Pellman agreed.
But Pellman — a rheumatologist whose work as chairman of the NFL’s mild-traumatic brain injury committee made him a frequent target for criticism of the league’s handling of concussions and a character portrayed by Paul Reiser in the movie Con
cussion — continued to work with the NFL through last month’s scouting combine.
“He was still in his role as an administrator, as he had been for a period of time,” Miller said. “There’s a lot of meetings, a lot of people, a lot of moving parts, so he participates in those.”
Asked if Pellman will continue to consult or have a role of any kind with the league going forward, Miller said, “No. He’s retiring.”
Sills, 52, came to the NFL from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he was a professor and founder and codirector of the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center. He has worked with pro sports teams, including the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and the NHL’s Nashville Predators, as well as several universities and the U.S. Equestrian Foundation.
“We’re excited by the expertise that we’re going to have with Allen,” Miller said. “He’s recognized, certainly nationally, as a leading neurosurgeon and sports medicine doctor. He’s sort of that rare breed of person who has got experiences in both places from the amount of work he’s done on the sports medicine side but also recognized internationally.
“I anticipate that our work done with other international sports leagues where there’s contact is going to grow. I think that having somebody on a full-time basis in the office and available to our teams is going to mean that we’re going to have better engagement with the particular player care that’s going to happen. And I think some of the scientific research we’re doing is going to be advanced because we’re going to have somebody with a great amount of sophistication working on it, too.”