A Player’s Hard Lesson on Insurance

Rob Monaco is no household name, but he’s far closer to a typical National Football League player than millionaire quarterback Jim Kelly.

When an injury cut short his career, Monaco found out that football meant a lot more to him than he ever meant to football.

Like most NFL players, he had no long-term, guaranteed contract on which to fall. Although his team covered his medical care after the injury, he is now left to fend for himself.

A 280-pound center, Monaco was a team captain at Vanderbilt University as a senior in 1984. “He’s remembered as one of the finest offensive linemen in Vanderbilt history,” said Tony Neely of the school’s sports information office.

The St. Louis (now Phoenix) Cardinals drafted Monaco No. 212 out of 336 players in the 1985 college draft and signed him to a $100,000-a-year contract.

On Oct. 13, 1985, in his sixth NFL game, against the Philadelphia Eagles, Monaco was charging downfield on a kickoff. His job was to block an opposing player; as a rookie, he wanted to impress his coaches with a hard hit.

Monaco slammed into an Eagles linebacker at midfield, “helmet to helmet, face mask to face mask,” he said. The impact was so great that the other player was knocked unconscious and his helmet split. Monaco fell to the ground in agony, pain shooting through his right leg.

“I reached down where the pain was and felt nothing between my skin and the femur bone,” Monaco said. The large tendon attaching his thigh muscles to his kneecap had snapped. One of his quadriceps muscles had “ripped like a telephone book,” he said.

After an operation that left an 18-inch scar on his thigh, Monaco could walk again.

But today, at age 30, he says he is so debilitated by chronic pain and weakness in his legs that he is unable to hold a job. Divorced and bitter, he is living with his mother in his hometown of Hamden, Conn.

Monaco’s orthopedist, Dr. Robert Snyder of Memphis, Tenn., said the pain is caused by traumatic arthritis, a secondary result of the injury.

There was no disability insurance. Monaco said his agent never recommended it. “He just wanted his 10%,” he said. Fewer than half of the NFL’s 1,400 players buy career-ending injury policies.

After six years of legal skirmishing, the Cardinals’ insurance company is pressing him to accept a $12,000 workers’ compensation settlement that would absolve the team of all future claims. Monaco is afraid to settle because he believes that he will need another leg operation years from now.

Jack Randall, Monaco’s lawyer in St. Louis, said the hard truth is that under Missouri law, a pro football player’s leg is no more valuable than a factory worker’s.

Cardinals spokesman Paul Jensen said any dispute is between Monaco and the insurance firm.