The NFL ran a number of ads on the website of the New York Times about player safety just as a report came out by the paper this week about how the league released misleading research on concussions.

Ads were even displayed on the very article in question itself.

By mid-afternoon on Friday, Wall Street Journal reporters could no longer find the ads on the site. A Times spokeswoman said the ads were still in circulation, however.

A spokesman for the NFL said the league bought the ads because it wanted to present information directly to readers, rather than have it filtered through the Times’ editorial staff.

The NFL's top health and safety officer acknowledged Monday there is a link between football-related head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

This is the first time a senior NFL official has conceded to football's connection to the brain disease.

The admission came during a roundtable discussion on concussions convened by the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy & Commerce. Jeff Miller, the NFL's senior vice president for health and safety, was asked by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., if the link between football and neurodegenerative diseases like CTE has been established.

"The answer to that question is certainly yes," said Miller.

CTE can only be diagnosed after death.

"I think the broader point, and the one that your question gets to, is what that necessarily means, and where do we go from here with that information," Miller said.