The NFL Has A Lot To Answer For On Tua Tagovailoa's Head Injury

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We can all agree that there's an inherent risk involved in stepping onto a football field with 21 other huge, fast, powerful, professional rage monsters in what we're always reminded isn't a contact sport; it's a collision sport. Especially when you hold the ball on every play, making you the prey, not the predator. Duly noted. 

But there's the clear and present danger of getting injured on every snap of the ball, and then there's the ones that can be prevented. Where, in the medical decision-making calculus, the ratio skews way more to "risk" than "reward." Such was the case with Tua Tagovailoa last night:

… since the whole country saw him stumbling around punchy Sunday against the Bills. 

Note that I'm going to follow Matt Fitzgerald's lead and not post the images of Tagovailoa on the ground doing the "fencing motion." If you want to see a young man writhing around on the ground with uncontrollable spasms due to damage to his central nervous system, you've come to the wrong blog.

After years of making the CTE problem go away, relatively speaking, by throwing shipping containers filled with money into "research," assigning "Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants" to the sidelines, bringing injured players into a blue MAS*H unit behind the bench, putting mushroom helmets on lineman in training camps, and sending Roger Goodell around to slip the word "transparency" into every sentence, teams still don't seem willing to take a player off the field when they should. Especially not a good player. Particularly not in a big game. 

Tagovailoa has arguably been the best player in football through three games. The Dolphins are at the top of pretty much everyone's power rankings. Sunday's game against Buffalo was for control of the AFC East. Last night's was a marquee matchup for the NFL's newest "broadcast partner." Tagovailoa starting felt like Clubber Lang demanding to keep getting in the ring against Ivan Drago. Except in this case, everyone wanted him in there, risking his health. 

And it's not 20/20 hindsight to say so. It was being said by a lot of people long before kickoff. Some of them medical professionals specializing in concussions:

Which turned into one of the most unwanted told-ya-sos in recent memory. 

And while the Player's Association sounds extremely cheesed off about what happened:

… it's hard not to compare how much time, effort, and billable hours they invested in trying to keep Deshaun Watson's masseuse sexual harassment streak alive, as opposed to demanding Tagovailoa get put in the concussion protocol. 

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Amazon Prime doesn't come out of this unscathed either, as it calls into question the very concept of Thursday Night Football. Which one of their own analysts did a moral 180 once they paid him to talk about these games, instead of play in them:

It's funny how quickly something can go from objectionable to pure fun for the whole family once a megacorporation starts handing out giant checks. Jeff Bezos hired Richard Sherman in the same way Ginger Satan paid Jay-Z the big bucks to make the Super Bowl Halftime cool again. (At least that move spared us from any more Maroon 5 shows.) That's Capitalism 101. 

And I say this as a big fan of Capitalism, this was spot-on:

Anyway, now we're into the, uber-serious, furrowed brow, deep-voiced, "We're going to investigate this whole affair and leave no stone unturned until we know everything about how this happened" phase of what really is a scandal.:

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Source - Given the possibility that he suffered an injury to his brain on Sunday against the Bills, it’s possible that he has suffered two brain injuries, four days apart.

And that possibility raises the stakes, dramatically, as to the ongoing investigation regarding the decision to allow Tua to re-enter the game on Sunday, despite exhibiting what the league calls “gross motor instability” in the concussion protocol. It’s not known how or why the team physician and the Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant decided that the instability did not have a neurological cause. The NFL and the NFL Players Association already had commenced a review of that decision, at the behest of the union.

Now, that eventual determination hovers over the fact that Tua suffered an apparently severe concussion on Thursday night.

If he’d been held out of Sunday’s game and placed in the concussion protocol, would he have been cleared to play tonight, only four days after entering the protocol? If the goal is to exercise prudence and caution regarding the brains of the men who play the game, it’s hard to imagine clearance coming so quickly — no matter how many cognitive tests he could have passed.

Which means we'll hear nothing of substance about it for weeks, possibly months, until the people in charge of making things go away will make it go away. We've seen this dog and pony show before. The NFL will figure out some way to unfuck themselves. Probably with a memo that outlines some fine-tuning of their protocols. Maybe some low level medical staffer from the league or the Dolphins will be sacrificed on the altar of Doing the Right Thing. But ultimately, no one will admit they put a man's mental health on the line to win a regular season game and put on a show for their new corporate business partner. 

They should pray Tua Tagovailoa comes out of this OK. Or heads will roll. They better.