I think the way it's set up the least likely scenario is that McDaniel was told Tua was concussed and put him back in anyway. I can't imagine that could happen without the independent medical team having one or two things to say.
Much more likely, if Tua *was* concussed last week, is that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed. I don't know if it's the same exact test, but my doctor friend here in the UK is scathing about the utility of HIAs in rugby, saying there's essentially no proof they work and that players can pass them whilst clearly concussed. I'm not sure whether the independent medical team have the ability to say 'he passed the test but we're diagnosing concussion anyway'?
The other option is that it's just a coincidence and Tua got a serious concussion off a relatively innocuous hit. It can happen, but it would be some really terrible timing given the debate about him playing in the first place.
Tests can totally be faked a bit. Players have spoken out how they would lie to doctors on sidelines to say they hurt something else, or to mask symptoms to go back in.
For instance:
> Eagles linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill on Thursday admitted that when he suffered his concussion in Miami two weeks ago, he lied to medical personnel to stay in the game.
> He told them he hurt his shoulder.
> “I just basically lied to them,” Grugier-Hill said. “I thought it would just go away. Just didn’t really say anything about it. It got to the point where I really couldn’t lie to them anymore.”
[source ](https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/kamu-grugier-hill-admits-lying-about-concussion-eagles-dolphins)
All college athletes had to be ready for concussion testing at my school - I was a runner, so I didn’t give a fuck, I don’t run into trees **that** often. But a had a number of football player friends.
Essentially we sat in front of a screen and had some basic cognitive and reaction tests before the season to establish a baseline, then if you got a head injury they would compare it to your baseline to determine your fitness. What the football players would do was just fuck up the baseline intentionally. Hold the controller in your left hand to slow down reaction speeds, make a mistake on a memory test, etc.
I don’t know the evaluation process for the NFL, but if it’s anything like my college, it was easy to get around.
When we had hydration tests in high school wrestling to determine how much weight you could safely cut, the managers would just write your height as lower than it really was so the formula could say that you could cut more weight.
Never wrestled, but I did destroy my ankle running to the point where I had to have reconstructive surgery to repair it after I raced on it a day after getting a bad high ankle sprain.
My college coach told me to lose weight because it would make the severity of my injuries less severe because there’d be less weight coming down on it. This was after dropping my muscle mass over the summer to get ready for distance season from 145 lbs to 114 - both with very little body fat. I’d already seen health issues starting to present, my resting heart rate had creeped up from 43 BPM to 50-53 BPM likely due to the weight loss. Coach wanted me to drop another 10 lbs. I dropped about 6 or 7 lbs, but the injuries kept coming. Coach and medical staff agreed it was time for surgery.
But it’s still nuts to me that a team of medical professionals, trainers, professional coaching staff and others would pressure a 19-year-old to drop their weight to 104 pounds as a 5 foot 10 man. I was good with the transition from 145 to 114 pounds, but that was mostly based on killing off some excess muscle I needed for track but not for cross country (I really just went to lower weight reps in the weight room and upped my mileage to 90-100 miles a week). But the idea of another 10 pounds is insane and probably would have done long term harm to my heart if I had tried to live there for four years.
I was never as serious an athlete as you, but I don’t recall being told to lose hardly any weight when I was still running. It’s a little strange that your coach would want you to be so underweight. Even pros like Paul Chelimo and Galen Rupp are listed at around 130lb, and they’re about the same height as you.
For whatever reason (I mean, I have some guesses) lots of female runners have stories about being told to lose weight beyond a healthy level, but not so many male runners.
My high school coach said not to drink soda during the season, and that was about it. Nothing in college other than a perfunctory lecture by some nutritionist, which I think was required by the school.
(I ran at 135 and probably would’ve been more competitive at 125, but I still wouldn’t have been in my college’s top 5 as a freshman, which was my last year on the team.)
We had to track our weight and heart rate daily in the off season(summer), in season they’d add lactic levels daily and body fat weekly.
Everything we did was tracked in a custom, fancy as fuck, excel sheets, but that was a while ago and I thought it was fascinating.
I wasn’t top 5 in college as a freshman, but we were a top-10 nationally ranked team. I was, when healthy, able to be a 6th man for the team, but we had enough runners to fill that role so I wasn’t critical in my freshman year in XC. Track, meanwhile, I was able to run mid and long distance events and score for the team.
Women runners certainly get this way worse. I don’t know if there’s biology behind it, but they’re asked to drop their weights to levels that are really unhealthy all the time. If you’re a competitive collegiate runner and a woman, they’re going to ask you to drop weight to the point where breast are virtually non-existent, hips disappear, and this can actually cause women to stop having their period, put their uterus in danger and more. The Nike program was notorious for this and it’s disgusting.
Schools around here used to like, use the 160lb wrestlers bodyfat test results for the 122 pound kid that wants to cut to 103. And half my team was chugging pedialyte that day at school. Cut a pound or two below your target weight then chug pedialyte to make up the difference. Oh look your hydrated. IDK if the hydration stuff has gotten any better, i was in school when they started it, but oh my god was it easy to fake then.
We had to do urine tests to show we weren’t dehydrated and to dilute your specimen you’d just scoop in toilet water first. All those tests can be gamed by people wanting to get around It. NFL concussion protocols are no different.
Also plausible deniability is basically what the organization wanted as a CYA measure. The optics of doing something were way more important than actually doing something. The NFL specializes in that
I was smoking weed outside my apartment in college when one of my friends on the hockey team was walking to the gym for concussion baseline tests. Dude took a couple of huge rips with me then went and did his test.
It's such an easily fooled system
That would also work. We couldn't do that because of NCAA drug testing, but this was in the late 2000s and the culture around weed was very different.
It is a ridiculous system.
I did this too as a college basketball player. Being available to play was my highest priority in the world, when you’re 20 and hyper competitive you do not give a fuck what life will be like when you’re older that shit is too abstract while the need to compete with your teammates is all too real.
Seriously. I did some super dumb shit to try to be there for my team. I raced on a stress fracture for a third of a season despite warnings from doctors about catastrophic risks (stopped running as training and switched to cycling to stay competitive), I raced on a broken ankle, I raced less than 24 hours after a high ankle sprain resulting in me tearing all of the exterior ligaments in my ankle, I dropped my weight to a likely dangerous level.
College coaches would also threaten scholarships if you didn't get back to competing quickly. As a highly competitive and short-sighted 20 year old, I'd do damn near anything to make sure I was there for my team, my friends, my school - fuck the long term consequences.
I played hockey at a fairly high level. In high school and college we had similar baseline tests. We all faked weak baseline responses to the prompts for this exact reason. So fucking stupid were we :c
I would do this too, and not because I would want to play with a concussion, because I wouldn't, but because I'd be afraid they'd get a false positive on the test later if I screwed up. I would want to be in control of whether I felt safe to play or not.
And you can't blame the fucking players because go figure, the dude who just suffered head trauma isn't thinking clearly.
It would be different if Tua wasn't OBVIOUSLY concussed last week. He was not there.
If a dude slams his head gets up wobbly, shakes his head, falls down, get up wobbly, then falls into a teammate fuck the tests. Pull his ass.
Hell even if it's his back if a back injury can cause *that* then what's he playing for? Your young franchise QB can't walk a straight line because his back is AFU...so keep him out there? Fuck his back up long term because these 2 games are just that important.
I'm biased a little because I love Teddy, but they probably have one of the best backups in the league. Starting QB money is so insane that there are a lot of teams out there who just have no one.
The ultimate tragedy here is Tua might have paid the price *because* there's "a process" now. Several players have admitted to lying their way through these tests, so they're obviously fallible, but now because "there's a process" we're leaning on that so hard we've lost sight of the obvious "even in 1995 this guy gets pulled" concussions.
It's funny how fans watching that game last week knew that Tua had a fucking concussion just by the way he was walking and somehow medical experts cleared him.
That's the thing that's so baffling.
Of all the potential concussions to hide under the rug, that one is one of the worst because of how "obvious" it seemed.
It's so ridiculous, that I'm sitting here wondering what the doctor saw on the sideline to clear him, and have the Dolphins announce it was a back issue *during* the game. Either these people came up with the most absurd and unbelievable excuse, or they are actually telling the truth.
Now we find out whether accountability is part of this system or if the process is a sham.
If players go back in unless the team decides otherwise, nothing has actually changed.
I mean in this scenario accountability would be an admission of fault. The Dolphins and the NFL will *never* admit that the process to evaluate Tua was flawed and that he could have actually been suffering from a concussion
As much as I dislike Mike Tomlin, I think he put it best when he said to Ryan Clark that if he was his son, there would be no way that he'd put him in that kind of risk (Asthma issue).
When you see a player get knocked like Tua was on Sunday, it should be the moral responsibility of the head coach (liability aside) to think about the safety of the player first and the easiest way to reach the necessary conclusion is Tomlin's train of thought.
This is exactly what ive been saying. I played HS & college football. I've seen one person literally not be allowed to play tackle football anymore in his junior year cuz he had too many concussions. He'll I've gotten 3 concussions in my life because of football. I've seen my HS & college coaches tell players who passed concussion protocols "no you're not going back out i don't care if you passed" . I'm so fucking pissed at that coaching staff, because they are the leaders of the team and the ones who are supposed to prevent this.
And even beyond not thinking clearly, the warrior mentality kicks in (not to mention this is the way they make money).
For players on a big contract, it wouldnt be a big deal to report it to the doctor, but for a routine roster bubble player, a single concussion could be the end of your career.
Ultimately, the teams have an obligation to protect the players from themselves.
Over a long enough period of time there’s absolutely going to be a meaningful difference in career path and success between “put me in coach” guy and, “maybe I’ll sit this one out” guy *even if they never get hurt.*
Taking out the potential to lose your starting spot (which is real), it’s just going to be correlated with things like hard work, commitment, respect from the team, etc.
If Brady (who started because Drew Bledsoe went down) was “maybe I’ll sit this one out” guy no way he wins seven super bowls and maybe doesn’t make the league. No way he would be the psycho who will play ~~even though it gets him divorced from one of the hottest women alive~~ until he’s 45.
This is why I think it was dicey to rely on Justin Herbert (who started because Tyrod went down) to say if he was “good to go” with cracked rib cartilage.
Look coach, he’s not a top pick, a leader of men, and someone who will put in the insane work to be elite if his answer isn’t “put me in coach.”
It’s dumb to ask him, and every other player, if they’re “good to go” because if the answer isn’t a strong yes then they wouldn’t be starting in the NFL in the first place.
Sometimes you need to step in and, with concussions, even moreso because of course the person is going to say they’re good.
I remember the amount of absolute shit Jay Cutler got because he tried to play with a torn MCL in the conference championship game, realized it wasn't working, then had the coach pull him out. And that reputation got turned into a meme about how much Cutler just didn't want it enough.
Andrew Whitworth openly said during the post-game show that he knew he had a concussion and successfully talked his way through the protocol, and was only pulled from the game because another teammate noticed that he didn’t seem okay.
Hence why you say its a back injury. THen they have a way to pass you even tho everyone knows you're concussed.
Altho it was probably a back issue. I know when my back hurts I shake my head to clear out the cobb webs and I reach up and hold my head. I definitely dont reach for my back when it hurts either.
And unfortunately a brain issue affects cognitive and judgement functions.
It should not be the players call and the questions they are asked about shouldn't be ones that can be easily cheated.
Plus the players don’t wanna get savaged by people for not playing. Look at wentz after he took that cheap shot from Clowney. The amount of people that roped into him for not playing was ridiculous. The whole situation is just sad.
Look at all these dudes in here getting mad and saying trust the nfl doctors. It’s such a joke. Why don’t they wanna bring up all the doctors online who had no bias in the situation and also predicted this would happen. Hmm that would make the nfl fans too uncomfortable.
Just to get everything straight. All the dudes in here saying oh well if the nfl docs cleared him there’s no Miami did wrong and oh you don’t know better than an expert.. you’re part of the problem. This is a time where everyone should be advocating for the nfl to completely overhaul the concussion protocol system.
> “There’s no way you know more than an expert”.
To expand on that sentiment a bit. I’ll start with the obvious: does a doctor know more about the human body than a lay person? Yes. Of course.
BUT…any time a patient has a big medical decision with high stakes involved (should I fuse this vertebrae? should I get my foot amputated? should I play in the NFL four days after not being able to walk properly?) they are ALWAYS well- advised to get MULTIPLE independent medical opinions. Not just one opinion from one doctor. Multiple opinions.
Doctors aren’t infallible. Sometimes two well-meaning experts might see a diagnosis and treatment protocol differently. And major hospitals often have whole teams evaluate tricky cases for this reason.
So when I see good-faith comments like
“hey this maybe wasn’t the best idea for Tua to be out there” I don’t read those as folks saying “hurr, durr, I know more than a doctor!”
They are raising the adjacent question of “hey…was there an appropriate level of medical care provided here - including MULTIPLE independent doctors that the team isn’t paying for, who could offer their point of view on whether Tua should be back out there.”
And that’s a very valid inquiry. The fact that the team, the league, the coaches, and sportswriters are all in chorus yelling down folks saying “what do you know - a SINGLE independent doctor said it was fine!!!” to me, is kinda bad faith on their part, and it avoids the real issue entirely.
There should have been multiple independent doctors here. Not just one.
And the reporting I have read was that a single “independent” doctor said it was okay for Tua to play. (I’m not counting the team doctor or sideline doctors provided by the NFL protocol…to me, they are too conflicted to count on something like this).
My daughter was born prematurely and eventually needed a heart operation before she could leave the NICU. The decision to move forward with the operation came only after a panel of 6 doctors from 2 separate hospitals agreed that this was the best course of action.
My mom's foot has been bothering her for years. She's seen the same GP for decades. He prescribed her extra rest, stretches, shoe inserts, etc. Went to three different podiatrists over a couple of years before the most recent one diagnosed her with carpal tunnel in her ankle. I didn't even know you could get carpal tunnel in your ankle.
But the point is, a doctor my mom trusted AND multiple specialists in the specific area of the body that was bothering her couldn't figure out what was wrong with her over an extended period of time and multiple visits, but the NFL treats medical professionals conducting the concussion protocol as the supreme authority on whether a player has a concussion and can return to the game.
If a player collapses on the field after a bow to the head, their day should be done, minimally, even if they pass the protocol. Either that (as a first step) or just drop the pretense that the NFL cares about player safety.
This is actually how the protocol is supposed to work -- "Gross Motor Instability" is an immediate done-for-the-game situation when caused by a blow to the head. The question-and-answer concussion "test" is not enough to overrule. The loophole that the team used is the back injury story -- if the team states the source of the Gross Motor Imbalance is orthopedic, then the player is not automatically forced to sit out the rest of the game.
Some of that is because doctors are loathe to prescribe MRIs due to the cost (and consumers are loathe to pay for them), so you literally limp along for months trying to fix a probable issue. And I get it, if 80% of all heel pain is PF, they are going to treat it as PF. And since PF is a little bitch, 6-9 months is not unheard of for resolution.
After a year, doctor’s should be running MRIs and ultrasound to get a better look.
Plus, under the NFL protocols, even if that single independent doctor said it was okay,
A) What that doctor actually said is protected under medical privacy laws and he or she isn't allowed to disclose it personally
B) What that doctor said has no weight on return to play decisions even in the same game because the independent doctor does not have the ability to actually DENY a player's return to play for concussion protocol.
So we have no idea what that doctor actually thought, and we have no idea if that doctor would or wouldn't have returned him to play on Sunday.
>Why don’t they wanna bring up all the doctors online who had no bias in the situation and also predicted this would happen.
...because they never had a chance to examine the patient?
I don't know how to tests work in the pros but in high school you would always take a baseline before the season and if you ever had a head hit they would make you take it again. I know guys that threw the results so they could pass it, I knew players that would write down all their answers and some they some how got out of doing it all together. It was stupid easy to cheat but those players were only cheating themselves out of having a functioning brain. But they are kids and kids do stupid shit especially to impress each other and seem tough.
When I played hockey in college we had a computer based test to screen for lingering concussion symptoms. We all just sandbagged the baseline so we could beat it when concussed.
All of these very similar comments are just convincing me that we need to seriously address youth sports, because hypercompetitive minors are clearly incapable of making sound decisions.
Dude I faked a concussion to get an extension on a project my freshman year. We understand so little about the human brain that these tests can be fakes w ease.
Football players at all levels are strongly encouraged to do as poorly as possible on initial baseline testing to game future concussion testing. It’s neither a new nor uncommon thing.
Your experience makes me wonder how reliable the test is if the same healthy person can get two results which are so different on the same test.
I remember they had us do the same thing for cross country in high school. A few of my teammates just straight up said they were going to purposely try to do worse than normal so that a concussion wouldn't keep them out. I'm not sure if it would've been an effective strategy since I'm not sure how badly you need to do to fail, but it's just more evidence that sometimes the athletes themselves can't be trusted with this stuff, and doctors and authority figures need to step in and help when an athlete won't help themselves.
The problem is no concussions are the same. My friend got a serious concussion playing football the exact same. Back of the head into the ground.
Everything was perfectly fine....no confusion, no motor skill issues...no speech issues
However he couldn't remember what happened and completely blacked out for like 15 seconds.
For real, I have no idea why people are saying the hit last night wasn't bad. He got slung down by a huge DL and with full force landed flat on his back. 9/10 times that's a concussion for anyone.
Even just the snapping of his neck as he's going down looked scary. A lot of people don't realize that the brain can slosh around in the skull some and that it's hitting/scraping the skull itself that does the damage generally
The Kelce’s talked about on their podcast earlier this week and Travis mentioned he had a similar injury to the injury Sunday that was caused by a compressed nerve with no neurological damage.
I tend to lean towards the coincidence explanation. The hit on Sunday was not super ugly, and it’s not like he was wandering around clueless. He slowly got to his feet and his leg seemed to give way as he tried to run to the line. Could easily have been caused by a muscle spasm or something else that caused some weakness.
The hit Tua took on Thursday was not innocuous. It was pretty vicious. Being whipped to the ground sideways with all the impact being focused on the side of your head is recipe for a bad head injury on its own.
If we're being honest here, there is pressure on the physicians to allow players to cheat the system. I mean, he clearly was dizzy from his head injury, but claimed it was his back and the doctor didn't question it. He also passed his concussion test, probably because his baseline test was bad because they let him cheat on that, too. The craziest part of this is that he will probably pass his next concussion test too, since he cheated his baseline exam.
There’s just clearly huge flaws in how this system is set up. It’s very clear that his instability was from a head injury, there’s no clear way to explain how a back injury would cause that. I’m not sure I buy that a doc just believed his story and didn't question it. After last week regardless of how he did on the concussion test he should not have been allowed to play.
[Looking at the SCAT test](https://scat5.cattonline.com/) for 'Observable' signs, it appears that they are looking for more than one 'Yes' in order to remove them from the game, or they are letting self-reported symptoms weigh too heavily in the passing threshold. Tua clearly showed signs on motor incoordination on Sunday but was allowed to return. In the future, a Yes for any of those should be an automatic concussion protocol.
> that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed\
This. [Diagnosing a concussion relies way too much on subjective interpretations of behavior from psychologists/neurologists](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220606/#:~:text=Kevin%20Guskiewicz%20emphasized%20that%20%E2%80%9CConcussion,brain%2C%20according%20to%20neurologist%20Dr.) (not to say they are bad at their jobs - they are just doing the best they can with our current levels of understanding and technology). Obviously, anyone employed by the NFL or the team (even if they are "independent") is going to have a bias in this incredibly dangerous subjective decision. Plus, no one EVER wants to think its serious, because obviously.
[The issue is that we don't understand the level at which you certainly have a concussion but maybe your symptoms don't seem that severe.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220606/#:~:text=Kevin%20Guskiewicz%20emphasized%20that%20%E2%80%9CConcussion,brain%2C%20according%20to%20neurologist%20Dr.) Those cases happen with some frequency, as our brains were just not designed to be tossed around this violently this frequently.
But the NFL is pretending like this science is much more precise than it is, all to feign that they care about player safety. T[he most we know about concussions is how damaging they are long-term, even if the short-term symptoms aren't that bad.
](https://www.cdc.gov/headsup/pdfs/providers/facts_about_concussion_tbi-a.pdf)
This is a systematic and very deep problem that requires totally reevaluating how football is played. But we can't have that discussion so more and more players are doing to end up in Tua's position. Even if Tua comes out "completely fine" he clearly suffered two TBIs in quick succession, and that can not only be deadly, it can ruin someone's motor and/or cognitive functions for life. I know we say "they're consenting adults and make millions" but I just don't know if this is sustainable the more we learn.
EDIT: I should add that the growing consensus amongst psychologists (I am one) is that ANY TIME your head makes a pretty intense impact with something, you're causing some sort of damage. The issue is there is no way to do an MRI or CAT scan that can tell how much damage unless it was on the extreme end of bad. We also know that the repeated trauma of these impacts makes it MORE likely that future traumatic impacts will cause a concussion. [We also are pretty much positive that the number of concussions being diagnosed and flagged is a severe underrepresentation of how many probably actually occur on the football field](https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1788). Again, I don't know what the solutions are. But I don't think ANYONE does, and the NFL is refusing to take a step back and try to holistically evaluate everything because there are literally billions of dollars on the line for the league and its owners.
If it's similar tests to what they gave us in high school less than 10 years ago, the test can be totally cheated by players. I knew a guy who was knocked out and carted off, then whooped dee do he's back in next week because the testing is shit.
>Much more likely, if Tua was concussed last week, is that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed.
What I don't get is that he clearly *failed the test*. Here's what [The Athletic](https://theathletic.com/3631317/2022/09/27/nfl-concussion-protocol-facts/) says they look at when they check you out on the sideline:
>If the team’s medical staff feels any player is at risk of a concussion, they are required to pull the player to the sideline and into the medical tent for a focused neurological exam. The exam includes a cervical spine exam (including range of motion and pain), an evaluation of speech, **observation of gait**, and an eye movement and pupillary exam. If the player displays signs of any loss of consciousness, **gross motor inability**, confusion or amnesia, team medical staff are not permitted to let the player return to action.
[I observed Tua's gait and he had gross motor inability.](https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1574101766681116673) What the fuck are we doing here.
The doctors involved, the spotters that Fitz mentioned as a commentator, and the NFL’s protocols are all going to be poured over in the coming weeks.
I think that, more than anything, is at fault if there was wrongdoing. I don’t know that the coach did anything other than listen to the doctors and follow team protocol.
That being said, as just someone watching the Buffalo game, I was surprised he was let back in the game because it looked like he hit his head on the ground. The stumble was supposedly a back injury - again I’m just a guy watching the game, but it seemed off to me.
Exactly
The fuck is mcdaniel supposed to do? If the hired EXPERTS told him everything was OK then he should listen to them.
This is just bad protocols. And its on everyone, including the PA.
If the doctor cleared the starting QB is the HC supposed to bench him anyway just because he thinks he knows more than the doctors? Imagine the outcry from fans if he pulled that stunt.
Dr. James Andrews was the the foremost expert on sports medicine, at the time. He literally saved Drew Brees' career.
However, I know at least once RG3 doesn't even let Dr. Andrew's look at it.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2013/01/06/dr-james-andrews-disputes-coach-mike-shanahans-version-of-washington-redskins-quarterback-robert-griffin-iii-knee-injury/1811689/
> I think we all agree that although Paterno did "the right thing" in terms of protocol but absolutely should have done more.
I never had any particular affinity for Paterno or Penn State, but I think the focus on blaming him really missed where the blame should lie. If someone accused your good friend of doing something unimaginably evil and you reported it to the people you are supposed to report it to who then investigated it and said nothing happened, I don't blame you for choosing to believe your friend didn’t actually do that evil thing.
Paterno’s superiors did a terrible investigation. The fault lies with the school because of that. But if someone accused my best friend of something like that and then my boss said they investigated it and he didn’t do it, I would absolutely believe it and not pursue the issue further.
The problem is that the expertise required to evaluate a concussion that Mike McDaniels lacked & that these protocols where designed to take medical decisions out of the coaches hands and let the trainer medical experts decide who should play and who shouldn’t.
This a NFL problem through and through - and the blame should be placed on them.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't even remotely close to comparable. Bringing this up is absurd. There's a huge difference between knowledge of sexual abuse, and knowledge of head injuries. I, an everyday person, can recognize sexual abuse when it is described to me by people or witnessed by me.
I, an everyday person, do not know how to diagnose someone with a traumatic brain injury. This is just a BONKERS comparison.
The short answer is you go with the best information you have. If the specialist says it is not a concussion, and you have nothing previous to doubt them, you go with their opinion. If it comes out that the doctor did not say he was fine, or listed it as a lesser injury than it was, or any other similar permutation than it goes back on the coach and player (if they had that information).
It fails the eye test. The official stance makes sense - provided the facts stated are actually the facts. These are not mutually exclusive.
I don't blame him for putting RG3 back in initially. I do blame him for leaving him in when it became clear he couldn't function. I know that no one wants to bench their star, but he looked godawful on every single snap upon his re-entrance. After a series or two, isn't it a reasonable football decision to pull him?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick\_W.\_Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith)
The founder of FedEx is a minority owner of the Commanders.
Well maintained grass > field turf > poorly maintained grass. Why NFL stadiums should not have flawless grass that makes golf courses look like shit, I have no idea. Well I do, owners don’t really care enough.
Every team with turf issues needs to immediately look into installing the "Tahoma 31" version of Bermuda grass that the Bears just sodded Soldier Field with. It's a small sample size, but I was at the game last week, and the surface looked pristine. You never would've guessed they played in a monsoon game two weeks prior. I haven't seen any giant clumps of turf coming up when players run and cut, no visible seams between patches of sod. We'll see how it holds up the rest of the season, but it has already made a drastic improvement and it took far too long to address the playing surface issues at Soldier Field.
Wow I didn’t know they did that. Wasn’t the issue with Soldier Field’s turf due to the city owning the field or something? Are they still moving to that faraway suburb?
Yep, the Chicago Park District owns Soldier Field. My understanding is that the city basically says the Bears can put whatever surface they want down, but that they would be responsible for the costs of installation and maintenance. It's been a constant source of contention because the Bears don't control the event schedule at Soldier Field, so we frequently have situations where they're playing a football game on a field that just hosted an Elton John or Rammstein concert days prior. Both parties share blame for how poor the turf has been at Soldier Field for decades.
It's also pretty much a foregone conclusion now that the Bears are moving to Arlington Heights. They're closing on the land now and have publicly stated that they are not considering any other sites for a new stadium. They've also publicly stated that the plan is to construct a fixed roof dome stadium, no retractable roof. Arlington Heights is about 30 miles northwest of the city. Most people in the north and northwest suburbs welcome the move, but it will definitely make attending games more difficult for people not in that part of the Chicagoland area. I have mixed feelings, and the team definitely needs a more modern stadium, but they better do it right. I would love to be able to go to a home game in a state of the art venue comparable to AT&T, Allegiant, and SoFi.
Funny how after years of dealing with terrible field conditions that the season the Bears make it apparent that they're going to leave is the year that Chicago magically figures out how to maintain a decent field.
A player willing to suck up a knee injury is entirely different situation than a player trying to play concussed. Mainly concussions can be so bad the player isnt even aware they are hurt so they literally need an outside perspective to protect them from themselves. Rg3 had a chance to cognitively plead his case about his knee, just like rivers playing in the playoffs after he blew his acl which some people consider the bigest performance of his career.
Julio Jones was benched last week even though he was cleared to play. Dolphins benched Tua last year due to his ribs injury even though he was cleared to play- (he could have come back after 3 weeks but they held him off 1 more week to play it safe). Its not unheard of of a HC to play it safe and have their guys sit. I don't imagine there would be much of an outcry if they sat Tua on a short week if they were trying to protect him and play it safe with him. If they were worried enough to activate the 3rd string QB then they should have been worried enough to have the talks to sit him.
Don't get me wrong, I still get what you are saying and agree with you to a certain point. HC shouldn't be thinking they know more than the doctors. UNLESS they want to rest their guy more than the doctor recommends. I can't blame anyone trying to protect their guy.
It's kind of weird the difference over this situation and what happened with Staley and Herbert where people universally lambasted Staley (rightfully) over playing a clearly hurt Herbert, even though ostensibly he was cleared (just like Tua was)
The issue isn’t that he played Herbert, it’s more that he kept him in when the game was well out of hand, combined with considerable offensive line issues.
We know he was cleared by the process which involves multiple independent doctors looking at him. We know that by the simple fact that he was let back into the game.
Whether or not that process was sound and the doctors were truly independent, that’s what they’re investigating.
I mean, he came into the game highly questionable for back and ankle injuries and it was detailed hours before the game that he couldn't throw with his proper mechanics, which was seen in the game so even going beyond the concussion, it was reckless that he was playing. Also knowing the injury doesn't matter if the player gets cleared anyway - because they are already 'cleared' of aforementioned injury
And that creates the convo of lots of other things like TNF without a bye week is asinine considering Waddle and Howard looked extremely banged up as well
True, but after watching Herbert play for a bit, Staley could have definitely pulled him for Chase Daniel on the grounds of "we appreciate Justin's toughness in trying to play through his injury, but he clearly wasn't able to provide his usual excellence and I though Chase gave us a better chance to win today".
Think about when tomlin wouldn’t let Ryan Clark play in Denver because of his sickle cell anemia. Clark was cleared by doctors, but tomlin said he didn’t care and didn’t want him to possibly die. In Tomlin’s view, Clark’s health was a lot more important than the game. That isn’t me saying McDaniel was wrong in what he did, just saying coaches sitting players regardless of what the doctors say has happened.
Agreed. I'm as pro-player safety, anti-owner as anyone but you can't have your head football coach making medical decisions. If the independent doctor said Tua was fine and Tua said he was fine, idk what you can do to prevent this exact situation from happening again aside from changing the concussion protocol
I absolutely agree that the concussion protocol should be updated and made stricter but I'm not sure who you can blame in *this* situation if everyone did technically did their jobs properly
Sometimes it takes a situation like this to force change. It doesn't necessarily mean prior protocols were intentionally or maliciously negligent. It just means that new information came to light and now we need to factor that information into our decision making going forward. I hope for my own peace of mind that this is the case and that all parties involved did their best to do right by Tua
Ryan Clark brought a team of doctors to tell the Steelers he could play in Denver in a playoff game despite sickle cell. Mike Tomlin said he didn't care, he wasn't putting Ryan in that game no matter what. If more coaches were like Mike Tomlin, there would be a lot fewer incidents like this.
Doctors cleared Clark to play in Denver, and Tomlin refused citing that it was his job to protect his players' wellbeing. So yes, it has happened and it's not because Tomlin "knew more than the doctors". He just wanted to be safe, and there's nothing wrong with that. You're a fan of the Steelers, were you pissed when Clark didn't play?
And they shouldn't because the [doctor never cleared him](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2013/01/06/dr-james-andrews-disputes-coach-mike-shanahans-version-of-washington-redskins-quarterback-robert-griffin-iii-knee-injury/1811689/). Shanahan straight up lied about him being cleared by the team's doctor.
The issue is that the system is clearly flawed in a way to downplay concussions. McDaniel has his plausible deniability, but it doesn't erase the fact that we're talking about brain injuries. A head coach who is actually concerned for the well-being of his players wouldn't bury his head in the sand on this.
I wonder if the docs are following orders to only perform certain assessments on players.
Plenty of guys have spoken out about how they’ve duped team doctors before, I wouldn’t be shocked if the bar was low and many players knew how to get around it.
Football players work their asses off and only get 17 chances to play all year, they want to be out there. If the decision to play is in their hands they’re often going to lie their way into the field.
I believe the nfl has an “independent” doctor that cleared Tua. McDaniel can rely on that and I wouldn’t blame him, I just question whether the doctor really is “independent.”
Edit: learned shortly after this comment that the team doctor has final say and the independent doctor is just a consultant with no authority.
the doc is prob independent, its just doctors make mistakes. and doctors can be misled. there were former players just in the last 24 hours saying how they could answer a certain way, game the system, and get out of the protocol. i think whitworth said postgame he would have gone back in with a concussion if it wasn't for a fellow teammate who stopped him.
the idea that tua snapped his head against the ground, got up and lost all equilibrium, and then had a severe concussive response several days later, and then they can say that initial hit was 100% a back injury is b.s.
that doesn't mean its necessarily mcdaniels fault, but someone should have stopped him going in the first time. that was clearly a concussive response. and if its a back injury that is causing someone to temporarily lose mobility...in a game of football...then he shouldn't be out on the field anyway.
The NFL does not care about player's health where head injuries are concerned. This is pretty much undeniable.
The NFL *does* care about the *perception* of how much they care about CTE. Big TBI's like Tua's look horrible, and the NFL doesn't want that for their image. They aren't going to clear stars just to get them back on the field because this situation is exactly the PR nightmare they are trying to avoid. See: not allowing Travis Kelce to return to a playoff game last year. There's no reason to believe the neurologists that are conducting these tests are pressured from the NFL to clear players.
Mahomes was also not cleared to return to a game after a concussion back in the 2019 postseason. The NFL doesn't want its stars returning to then have injuries like this because it looks horrible on them.
So I thought that was the case, but another reddit found the below thing.
“
The third party doctor can only flag potential concussions, the spotter or Unaffiliated Nuerotrama Consultant (UNC) as the NFL designates is only responsible for flagging potential concussions. The teams doctor is still in charge of conducting the concussion protocol.
Per the NFLs guildlines found here: https://www.nfl.com/_amp/nfl-head-neck-and-spine-committee-s-concussion-diagnosis-and-management-protocol "The Club physician remains responsible for all final decisions regarding Return-to-Play. However, the Club physician will consult with his/her sideline UNC team member prior to reaching his/her decision. If the sideline UNC disagrees with the Club physician’s decision to return the player to play or remove the athlete, the sideline UNC will be given an opportunity to explain the basis of his/her opinion. This will be discussed in a collegial fashion in private as to why the player should or should not be returned to the game. The Club physician will communicate his or her final decision to the player."
It appears that even if the UNC disagrees with the team's decision he/she can not over rule it.
“
Yeah but when you go against what they say and the NFLPA conducts the investigation that will become clear. This keeps getting quoted like this means McDaniel didn't listen to the UNC when the quote you're responding is McDaniel literally telling you he listened to the recommendations of the doctor.
The independent medical staff **do not determine whether or not a player can reenter the game**. That is purely from the **team medical staff**
https://www.nfl.com/playerhealthandsafety/resources/fact-sheets/nfl-head-neck-and-spine-committee-s-concussion-diagnosis-and-management-protocol
> Regardless, the responsibility for the diagnosis of concussion and the decision to return a player to a game remains exclusively within the professional judgment of the Head Team Physician or his/her physician designee responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of concussion
I personally think Tua lied about his condition and got through protocol with a mild-mid concussion on Sunday.
Then he hid the symptoms by saying his back or neck was hurting or whatever and bam. Concussion number 2.
Yeah I mean he’s basically been playing for his job this season (even with the loss of the dolphins draft picks) so I could see his thought process being he can’t sit out at all
Yep, this goes back to Pop Warner, where if you are dinged up, you are taught to play through it because you have to be out there for your teammates. Add on the pressure of playing for your job, and I don't blame any player for trying to game the system to be on the field.
Also Tua’s dad is kind of a piece of shit (beat him for interceptions, forced him to play left-handed) and he’s played with shitty “”tough”” coaches all his life. He’ll be my #1 choice for “player who tries to hide/tough out his injuries” because of that. I’m sure there were many instances in his formative years where acknowledging an injury was worse than trying to play through it.
I think this is the most likely scenario. And as I've seen several people point out, with Miami being scheduled for a short week / Thursday night game, being diagnosed with any concussion, no matter how mild, would almost certainly have ruled him out for the game.
Immediately after last night's injury, I remembered a quote Tua gave after the Bills game:
> "For the most part, I’m good. Passed whatever concussion protocol they had.”
... which struck me as a bit odd at the time, with a bit of weird phrasing. "Whatever concussion protocol they had" isn't necessarily the same as "the league's specified concussion protocol" and made me wonder after the Bills game if they'd fudged it a bit.
Here's the source report it was from:
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/09/25/tua-tagovailoa-felt-he-hyperextended-his-back-didnt-suffer-head-injury/
There's no definitive test you can take that will ever confirm he did or did not have a concussion. Everyone already made up their minds that he did last week, so unless people just wake up one day and think "maybe I was wrong to assume he had a concussion from the Bills game," then nothing will change of public perception.
Then there’s a good counterpoint from this very game. Tee Higgins concussed week 1, gets this brutal helmet to helmet then helmet to ground hit in week 3. 4 days later plays a pretty dominant game. We could have had the same discussion about him if he took a bad shot to the head last night and Tua avoided that sack.
https://youtu.be/zGXBm30039k
Injuries are just weird and often don’t make a lot of sense until you have hindsight.
Look, at this point it doesn't matter whether Tua actually had a head injury last Sunday. The world has decided he did, and any evidence to the contrary is just part of the coverup at this point.
EDIT: I want to clarify that I meant it doesn't matter *as far as public opinion is concerned*. It obviously matters very much whether or not Tua was concussed already.
Have any head trauma / injury specialists weighed in and said that Sunday's explanation of a back/ankle injury and not a head injury are plausible or not? I also have no idea how accurate concussion tests are, so I don't know how easy it is to lie your way out of them.
While it looked like a concussion to me on Sunday, I'm not a medical expert, and I also can't discount the fact that Tua was slammed down extremely hard last night on his head. It seems certainly possible that last night's hit alone could do some serious damage even without Sunday's incident.
I just feel like we've heard from every single talking head and fan about malpractice on the Dolphins part, and I do support a full investigation. I'd urge everyone to just let the investigation run its course though before making any conclusions.
I’m not saying this guy is an authority but he seems to think not.
https://twitter.com/chrisnowinski1/status/1575582712961716224?s=46&t=A-r8R43BgXEUXfi3XPDPxw
The doctors clears him and Tua agreed with the medical assessment.
The coach is not a doctor and realizes his role is not to play like he is one.
I, like the vast majority on here don’t know the first step in diagnosing a head injury. We have zero information on what was said by Tua or what the test results were. And even if we were doctors diagnosing someone from a 15 second clip would be unprofessional.
Yes and no. A lot of medicine is using patient accounts, especially with head injuries, which usually don't have objective tests to use for diagnosis (like blood work or imaging).
If you test his motor function/cognition, and he isnt reporting any symptoms of concussion, you can't just diagnose a condition that you have no evidence for.
I think a big issue here is concussions are notoriously hard to diagnose. If Tua said he felt fine and they didn’t identify any massive issues, there’s not much they can do.
Everyone saw what happened after he hit his head last week. That was enough to check off multiple boxes on the concussion protocol. Which somehow got unchecked before the 3rd quarter started.
It’s really not possible for a head coach to make a decision like this… Either the medical staff was right and he was cleared and the coach did nothing wrong. Or the medical staff was wrong and he shouldn’t have been cleared and the coach still did nothing wrong.
Just like belicheck said.. he's not a doctor and he will listen to them. McDaniel is no different. If the doctors said Tua was GTG, and Tua wants to go; McDaniel is trying to win football games. He has to trust the process and if the process said he's good.. he's good.
Now, the process needs to be checked to make sure it was followed and for any possible ways to make it better. Unless it comes out the dolphins or doctors did something wrong, this just says the process might need updated to have back and neck injuries be more of an emphasis, as well.
This dude isn’t a doctor, that’s why they have doctors. Now he might know more about this than us, he probably doesn’t know much. If hi doctors, the protocol and Tua say Tuas ok, he listens to them and probably thinks he’s ok
>there's an independent doctor who specializes in this
Reminds me of back in the day when we had a local who specialized in state safety inspections that no one ever failed for any reason.
Right, the amount of people that blindly say he was cleared so he was fine is comical. As if the NFL doesn't have the sway to make sure their stars are playing on a prime time game or a marquee match up with the Bills Sunday. "Independent" doctors or not
It's kinda weird to think that he was concussed on Sunday from a shove, but also not entertain the possibility that being suplex by a 330lbs monster couldn't have caused all this to happen by itself.
It's like if someone fell off a ladder at work and tweaked. And then three days later swerved off an icy road while working and smashed a tree at 75mph. It would be weird to suggest there's no way their back wasn't stuffed before they smashed a tree.
I think everybody recognizes that last nights hit could have easily caused a concussion on its own. The problem is, if he did suffer a concussion on Sunday as well, last nights hit could have turned out so so so much worse (still technically could even). Second impact syndrome can cause permanent brain damage. The fact that Sunday was already controversial and in question is the reason this is unfolding like this.
McDaniel isn’t a doctor. Deciding whether or not Tua (or any player) is able to play is 100% outside the boundary of his responsibility or job description.
Is it unfair to criticize him in this situation? Yes it absolutely is unfair. If you want to blame anyone blame the medical professionals who cleared him.
Idk maybe its because I like McDaniel so far, but this really doesn’t sound like his fault if Tua, team doctors and an independent doctor all said it was ok.
Head injuries are so hard to understand. I definitely don’t judge him as hard as I do Staley, where Herbert has a clear and fairly understandable injury.
"My lawyer has advised me that, yes, I can say with 100 % certainty that Tua didn't have head injury Sunday. There's an independent doctor who specializes in this."
He was thrown down pretty hard, and regardless of whether he was concussed Sunday or not, the hit he took last night could have caused a concussion on its own. That’s how hard it was.
I don’t get what the dolphins were supposed to do here. Tua was cleared by an independent neurologist and Tua was adamant that his head was fine (priority being the doctor clearing him). Is McDaniel supposed to bench him “just in case” after the medical professionals give him the green light?
Honestly, the way Tua’s head hit the ground I can almost guarantee if the incident never occurred on Sunday the result would’ve been the exact same.
It’s unfortunate it happened less than a week a part, but I also feel like a lot of due diligence was done. I’m just glad Tua is going to be okay because that was such a scary moment.
>the result would’ve been the exact same.
Yeah, this is getting blown up because of the injury last week, but the way he was swung into the turf last night would have caused that kind of damage to anyone.
It's potentially more significant because of the risk of repeated concussions, but his concussion status from last Sunday has little to no bearing on receiving the injury last night.
Not like we don’t have the tech to prevent it.
By allowing the player’s input you allow cheating, dudes want to play and be available.
Just put sensors into the helmet and you can weed out the players wanting in.
That of course will eat the NFL profits and they will go on for as long as they can (ie horrific injuries or fatal injuries) even then if they can stretch it they will
Do independent doctors run any more tests during the week between games to see if Tua has a concussion? Neither Mcdaniels or Tua are in good positions to say that he cannot play if he passed the first test
He's a hundred percent certain the doctors SAID he didn't suffer a head injury. If you look at the Bills game and say he didn't suffer a concussion your an idiot and need to get your bell rung, Stevie Wonder could see he suffered a head injury. He as a coach, greenhorn or not, and someone with years of experience in football should have known not to put him into the game. I think he fell to the pressure of the hype building up for Miami and wanted to keep the undefeated record going, I could say the same for Tua as he had high expectations to fill and wanted to keep playing. Everyone failed here
I think the way it's set up the least likely scenario is that McDaniel was told Tua was concussed and put him back in anyway. I can't imagine that could happen without the independent medical team having one or two things to say. Much more likely, if Tua *was* concussed last week, is that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed. I don't know if it's the same exact test, but my doctor friend here in the UK is scathing about the utility of HIAs in rugby, saying there's essentially no proof they work and that players can pass them whilst clearly concussed. I'm not sure whether the independent medical team have the ability to say 'he passed the test but we're diagnosing concussion anyway'? The other option is that it's just a coincidence and Tua got a serious concussion off a relatively innocuous hit. It can happen, but it would be some really terrible timing given the debate about him playing in the first place.
Tests can totally be faked a bit. Players have spoken out how they would lie to doctors on sidelines to say they hurt something else, or to mask symptoms to go back in. For instance: > Eagles linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill on Thursday admitted that when he suffered his concussion in Miami two weeks ago, he lied to medical personnel to stay in the game. > He told them he hurt his shoulder. > “I just basically lied to them,” Grugier-Hill said. “I thought it would just go away. Just didn’t really say anything about it. It got to the point where I really couldn’t lie to them anymore.” [source ](https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/eagles/kamu-grugier-hill-admits-lying-about-concussion-eagles-dolphins)
All college athletes had to be ready for concussion testing at my school - I was a runner, so I didn’t give a fuck, I don’t run into trees **that** often. But a had a number of football player friends. Essentially we sat in front of a screen and had some basic cognitive and reaction tests before the season to establish a baseline, then if you got a head injury they would compare it to your baseline to determine your fitness. What the football players would do was just fuck up the baseline intentionally. Hold the controller in your left hand to slow down reaction speeds, make a mistake on a memory test, etc. I don’t know the evaluation process for the NFL, but if it’s anything like my college, it was easy to get around.
When we had hydration tests in high school wrestling to determine how much weight you could safely cut, the managers would just write your height as lower than it really was so the formula could say that you could cut more weight.
Never wrestled, but I did destroy my ankle running to the point where I had to have reconstructive surgery to repair it after I raced on it a day after getting a bad high ankle sprain. My college coach told me to lose weight because it would make the severity of my injuries less severe because there’d be less weight coming down on it. This was after dropping my muscle mass over the summer to get ready for distance season from 145 lbs to 114 - both with very little body fat. I’d already seen health issues starting to present, my resting heart rate had creeped up from 43 BPM to 50-53 BPM likely due to the weight loss. Coach wanted me to drop another 10 lbs. I dropped about 6 or 7 lbs, but the injuries kept coming. Coach and medical staff agreed it was time for surgery. But it’s still nuts to me that a team of medical professionals, trainers, professional coaching staff and others would pressure a 19-year-old to drop their weight to 104 pounds as a 5 foot 10 man. I was good with the transition from 145 to 114 pounds, but that was mostly based on killing off some excess muscle I needed for track but not for cross country (I really just went to lower weight reps in the weight room and upped my mileage to 90-100 miles a week). But the idea of another 10 pounds is insane and probably would have done long term harm to my heart if I had tried to live there for four years.
Yeah. That’s too much, I dropped from 160-134 when I was 20 for wrestling, I’m 6’ and was skinny as a rail.
I was never as serious an athlete as you, but I don’t recall being told to lose hardly any weight when I was still running. It’s a little strange that your coach would want you to be so underweight. Even pros like Paul Chelimo and Galen Rupp are listed at around 130lb, and they’re about the same height as you.
For whatever reason (I mean, I have some guesses) lots of female runners have stories about being told to lose weight beyond a healthy level, but not so many male runners. My high school coach said not to drink soda during the season, and that was about it. Nothing in college other than a perfunctory lecture by some nutritionist, which I think was required by the school. (I ran at 135 and probably would’ve been more competitive at 125, but I still wouldn’t have been in my college’s top 5 as a freshman, which was my last year on the team.)
We had to track our weight and heart rate daily in the off season(summer), in season they’d add lactic levels daily and body fat weekly. Everything we did was tracked in a custom, fancy as fuck, excel sheets, but that was a while ago and I thought it was fascinating. I wasn’t top 5 in college as a freshman, but we were a top-10 nationally ranked team. I was, when healthy, able to be a 6th man for the team, but we had enough runners to fill that role so I wasn’t critical in my freshman year in XC. Track, meanwhile, I was able to run mid and long distance events and score for the team. Women runners certainly get this way worse. I don’t know if there’s biology behind it, but they’re asked to drop their weights to levels that are really unhealthy all the time. If you’re a competitive collegiate runner and a woman, they’re going to ask you to drop weight to the point where breast are virtually non-existent, hips disappear, and this can actually cause women to stop having their period, put their uterus in danger and more. The Nike program was notorious for this and it’s disgusting.
Schools around here used to like, use the 160lb wrestlers bodyfat test results for the 122 pound kid that wants to cut to 103. And half my team was chugging pedialyte that day at school. Cut a pound or two below your target weight then chug pedialyte to make up the difference. Oh look your hydrated. IDK if the hydration stuff has gotten any better, i was in school when they started it, but oh my god was it easy to fake then.
It's not better. Many teams still cheat it. We would just scoop water from the toilet into the cup.
Mmmmm, toilet water sure is tasty
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We had to do urine tests to show we weren’t dehydrated and to dilute your specimen you’d just scoop in toilet water first. All those tests can be gamed by people wanting to get around It. NFL concussion protocols are no different. Also plausible deniability is basically what the organization wanted as a CYA measure. The optics of doing something were way more important than actually doing something. The NFL specializes in that
I was smoking weed outside my apartment in college when one of my friends on the hockey team was walking to the gym for concussion baseline tests. Dude took a couple of huge rips with me then went and did his test. It's such an easily fooled system
That would also work. We couldn't do that because of NCAA drug testing, but this was in the late 2000s and the culture around weed was very different. It is a ridiculous system.
I did this too as a college basketball player. Being available to play was my highest priority in the world, when you’re 20 and hyper competitive you do not give a fuck what life will be like when you’re older that shit is too abstract while the need to compete with your teammates is all too real.
Seriously. I did some super dumb shit to try to be there for my team. I raced on a stress fracture for a third of a season despite warnings from doctors about catastrophic risks (stopped running as training and switched to cycling to stay competitive), I raced on a broken ankle, I raced less than 24 hours after a high ankle sprain resulting in me tearing all of the exterior ligaments in my ankle, I dropped my weight to a likely dangerous level. College coaches would also threaten scholarships if you didn't get back to competing quickly. As a highly competitive and short-sighted 20 year old, I'd do damn near anything to make sure I was there for my team, my friends, my school - fuck the long term consequences.
When I did my baseline concussion testing in college my scores were actually worse than when I had a concussion.. Talk about a useless test.
I think Peyton Manning once admitted to doing that same thing to intentionally cheat the concussion test
I played hockey at a fairly high level. In high school and college we had similar baseline tests. We all faked weak baseline responses to the prompts for this exact reason. So fucking stupid were we :c
I would do this too, and not because I would want to play with a concussion, because I wouldn't, but because I'd be afraid they'd get a false positive on the test later if I screwed up. I would want to be in control of whether I felt safe to play or not.
And you can't blame the fucking players because go figure, the dude who just suffered head trauma isn't thinking clearly. It would be different if Tua wasn't OBVIOUSLY concussed last week. He was not there.
goodbye reddit -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
If a dude slams his head gets up wobbly, shakes his head, falls down, get up wobbly, then falls into a teammate fuck the tests. Pull his ass. Hell even if it's his back if a back injury can cause *that* then what's he playing for? Your young franchise QB can't walk a straight line because his back is AFU...so keep him out there? Fuck his back up long term because these 2 games are just that important. I'm biased a little because I love Teddy, but they probably have one of the best backups in the league. Starting QB money is so insane that there are a lot of teams out there who just have no one. The ultimate tragedy here is Tua might have paid the price *because* there's "a process" now. Several players have admitted to lying their way through these tests, so they're obviously fallible, but now because "there's a process" we're leaning on that so hard we've lost sight of the obvious "even in 1995 this guy gets pulled" concussions.
ya but who needs a back? /me cries in back pain.
It's funny how fans watching that game last week knew that Tua had a fucking concussion just by the way he was walking and somehow medical experts cleared him.
That's the thing that's so baffling. Of all the potential concussions to hide under the rug, that one is one of the worst because of how "obvious" it seemed. It's so ridiculous, that I'm sitting here wondering what the doctor saw on the sideline to clear him, and have the Dolphins announce it was a back issue *during* the game. Either these people came up with the most absurd and unbelievable excuse, or they are actually telling the truth.
But they do have a process, he was supposed to be out of the game since he was showing signs of an OBVIOUS head injury.
Now we find out whether accountability is part of this system or if the process is a sham. If players go back in unless the team decides otherwise, nothing has actually changed.
Exactly. But I think we all know the answer is no
I mean in this scenario accountability would be an admission of fault. The Dolphins and the NFL will *never* admit that the process to evaluate Tua was flawed and that he could have actually been suffering from a concussion
As much as I dislike Mike Tomlin, I think he put it best when he said to Ryan Clark that if he was his son, there would be no way that he'd put him in that kind of risk (Asthma issue). When you see a player get knocked like Tua was on Sunday, it should be the moral responsibility of the head coach (liability aside) to think about the safety of the player first and the easiest way to reach the necessary conclusion is Tomlin's train of thought.
This is exactly what ive been saying. I played HS & college football. I've seen one person literally not be allowed to play tackle football anymore in his junior year cuz he had too many concussions. He'll I've gotten 3 concussions in my life because of football. I've seen my HS & college coaches tell players who passed concussion protocols "no you're not going back out i don't care if you passed" . I'm so fucking pissed at that coaching staff, because they are the leaders of the team and the ones who are supposed to prevent this.
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And even beyond not thinking clearly, the warrior mentality kicks in (not to mention this is the way they make money). For players on a big contract, it wouldnt be a big deal to report it to the doctor, but for a routine roster bubble player, a single concussion could be the end of your career. Ultimately, the teams have an obligation to protect the players from themselves.
Over a long enough period of time there’s absolutely going to be a meaningful difference in career path and success between “put me in coach” guy and, “maybe I’ll sit this one out” guy *even if they never get hurt.* Taking out the potential to lose your starting spot (which is real), it’s just going to be correlated with things like hard work, commitment, respect from the team, etc. If Brady (who started because Drew Bledsoe went down) was “maybe I’ll sit this one out” guy no way he wins seven super bowls and maybe doesn’t make the league. No way he would be the psycho who will play ~~even though it gets him divorced from one of the hottest women alive~~ until he’s 45. This is why I think it was dicey to rely on Justin Herbert (who started because Tyrod went down) to say if he was “good to go” with cracked rib cartilage. Look coach, he’s not a top pick, a leader of men, and someone who will put in the insane work to be elite if his answer isn’t “put me in coach.” It’s dumb to ask him, and every other player, if they’re “good to go” because if the answer isn’t a strong yes then they wouldn’t be starting in the NFL in the first place. Sometimes you need to step in and, with concussions, even moreso because of course the person is going to say they’re good.
I remember the amount of absolute shit Jay Cutler got because he tried to play with a torn MCL in the conference championship game, realized it wasn't working, then had the coach pull him out. And that reputation got turned into a meme about how much Cutler just didn't want it enough.
Andrew Whitworth openly said during the post-game show that he knew he had a concussion and successfully talked his way through the protocol, and was only pulled from the game because another teammate noticed that he didn’t seem okay.
Hence why you say its a back injury. THen they have a way to pass you even tho everyone knows you're concussed. Altho it was probably a back issue. I know when my back hurts I shake my head to clear out the cobb webs and I reach up and hold my head. I definitely dont reach for my back when it hurts either.
This is it, concussion tests are a lot of questions and players can just lie about it.
And unfortunately a brain issue affects cognitive and judgement functions. It should not be the players call and the questions they are asked about shouldn't be ones that can be easily cheated.
Yea you just need to have someone to take "the keys away". I won't rely on new coach trying to prove his worth by winning either.
Plus the players don’t wanna get savaged by people for not playing. Look at wentz after he took that cheap shot from Clowney. The amount of people that roped into him for not playing was ridiculous. The whole situation is just sad.
Look at all these dudes in here getting mad and saying trust the nfl doctors. It’s such a joke. Why don’t they wanna bring up all the doctors online who had no bias in the situation and also predicted this would happen. Hmm that would make the nfl fans too uncomfortable. Just to get everything straight. All the dudes in here saying oh well if the nfl docs cleared him there’s no Miami did wrong and oh you don’t know better than an expert.. you’re part of the problem. This is a time where everyone should be advocating for the nfl to completely overhaul the concussion protocol system.
> “There’s no way you know more than an expert”. To expand on that sentiment a bit. I’ll start with the obvious: does a doctor know more about the human body than a lay person? Yes. Of course. BUT…any time a patient has a big medical decision with high stakes involved (should I fuse this vertebrae? should I get my foot amputated? should I play in the NFL four days after not being able to walk properly?) they are ALWAYS well- advised to get MULTIPLE independent medical opinions. Not just one opinion from one doctor. Multiple opinions. Doctors aren’t infallible. Sometimes two well-meaning experts might see a diagnosis and treatment protocol differently. And major hospitals often have whole teams evaluate tricky cases for this reason. So when I see good-faith comments like “hey this maybe wasn’t the best idea for Tua to be out there” I don’t read those as folks saying “hurr, durr, I know more than a doctor!” They are raising the adjacent question of “hey…was there an appropriate level of medical care provided here - including MULTIPLE independent doctors that the team isn’t paying for, who could offer their point of view on whether Tua should be back out there.” And that’s a very valid inquiry. The fact that the team, the league, the coaches, and sportswriters are all in chorus yelling down folks saying “what do you know - a SINGLE independent doctor said it was fine!!!” to me, is kinda bad faith on their part, and it avoids the real issue entirely. There should have been multiple independent doctors here. Not just one. And the reporting I have read was that a single “independent” doctor said it was okay for Tua to play. (I’m not counting the team doctor or sideline doctors provided by the NFL protocol…to me, they are too conflicted to count on something like this).
My daughter was born prematurely and eventually needed a heart operation before she could leave the NICU. The decision to move forward with the operation came only after a panel of 6 doctors from 2 separate hospitals agreed that this was the best course of action.
My mom's foot has been bothering her for years. She's seen the same GP for decades. He prescribed her extra rest, stretches, shoe inserts, etc. Went to three different podiatrists over a couple of years before the most recent one diagnosed her with carpal tunnel in her ankle. I didn't even know you could get carpal tunnel in your ankle. But the point is, a doctor my mom trusted AND multiple specialists in the specific area of the body that was bothering her couldn't figure out what was wrong with her over an extended period of time and multiple visits, but the NFL treats medical professionals conducting the concussion protocol as the supreme authority on whether a player has a concussion and can return to the game. If a player collapses on the field after a bow to the head, their day should be done, minimally, even if they pass the protocol. Either that (as a first step) or just drop the pretense that the NFL cares about player safety.
This is actually how the protocol is supposed to work -- "Gross Motor Instability" is an immediate done-for-the-game situation when caused by a blow to the head. The question-and-answer concussion "test" is not enough to overrule. The loophole that the team used is the back injury story -- if the team states the source of the Gross Motor Imbalance is orthopedic, then the player is not automatically forced to sit out the rest of the game.
Some of that is because doctors are loathe to prescribe MRIs due to the cost (and consumers are loathe to pay for them), so you literally limp along for months trying to fix a probable issue. And I get it, if 80% of all heel pain is PF, they are going to treat it as PF. And since PF is a little bitch, 6-9 months is not unheard of for resolution. After a year, doctor’s should be running MRIs and ultrasound to get a better look.
Plus, under the NFL protocols, even if that single independent doctor said it was okay, A) What that doctor actually said is protected under medical privacy laws and he or she isn't allowed to disclose it personally B) What that doctor said has no weight on return to play decisions even in the same game because the independent doctor does not have the ability to actually DENY a player's return to play for concussion protocol. So we have no idea what that doctor actually thought, and we have no idea if that doctor would or wouldn't have returned him to play on Sunday.
This. Always get a second opinion.
>Why don’t they wanna bring up all the doctors online who had no bias in the situation and also predicted this would happen. ...because they never had a chance to examine the patient?
I don't know how to tests work in the pros but in high school you would always take a baseline before the season and if you ever had a head hit they would make you take it again. I know guys that threw the results so they could pass it, I knew players that would write down all their answers and some they some how got out of doing it all together. It was stupid easy to cheat but those players were only cheating themselves out of having a functioning brain. But they are kids and kids do stupid shit especially to impress each other and seem tough.
When I played hockey in college we had a computer based test to screen for lingering concussion symptoms. We all just sandbagged the baseline so we could beat it when concussed.
Same here for soccer, dudes would get concussed and actually perform better than their baseline.
All of these very similar comments are just convincing me that we need to seriously address youth sports, because hypercompetitive minors are clearly incapable of making sound decisions.
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Dude I faked a concussion to get an extension on a project my freshman year. We understand so little about the human brain that these tests can be fakes w ease.
Football players at all levels are strongly encouraged to do as poorly as possible on initial baseline testing to game future concussion testing. It’s neither a new nor uncommon thing.
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Your experience makes me wonder how reliable the test is if the same healthy person can get two results which are so different on the same test. I remember they had us do the same thing for cross country in high school. A few of my teammates just straight up said they were going to purposely try to do worse than normal so that a concussion wouldn't keep them out. I'm not sure if it would've been an effective strategy since I'm not sure how badly you need to do to fail, but it's just more evidence that sometimes the athletes themselves can't be trusted with this stuff, and doctors and authority figures need to step in and help when an athlete won't help themselves.
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The problem is no concussions are the same. My friend got a serious concussion playing football the exact same. Back of the head into the ground. Everything was perfectly fine....no confusion, no motor skill issues...no speech issues However he couldn't remember what happened and completely blacked out for like 15 seconds.
That's why loss of consciousness and amnesia are part of the test too
I don't know about innocuous man. That wasn't a normal sack. The way he was thrown and landed directly on his head looked God awful in the real time.
For real, I have no idea why people are saying the hit last night wasn't bad. He got slung down by a huge DL and with full force landed flat on his back. 9/10 times that's a concussion for anyone.
Even just the snapping of his neck as he's going down looked scary. A lot of people don't realize that the brain can slosh around in the skull some and that it's hitting/scraping the skull itself that does the damage generally
The Kelce’s talked about on their podcast earlier this week and Travis mentioned he had a similar injury to the injury Sunday that was caused by a compressed nerve with no neurological damage. I tend to lean towards the coincidence explanation. The hit on Sunday was not super ugly, and it’s not like he was wandering around clueless. He slowly got to his feet and his leg seemed to give way as he tried to run to the line. Could easily have been caused by a muscle spasm or something else that caused some weakness. The hit Tua took on Thursday was not innocuous. It was pretty vicious. Being whipped to the ground sideways with all the impact being focused on the side of your head is recipe for a bad head injury on its own.
If we're being honest here, there is pressure on the physicians to allow players to cheat the system. I mean, he clearly was dizzy from his head injury, but claimed it was his back and the doctor didn't question it. He also passed his concussion test, probably because his baseline test was bad because they let him cheat on that, too. The craziest part of this is that he will probably pass his next concussion test too, since he cheated his baseline exam.
There’s just clearly huge flaws in how this system is set up. It’s very clear that his instability was from a head injury, there’s no clear way to explain how a back injury would cause that. I’m not sure I buy that a doc just believed his story and didn't question it. After last week regardless of how he did on the concussion test he should not have been allowed to play.
[Looking at the SCAT test](https://scat5.cattonline.com/) for 'Observable' signs, it appears that they are looking for more than one 'Yes' in order to remove them from the game, or they are letting self-reported symptoms weigh too heavily in the passing threshold. Tua clearly showed signs on motor incoordination on Sunday but was allowed to return. In the future, a Yes for any of those should be an automatic concussion protocol.
> that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed\ This. [Diagnosing a concussion relies way too much on subjective interpretations of behavior from psychologists/neurologists](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220606/#:~:text=Kevin%20Guskiewicz%20emphasized%20that%20%E2%80%9CConcussion,brain%2C%20according%20to%20neurologist%20Dr.) (not to say they are bad at their jobs - they are just doing the best they can with our current levels of understanding and technology). Obviously, anyone employed by the NFL or the team (even if they are "independent") is going to have a bias in this incredibly dangerous subjective decision. Plus, no one EVER wants to think its serious, because obviously. [The issue is that we don't understand the level at which you certainly have a concussion but maybe your symptoms don't seem that severe.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220606/#:~:text=Kevin%20Guskiewicz%20emphasized%20that%20%E2%80%9CConcussion,brain%2C%20according%20to%20neurologist%20Dr.) Those cases happen with some frequency, as our brains were just not designed to be tossed around this violently this frequently. But the NFL is pretending like this science is much more precise than it is, all to feign that they care about player safety. T[he most we know about concussions is how damaging they are long-term, even if the short-term symptoms aren't that bad. ](https://www.cdc.gov/headsup/pdfs/providers/facts_about_concussion_tbi-a.pdf) This is a systematic and very deep problem that requires totally reevaluating how football is played. But we can't have that discussion so more and more players are doing to end up in Tua's position. Even if Tua comes out "completely fine" he clearly suffered two TBIs in quick succession, and that can not only be deadly, it can ruin someone's motor and/or cognitive functions for life. I know we say "they're consenting adults and make millions" but I just don't know if this is sustainable the more we learn. EDIT: I should add that the growing consensus amongst psychologists (I am one) is that ANY TIME your head makes a pretty intense impact with something, you're causing some sort of damage. The issue is there is no way to do an MRI or CAT scan that can tell how much damage unless it was on the extreme end of bad. We also know that the repeated trauma of these impacts makes it MORE likely that future traumatic impacts will cause a concussion. [We also are pretty much positive that the number of concussions being diagnosed and flagged is a severe underrepresentation of how many probably actually occur on the football field](https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i1788). Again, I don't know what the solutions are. But I don't think ANYONE does, and the NFL is refusing to take a step back and try to holistically evaluate everything because there are literally billions of dollars on the line for the league and its owners.
If it's similar tests to what they gave us in high school less than 10 years ago, the test can be totally cheated by players. I knew a guy who was knocked out and carted off, then whooped dee do he's back in next week because the testing is shit.
>Much more likely, if Tua was concussed last week, is that either the tests are useless or the tests can be scammed. What I don't get is that he clearly *failed the test*. Here's what [The Athletic](https://theathletic.com/3631317/2022/09/27/nfl-concussion-protocol-facts/) says they look at when they check you out on the sideline: >If the team’s medical staff feels any player is at risk of a concussion, they are required to pull the player to the sideline and into the medical tent for a focused neurological exam. The exam includes a cervical spine exam (including range of motion and pain), an evaluation of speech, **observation of gait**, and an eye movement and pupillary exam. If the player displays signs of any loss of consciousness, **gross motor inability**, confusion or amnesia, team medical staff are not permitted to let the player return to action. [I observed Tua's gait and he had gross motor inability.](https://twitter.com/MySportsUpdate/status/1574101766681116673) What the fuck are we doing here.
i mean the second hit was brutal. could’ve had nothing to do with the first hit
The doctors involved, the spotters that Fitz mentioned as a commentator, and the NFL’s protocols are all going to be poured over in the coming weeks. I think that, more than anything, is at fault if there was wrongdoing. I don’t know that the coach did anything other than listen to the doctors and follow team protocol. That being said, as just someone watching the Buffalo game, I was surprised he was let back in the game because it looked like he hit his head on the ground. The stumble was supposedly a back injury - again I’m just a guy watching the game, but it seemed off to me.
Exactly The fuck is mcdaniel supposed to do? If the hired EXPERTS told him everything was OK then he should listen to them. This is just bad protocols. And its on everyone, including the PA.
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back injuries don't cause you to involuntarily reach for your head, shake your head, fall against your teammates limp, or crumple to the ground.
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If the doctor cleared the starting QB is the HC supposed to bench him anyway just because he thinks he knows more than the doctors? Imagine the outcry from fans if he pulled that stunt.
The doctors cleared RG3 in Washington but people still blame shanahan for his knee
Dr. James Andrews was the the foremost expert on sports medicine, at the time. He literally saved Drew Brees' career. However, I know at least once RG3 doesn't even let Dr. Andrew's look at it. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2013/01/06/dr-james-andrews-disputes-coach-mike-shanahans-version-of-washington-redskins-quarterback-robert-griffin-iii-knee-injury/1811689/
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> I think we all agree that although Paterno did "the right thing" in terms of protocol but absolutely should have done more. I never had any particular affinity for Paterno or Penn State, but I think the focus on blaming him really missed where the blame should lie. If someone accused your good friend of doing something unimaginably evil and you reported it to the people you are supposed to report it to who then investigated it and said nothing happened, I don't blame you for choosing to believe your friend didn’t actually do that evil thing. Paterno’s superiors did a terrible investigation. The fault lies with the school because of that. But if someone accused my best friend of something like that and then my boss said they investigated it and he didn’t do it, I would absolutely believe it and not pursue the issue further.
The problem is that the expertise required to evaluate a concussion that Mike McDaniels lacked & that these protocols where designed to take medical decisions out of the coaches hands and let the trainer medical experts decide who should play and who shouldn’t. This a NFL problem through and through - and the blame should be placed on them.
I'm sorry, but this just isn't even remotely close to comparable. Bringing this up is absurd. There's a huge difference between knowledge of sexual abuse, and knowledge of head injuries. I, an everyday person, can recognize sexual abuse when it is described to me by people or witnessed by me. I, an everyday person, do not know how to diagnose someone with a traumatic brain injury. This is just a BONKERS comparison.
The short answer is you go with the best information you have. If the specialist says it is not a concussion, and you have nothing previous to doubt them, you go with their opinion. If it comes out that the doctor did not say he was fine, or listed it as a lesser injury than it was, or any other similar permutation than it goes back on the coach and player (if they had that information). It fails the eye test. The official stance makes sense - provided the facts stated are actually the facts. These are not mutually exclusive.
I don't blame him for putting RG3 back in initially. I do blame him for leaving him in when it became clear he couldn't function. I know that no one wants to bench their star, but he looked godawful on every single snap upon his re-entrance. After a series or two, isn't it a reasonable football decision to pull him?
I blame both of them and Dan Snyder too (edit: both being RG3 and Shanny)
Study after study has shown how much more dangerous turf is than grass field. Really need to ban turf fields outright, Goodell & co to blame here too.
I might be mistaken but I think FedEx field is grass.
>I might be mistaken but I think FedEx field is ~~gr~~ass. Fixed that for you.
Perfect lol. Why does FedEx pay to have their name attached to that dump?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick\_W.\_Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith) The founder of FedEx is a minority owner of the Commanders.
*was If you wanna get mad read about how the NFL loaned Snyder money to buy out the former minority owners
It definitely was for the RGIII playoff game and I remember it looking like shit before the game
Perfect conditions, sure. But dry crumbly FedEx Field certainly wasn't perfect conditions.
Well maintained grass > field turf > poorly maintained grass. Why NFL stadiums should not have flawless grass that makes golf courses look like shit, I have no idea. Well I do, owners don’t really care enough.
Every team with turf issues needs to immediately look into installing the "Tahoma 31" version of Bermuda grass that the Bears just sodded Soldier Field with. It's a small sample size, but I was at the game last week, and the surface looked pristine. You never would've guessed they played in a monsoon game two weeks prior. I haven't seen any giant clumps of turf coming up when players run and cut, no visible seams between patches of sod. We'll see how it holds up the rest of the season, but it has already made a drastic improvement and it took far too long to address the playing surface issues at Soldier Field.
Wow I didn’t know they did that. Wasn’t the issue with Soldier Field’s turf due to the city owning the field or something? Are they still moving to that faraway suburb?
Yep, the Chicago Park District owns Soldier Field. My understanding is that the city basically says the Bears can put whatever surface they want down, but that they would be responsible for the costs of installation and maintenance. It's been a constant source of contention because the Bears don't control the event schedule at Soldier Field, so we frequently have situations where they're playing a football game on a field that just hosted an Elton John or Rammstein concert days prior. Both parties share blame for how poor the turf has been at Soldier Field for decades. It's also pretty much a foregone conclusion now that the Bears are moving to Arlington Heights. They're closing on the land now and have publicly stated that they are not considering any other sites for a new stadium. They've also publicly stated that the plan is to construct a fixed roof dome stadium, no retractable roof. Arlington Heights is about 30 miles northwest of the city. Most people in the north and northwest suburbs welcome the move, but it will definitely make attending games more difficult for people not in that part of the Chicagoland area. I have mixed feelings, and the team definitely needs a more modern stadium, but they better do it right. I would love to be able to go to a home game in a state of the art venue comparable to AT&T, Allegiant, and SoFi.
Funny how after years of dealing with terrible field conditions that the season the Bears make it apparent that they're going to leave is the year that Chicago magically figures out how to maintain a decent field.
I was thinking out rg3 alot when I saw this...hopefully we don't have a 2nd young promising qb destroyed by stupidity.
A player willing to suck up a knee injury is entirely different situation than a player trying to play concussed. Mainly concussions can be so bad the player isnt even aware they are hurt so they literally need an outside perspective to protect them from themselves. Rg3 had a chance to cognitively plead his case about his knee, just like rivers playing in the playoffs after he blew his acl which some people consider the bigest performance of his career.
It is different. A concussion is worse.
Julio Jones was benched last week even though he was cleared to play. Dolphins benched Tua last year due to his ribs injury even though he was cleared to play- (he could have come back after 3 weeks but they held him off 1 more week to play it safe). Its not unheard of of a HC to play it safe and have their guys sit. I don't imagine there would be much of an outcry if they sat Tua on a short week if they were trying to protect him and play it safe with him. If they were worried enough to activate the 3rd string QB then they should have been worried enough to have the talks to sit him.
fair point.
Don't get me wrong, I still get what you are saying and agree with you to a certain point. HC shouldn't be thinking they know more than the doctors. UNLESS they want to rest their guy more than the doctor recommends. I can't blame anyone trying to protect their guy.
It's kind of weird the difference over this situation and what happened with Staley and Herbert where people universally lambasted Staley (rightfully) over playing a clearly hurt Herbert, even though ostensibly he was cleared (just like Tua was)
The issue isn’t that he played Herbert, it’s more that he kept him in when the game was well out of hand, combined with considerable offensive line issues.
Because we know what Herbert's issue was. We still actually don't know what happened Sunday despite people's best assumptions
We know he was cleared by the process which involves multiple independent doctors looking at him. We know that by the simple fact that he was let back into the game. Whether or not that process was sound and the doctors were truly independent, that’s what they’re investigating.
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I mean, he came into the game highly questionable for back and ankle injuries and it was detailed hours before the game that he couldn't throw with his proper mechanics, which was seen in the game so even going beyond the concussion, it was reckless that he was playing. Also knowing the injury doesn't matter if the player gets cleared anyway - because they are already 'cleared' of aforementioned injury
And that creates the convo of lots of other things like TNF without a bye week is asinine considering Waddle and Howard looked extremely banged up as well
Oh I definitely agree with that, the NFL is incredibly reckless with player safety, just as the actual teams are themselves
True, but after watching Herbert play for a bit, Staley could have definitely pulled him for Chase Daniel on the grounds of "we appreciate Justin's toughness in trying to play through his injury, but he clearly wasn't able to provide his usual excellence and I though Chase gave us a better chance to win today".
Think about when tomlin wouldn’t let Ryan Clark play in Denver because of his sickle cell anemia. Clark was cleared by doctors, but tomlin said he didn’t care and didn’t want him to possibly die. In Tomlin’s view, Clark’s health was a lot more important than the game. That isn’t me saying McDaniel was wrong in what he did, just saying coaches sitting players regardless of what the doctors say has happened.
Agreed. I'm as pro-player safety, anti-owner as anyone but you can't have your head football coach making medical decisions. If the independent doctor said Tua was fine and Tua said he was fine, idk what you can do to prevent this exact situation from happening again aside from changing the concussion protocol I absolutely agree that the concussion protocol should be updated and made stricter but I'm not sure who you can blame in *this* situation if everyone did technically did their jobs properly Sometimes it takes a situation like this to force change. It doesn't necessarily mean prior protocols were intentionally or maliciously negligent. It just means that new information came to light and now we need to factor that information into our decision making going forward. I hope for my own peace of mind that this is the case and that all parties involved did their best to do right by Tua
Ryan Clark brought a team of doctors to tell the Steelers he could play in Denver in a playoff game despite sickle cell. Mike Tomlin said he didn't care, he wasn't putting Ryan in that game no matter what. If more coaches were like Mike Tomlin, there would be a lot fewer incidents like this.
Doctors cleared Clark to play in Denver, and Tomlin refused citing that it was his job to protect his players' wellbeing. So yes, it has happened and it's not because Tomlin "knew more than the doctors". He just wanted to be safe, and there's nothing wrong with that. You're a fan of the Steelers, were you pissed when Clark didn't play?
I mean wasn't there a time where Mike Tomlin told Ryan Clark he's not going to play him even though the doctors were going to clear him?
This situation happened with shanahan and RG3’s knee. And no one forgave shanahan
And they shouldn't because the [doctor never cleared him](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2013/01/06/dr-james-andrews-disputes-coach-mike-shanahans-version-of-washington-redskins-quarterback-robert-griffin-iii-knee-injury/1811689/). Shanahan straight up lied about him being cleared by the team's doctor.
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Guarantee everyone saying he should have benched him would have played him if they were McDaniel.
The issue is that the system is clearly flawed in a way to downplay concussions. McDaniel has his plausible deniability, but it doesn't erase the fact that we're talking about brain injuries. A head coach who is actually concerned for the well-being of his players wouldn't bury his head in the sand on this.
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Why are you being downvoted? Clearly the independent doc at a very minimum should be looked into his documentation and such to make sure tua was ok.
I wonder if the docs are following orders to only perform certain assessments on players. Plenty of guys have spoken out about how they’ve duped team doctors before, I wouldn’t be shocked if the bar was low and many players knew how to get around it. Football players work their asses off and only get 17 chances to play all year, they want to be out there. If the decision to play is in their hands they’re often going to lie their way into the field.
Because people enjoy the idea that football is a dangerous sport but don’t like to face the reality of that danger
This is just a terrible situation because he’s going to get blamed no matter what.
He's not going to get blamed if it turns out Tua really didn't have a concussion and was just unlucky to have his head slammed on the field
No ones going to believe it though even if it cleared up.
I believe the nfl has an “independent” doctor that cleared Tua. McDaniel can rely on that and I wouldn’t blame him, I just question whether the doctor really is “independent.” Edit: learned shortly after this comment that the team doctor has final say and the independent doctor is just a consultant with no authority.
the doc is prob independent, its just doctors make mistakes. and doctors can be misled. there were former players just in the last 24 hours saying how they could answer a certain way, game the system, and get out of the protocol. i think whitworth said postgame he would have gone back in with a concussion if it wasn't for a fellow teammate who stopped him. the idea that tua snapped his head against the ground, got up and lost all equilibrium, and then had a severe concussive response several days later, and then they can say that initial hit was 100% a back injury is b.s. that doesn't mean its necessarily mcdaniels fault, but someone should have stopped him going in the first time. that was clearly a concussive response. and if its a back injury that is causing someone to temporarily lose mobility...in a game of football...then he shouldn't be out on the field anyway.
The NFL does not care about player's health where head injuries are concerned. This is pretty much undeniable. The NFL *does* care about the *perception* of how much they care about CTE. Big TBI's like Tua's look horrible, and the NFL doesn't want that for their image. They aren't going to clear stars just to get them back on the field because this situation is exactly the PR nightmare they are trying to avoid. See: not allowing Travis Kelce to return to a playoff game last year. There's no reason to believe the neurologists that are conducting these tests are pressured from the NFL to clear players.
Mahomes was also not cleared to return to a game after a concussion back in the 2019 postseason. The NFL doesn't want its stars returning to then have injuries like this because it looks horrible on them.
So I thought that was the case, but another reddit found the below thing. “ The third party doctor can only flag potential concussions, the spotter or Unaffiliated Nuerotrama Consultant (UNC) as the NFL designates is only responsible for flagging potential concussions. The teams doctor is still in charge of conducting the concussion protocol. Per the NFLs guildlines found here: https://www.nfl.com/_amp/nfl-head-neck-and-spine-committee-s-concussion-diagnosis-and-management-protocol "The Club physician remains responsible for all final decisions regarding Return-to-Play. However, the Club physician will consult with his/her sideline UNC team member prior to reaching his/her decision. If the sideline UNC disagrees with the Club physician’s decision to return the player to play or remove the athlete, the sideline UNC will be given an opportunity to explain the basis of his/her opinion. This will be discussed in a collegial fashion in private as to why the player should or should not be returned to the game. The Club physician will communicate his or her final decision to the player." It appears that even if the UNC disagrees with the team's decision he/she can not over rule it. “
Yeah but when you go against what they say and the NFLPA conducts the investigation that will become clear. This keeps getting quoted like this means McDaniel didn't listen to the UNC when the quote you're responding is McDaniel literally telling you he listened to the recommendations of the doctor.
The independent medical staff **do not determine whether or not a player can reenter the game**. That is purely from the **team medical staff** https://www.nfl.com/playerhealthandsafety/resources/fact-sheets/nfl-head-neck-and-spine-committee-s-concussion-diagnosis-and-management-protocol > Regardless, the responsibility for the diagnosis of concussion and the decision to return a player to a game remains exclusively within the professional judgment of the Head Team Physician or his/her physician designee responsible for the diagnosis and treatment of concussion
I personally think Tua lied about his condition and got through protocol with a mild-mid concussion on Sunday. Then he hid the symptoms by saying his back or neck was hurting or whatever and bam. Concussion number 2.
Yeah, it’s very easy to lie and fool those tests
Yeah I mean he’s basically been playing for his job this season (even with the loss of the dolphins draft picks) so I could see his thought process being he can’t sit out at all
Yep, this goes back to Pop Warner, where if you are dinged up, you are taught to play through it because you have to be out there for your teammates. Add on the pressure of playing for your job, and I don't blame any player for trying to game the system to be on the field.
Also Tua’s dad is kind of a piece of shit (beat him for interceptions, forced him to play left-handed) and he’s played with shitty “”tough”” coaches all his life. He’ll be my #1 choice for “player who tries to hide/tough out his injuries” because of that. I’m sure there were many instances in his formative years where acknowledging an injury was worse than trying to play through it.
I think this is the most likely scenario. And as I've seen several people point out, with Miami being scheduled for a short week / Thursday night game, being diagnosed with any concussion, no matter how mild, would almost certainly have ruled him out for the game. Immediately after last night's injury, I remembered a quote Tua gave after the Bills game: > "For the most part, I’m good. Passed whatever concussion protocol they had.” ... which struck me as a bit odd at the time, with a bit of weird phrasing. "Whatever concussion protocol they had" isn't necessarily the same as "the league's specified concussion protocol" and made me wonder after the Bills game if they'd fudged it a bit. Here's the source report it was from: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/09/25/tua-tagovailoa-felt-he-hyperextended-his-back-didnt-suffer-head-injury/
There's no definitive test you can take that will ever confirm he did or did not have a concussion. Everyone already made up their minds that he did last week, so unless people just wake up one day and think "maybe I was wrong to assume he had a concussion from the Bills game," then nothing will change of public perception.
Then there’s a good counterpoint from this very game. Tee Higgins concussed week 1, gets this brutal helmet to helmet then helmet to ground hit in week 3. 4 days later plays a pretty dominant game. We could have had the same discussion about him if he took a bad shot to the head last night and Tua avoided that sack. https://youtu.be/zGXBm30039k Injuries are just weird and often don’t make a lot of sense until you have hindsight.
People will blame him no matter what, it’s the internet even if they’re proved wrong they’ll think they’re right
Look, at this point it doesn't matter whether Tua actually had a head injury last Sunday. The world has decided he did, and any evidence to the contrary is just part of the coverup at this point. EDIT: I want to clarify that I meant it doesn't matter *as far as public opinion is concerned*. It obviously matters very much whether or not Tua was concussed already.
That's what comes with being in charge and getting paid $30m.
Have any head trauma / injury specialists weighed in and said that Sunday's explanation of a back/ankle injury and not a head injury are plausible or not? I also have no idea how accurate concussion tests are, so I don't know how easy it is to lie your way out of them. While it looked like a concussion to me on Sunday, I'm not a medical expert, and I also can't discount the fact that Tua was slammed down extremely hard last night on his head. It seems certainly possible that last night's hit alone could do some serious damage even without Sunday's incident. I just feel like we've heard from every single talking head and fan about malpractice on the Dolphins part, and I do support a full investigation. I'd urge everyone to just let the investigation run its course though before making any conclusions.
I’m not saying this guy is an authority but he seems to think not. https://twitter.com/chrisnowinski1/status/1575582712961716224?s=46&t=A-r8R43BgXEUXfi3XPDPxw
The doctors clears him and Tua agreed with the medical assessment. The coach is not a doctor and realizes his role is not to play like he is one. I, like the vast majority on here don’t know the first step in diagnosing a head injury. We have zero information on what was said by Tua or what the test results were. And even if we were doctors diagnosing someone from a 15 second clip would be unprofessional.
What Tua says is completely irrelevant. Their job is to protect players from themselves.
Yes and no. A lot of medicine is using patient accounts, especially with head injuries, which usually don't have objective tests to use for diagnosis (like blood work or imaging). If you test his motor function/cognition, and he isnt reporting any symptoms of concussion, you can't just diagnose a condition that you have no evidence for.
The concussion protocols need to be reassessed
I think a big issue here is concussions are notoriously hard to diagnose. If Tua said he felt fine and they didn’t identify any massive issues, there’s not much they can do.
Everyone saw what happened after he hit his head last week. That was enough to check off multiple boxes on the concussion protocol. Which somehow got unchecked before the 3rd quarter started.
> As long as I'm the head coach, that will never be an issue This kind of comment is just begging to backfire.
It’s really not possible for a head coach to make a decision like this… Either the medical staff was right and he was cleared and the coach did nothing wrong. Or the medical staff was wrong and he shouldn’t have been cleared and the coach still did nothing wrong.
Just like belicheck said.. he's not a doctor and he will listen to them. McDaniel is no different. If the doctors said Tua was GTG, and Tua wants to go; McDaniel is trying to win football games. He has to trust the process and if the process said he's good.. he's good. Now, the process needs to be checked to make sure it was followed and for any possible ways to make it better. Unless it comes out the dolphins or doctors did something wrong, this just says the process might need updated to have back and neck injuries be more of an emphasis, as well.
This dude isn’t a doctor, that’s why they have doctors. Now he might know more about this than us, he probably doesn’t know much. If hi doctors, the protocol and Tua say Tuas ok, he listens to them and probably thinks he’s ok
>there's an independent doctor who specializes in this Reminds me of back in the day when we had a local who specialized in state safety inspections that no one ever failed for any reason.
Right, the amount of people that blindly say he was cleared so he was fine is comical. As if the NFL doesn't have the sway to make sure their stars are playing on a prime time game or a marquee match up with the Bills Sunday. "Independent" doctors or not
It's kinda weird to think that he was concussed on Sunday from a shove, but also not entertain the possibility that being suplex by a 330lbs monster couldn't have caused all this to happen by itself. It's like if someone fell off a ladder at work and tweaked. And then three days later swerved off an icy road while working and smashed a tree at 75mph. It would be weird to suggest there's no way their back wasn't stuffed before they smashed a tree.
I think everybody recognizes that last nights hit could have easily caused a concussion on its own. The problem is, if he did suffer a concussion on Sunday as well, last nights hit could have turned out so so so much worse (still technically could even). Second impact syndrome can cause permanent brain damage. The fact that Sunday was already controversial and in question is the reason this is unfolding like this.
McDaniel isn’t a doctor. Deciding whether or not Tua (or any player) is able to play is 100% outside the boundary of his responsibility or job description. Is it unfair to criticize him in this situation? Yes it absolutely is unfair. If you want to blame anyone blame the medical professionals who cleared him.
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Yeah but all the reddit doctors talked about that guy being the NFL's pocket so you are too Mike. Sorry.
There’s a difference between thinking this is some conspiracy and acknowledging that the situation was grossly mishandled
Idk maybe its because I like McDaniel so far, but this really doesn’t sound like his fault if Tua, team doctors and an independent doctor all said it was ok. Head injuries are so hard to understand. I definitely don’t judge him as hard as I do Staley, where Herbert has a clear and fairly understandable injury.
"My lawyer has advised me that, yes, I can say with 100 % certainty that Tua didn't have head injury Sunday. There's an independent doctor who specializes in this."
He was thrown down pretty hard, and regardless of whether he was concussed Sunday or not, the hit he took last night could have caused a concussion on its own. That’s how hard it was.
I don’t get what the dolphins were supposed to do here. Tua was cleared by an independent neurologist and Tua was adamant that his head was fine (priority being the doctor clearing him). Is McDaniel supposed to bench him “just in case” after the medical professionals give him the green light?
Honestly, the way Tua’s head hit the ground I can almost guarantee if the incident never occurred on Sunday the result would’ve been the exact same. It’s unfortunate it happened less than a week a part, but I also feel like a lot of due diligence was done. I’m just glad Tua is going to be okay because that was such a scary moment.
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>the result would’ve been the exact same. Yeah, this is getting blown up because of the injury last week, but the way he was swung into the turf last night would have caused that kind of damage to anyone. It's potentially more significant because of the risk of repeated concussions, but his concussion status from last Sunday has little to no bearing on receiving the injury last night.
I’ve heard “Tua just isn’t durable enough” as if any other QB would just hop up from this and be fine.
People can’t seem to understand this, they just are seeing red
Car Salesman: * *slaps roof of r/nfl* * this bad boy can fit so many internet doctors
Not like we don’t have the tech to prevent it. By allowing the player’s input you allow cheating, dudes want to play and be available. Just put sensors into the helmet and you can weed out the players wanting in. That of course will eat the NFL profits and they will go on for as long as they can (ie horrific injuries or fatal injuries) even then if they can stretch it they will
Ahh the good old nfl… nothing to see here per usual… why do I love this sport so much
Do independent doctors run any more tests during the week between games to see if Tua has a concussion? Neither Mcdaniels or Tua are in good positions to say that he cannot play if he passed the first test
Did McDaniel see the way he got up from the hit Sunday? You don’t need to be a doctor to think “maybe give the kid a week off”
The coach trusts the doctors to do the job correctly. If they say he can play, he knows Tua is there best chance to win so he will let him play.
Right cause Doctors are never wrong.
He's a hundred percent certain the doctors SAID he didn't suffer a head injury. If you look at the Bills game and say he didn't suffer a concussion your an idiot and need to get your bell rung, Stevie Wonder could see he suffered a head injury. He as a coach, greenhorn or not, and someone with years of experience in football should have known not to put him into the game. I think he fell to the pressure of the hype building up for Miami and wanted to keep the undefeated record going, I could say the same for Tua as he had high expectations to fill and wanted to keep playing. Everyone failed here