Hard Knocks

By Scott MacLean

Two things that are true. There are few, if any, professional leagues on the planet as physical and violent as America’s National Football League. There’s also no other league in the gun for how it manages and mitigates head trauma that the NFL is.

That has been sheeted home, brutally, in the past week.

On Sunday (US time) Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was on the receiving end of what looked like a harmless push from Buffalo Bills linebacker Matt Milano. Except Tagovailoa hit the back of his head on the ground, and well….. let this footage show you.

 

The Dolphins removed Tagovailoa from the game, but this is the only part of this that makes sense.

Remarkably Tagovailoa returned to the game after hafltime, with the Dolphins claiming it was a back injury that caused him stumble rather than a concussion. Despite then leading his team to a win over the early-season Super Bowl favourites, the series of events caused an uproar with the Players Association opening an investigation and Congress threatening to.

The allegation was clear; that the Dolphins were lying about Tagovailoa’s injury and put winning over his health.

So, fast-forward to Thursday night’s flagship game against the Bengals in Cincinnati, where despite being listed as “questionable” to play in the injury report, Tagovailoa was again Miami’s starting quarterback. He played OK, leading a couple of drives that ended in field goals and throwing an interception through the first quarter and half, until he was taken down for a sack by Bengals lineman Josh Tupou.

What happened next was disturbing, to say the least.

Stretchered off and taken to a local hospital, Tagovailoa has been cleared of serious injury but will miss several weeks of the season at least. Fingers will be pointed, mainly at the Dolphins medical staff but also at the coaches who seem to have ignored the obvious from the first game.

Multiple concussions – especially in quick succession – can be fatal; one only has to consider the case of Canadian schoolgirl rugby player Rowan Stringer who died after suffering one hit to the head too many. Tagovailoa may have access to a great deal of medical care, but if they prove to be a living version of Harvey Mandrake – the fictitional corrupt team doctor from the 1999 film Any Given Sunday played by James Woods – what good does it serve? Already that most American of words – ‘lawsuit’ – is being bandied about.

The NFL spent years denying there was an issue with concussion, even going to the length of trying to discredit the work of pathologist Bennet Omalu who discovered the disease Chronic traumatic encephalopathy and it’s prevalence amongst deceased NFL players.

But if the sight of a star player visibly suffering a seizure on the field in a primetime game doesn’t make the NFL wake up and consider that some things are more important than the gladiatorial aspect its traded on for years, you shudder at the thought of what it might take.

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