NFLPA firing medical consultant for concussion ruling means Dolphins, Tua may be victims here | Opinion
Imagine how we would all be seeing the positive and defiantly doubling down on our optimism about the Miami Dolphins and this season had the game been simply a 27-15 road loss to a Cincinnati Bengals team that made the Super Bowl last season.
The Dolphins stand 3-1 at roughly the NFL season’s quarter mark, against the toughest four-game gauntlet on the NFL schedule. In succession they beat Bill Belichick and Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen before falling to Joe Burrow. Offered that, any sane fan would have jumped at it.
But everything changed Thursday night, as quarterback Tua Tagovailoa lay motionless on the football field, and in the ugly aftermath as speculation and innuendo went malignant and metastasized across Twitter and social media.
A foreboding shadow has been cast across the Dolphins for the way they handled, or failed to handle, allowing Tua to play at all in the game. Everybody is speaking with the luxury of hindsight. Self-appointed amateur neurologists were declaring diagnoses from their living rooms.
Representative actual tweet: “My dad, a neurosurgeon, said that Tua most likely had a cervical spine injury. Season over, career potentially.”
That, from Dr. Dad watching on TV.
Saturday, though, there came a development in the story that only cast further doubt on whether the Dolphins did right or wrong in letting Tua go back in the game on Sunday, and play at all Thursday night.
After the NFL Players Association had asked for a review, the NFLPA on Saturday fired the independent neurotrauma consultant who cleared Tagovailoa to return and play the second half on Sunday. The NFLPA determined the specialist made mistakes in his judgment.
It should be emphasized the NFL found the Dolphins guilty of nothing except following the expert independent decision they were given, which aligned with the opinion of their own team, doctors
The Dolphins say Tagovailoa subsequently passed daily concussion evaluations leading up to Thursday’s game, according to NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills, who said a league review is ongoing.
The national diagnosis and verdict seems to have been that the Dolphins are guilty of letting Tagovailoa play when he should not have. Because he had briefly left Sunday’s game with an apparent concussion that turned out to be (said Tua, the team -- and doctors) a back injury. He was examined but not found to be concussed, and was questionable for Thursday’s game because of his back and also a mild ankle sprain.
Yet many in the the medical profession — none of whom has met or examined Tagovailoa or seen any of his medical charts — seemed comfortable second-guessing and virtually indicting the Dolphins for wrongdoing.
One of them, Dr. Chris Nowinski, who has a PhD in behavioral neuroscience, was invited onto the “Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz” on Friday morning. He said:
“This is such a medical disaster that if I’m Tua and I recover from this, which is not guaranteed, I might say I don’t want to play for this team anymore because of what they did. He should have been rested so his brain could recover. No doctor should have believed him when he said his back hurt.”
That’s a flagrant opinion not based on any examination or inside knowledge. It’s reckless.
Nowinski, who is not a medical doctor, also tweeted that Dolphins coaches and doctors should ”go to jail” if they knowingly covered up a Sunday concussion and face a murder charge if Tagovailoa died from the injuries. Just, wow.
The same doctor, whom I might diagnose from afar as suffering from acute hyperbole, said, “If he’s [back] on the field within a month, we need to give up on the NFL completely.”
I do not blame Le Batard (or any media outlet) for giving an aggressively available, attention-seeking doctor a platform, but a modicum of skepticism might be fair. As in, “Doctor, how can you refer to a ‘medical disaster’ when you have not examined Tagovailoa and cannot actually know what may or may not ail him?”
The questions now:
Does the NFL need an overhaul and toughening of its concussion protocol?
And do the Dolphins have any blame coming for following the ruling of an independent neurotrauma expert who’s just been fired by the league?
Tagovailoa lay on the field about 10 minutes Thursday night before being carefully strapped onto a stretcher and taken to a local hospital. It was frightening, enough to make an agnostic pray. Please, not paralysis.
It seemed unlikely, then, but Tagovailoa would be examined and discharged in time to fly home with the team. He is said to have a concussion, with no timetable for his return.
McDaniel, rushing to Tagovailoa on the field: “I could tell it wasn’t the same guy that I was used to seeing. It was a scary moment. He was evaluated for a concussion. He’s in the concussion protocol, but he’s being discharged. It’s an emotional moment. It’s not a part of the deal you sign up for. His teammates and myself were very concerned, but he got checked out and it’s nothing more serious than a concussion.”
Nothing more serious than a concussion, though, is itself a troubling phrase.
A concussion itself is serious. And if he had just suffered his second in five days, that compounds the seriousness. Concussions are the foundation of what can become Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive brain condition thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head and repeated episodes of concussion.
It’s the football disease. Some of the 1972 Perfect Season Dolphins whose feat is being celebrated by Miami on its 50th anniversary this season were diagnosed with it after their deaths.
Concussions are serious. If the Dolphins are found to have covered up a concussion their QB suffered on Sunday, that would be terrible, and punishable. Repeat that. It matters. But unless and until that is found to have happened, McDaniel and the team should not be accused of callousness because on a hard sack Tagovailao happened to have suffered a concussion Thursday night.
McDaniel, asked directly, said he was 100 percent certain Tagovailoa was not concussed after Sunday’s game, and that he had been cleared by medical staff as well as that independent neurologist.
“People don’t stray. We don’t mess with that. As long as I’m the head coach, that will never be an issue,” McDaniel said.
In hindsight would he have done anything different after Sunday’s Buffalo game and in the buildup to Thursday night?
“Absolutely zero patience for [putting] a player in position for them to be in harm’s way,” he said. “That’s not what I’m about at all. No outcome of a game would influence me to be irresponsible as a head coach of a football team.”
It is hard to imagine Tagovailoa will be cleared from concussion protocol to play as soon as a week from Sunday at the New York Jets. But there is every expectation he will be back playing at some point.
Unless the Dolphins themselves are found guilty of a cover-up this past Sunday, which the NFL firing its consultant on Saturday did not suggest, this firestorm will ebb.
In its wake, though, the NFL must rethink its protocol system to make what constitutes a concussion more uniform and erring — always — on the side of player safety.
If the NFLPA is justified in firing its independent neurological consultant because of his mistakes, that doesn’t make the Dolphins wrong.
It makes them, and Tua Tagovailoa, the victims.
This story was originally published September 30, 2022 at 12:55 PM.
