Tua Tagovailoa & The Coming Storm
The NFL has some explaining to do
By now you’ve seen what happened to Tua Tagovailoa in last night’s Bengals vs Dolphins game. It’s an incredibly disturbing situation for a variety of reasons, all circling around the question of whether or not he should have been on the field at all. Ultimately, this has the potential to be a major moment in the future of the NFL and how player safety is approached.
First and foremost, though, we have to hope that Tua is ok and is able to recover. That focus shouldn’t be lost in the effort to determine fault and point fingers in today’s hot-take culture. In a sport that rakes in gazillions, it’s the human element that takes precedence here.
It was a moment where the score, the game, the standings, even team allegiances, none of it mattered. Bengals fans, mostly clad in white, chanted Tua’s name, sensing the seriousness of the moment. I’ll write about shared sports experiences in sports and the unifying effect they can have a lot in this substack because I think it’s one of the most powerful and positive aspects of athletics, but there are times where shared human experiences supersede even the fiercest sports rivalry. The Cincinatti crowd’s reaction, which saw abandon any concern for the game itself, was both touching and an indication of how dire the situation was.
For those at home, Amazon Prime, the streaming service that partnered with the NFL this year in order to create another hoop to jump through to watch a game, replayed the injury over and over. It was hard to watch. I’ll spare the details of what happened because by now you’ve seen it, and as such, flexing descriptive muscles to paint a grotesque picture feels self-serving and unnecessary.
We have a different reaction to head injuries than we do, say, a broken bone, or heaven-forbid, blood. Had Tua suffered a compound fracture in his arm cameras would have cut away immediately. Replays would have been limited if there were any at all. Yet here we watched it all play out, again and again, cameras zooming in on his arms in what I, and many others, learned is called a fencer’s response.
I was glad my 6-year-old daughter was already in bed and didn’t have to see it. Perhaps there is simply a lack of understanding of what we were seeing, but it felt like exploitation of a medical emergency.
Ryan Fitzpatrick, who played in Miami with Tua two seasons ago and now acts as an analyst for Amazon, struggled to contain his emotions during the halftime show.
We become connected to sports through our rooting interests, our fantasy teams, and our bets. It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of that until a moment like this slaps us in the face with the cold truth that athletes, while often revered as demigods, are very much mortals, and our entertainment can do real harm to them.
That’s not to say that sports are bad, or generally dangerous. Injuries do occur, but for myself and so many others, sports give far more than they take away. That doesn’t change the fact that sometimes things go horribly wrong, even when we put forth the best effort to prevent it. The question is, did that happen here? Was it an unfortunate fluke accident or was not enough done to protect Tua?
We’ve seen frightening medical emergencies on the playing field over the years. Kermit Washington’s sucker punch on Rudy Tomjanovich, Christian Eriksen requiring CPR after going into cardiac arrest, Keyontae Johnson’s mid-court collapse, and many others stick in our collective memory.
But this is different. In this case, it’s not an opposing player or unforeseen health emergency that is to blame, instead, that blame may rest with those who put Tua on the field. Should he have even been out there, and how much worse was the situation made by his previous injury?
We all saw what happened to him just last Sunday. His legs were shaky after taking a tough hit in the Dolphin’s win over the Bills, but he surprisingly was allowed to stay in the game. It drew plenty of concern, particularly when the team announced it as a head injury at halftime, yet there he was, on the field for the second half.
Tua and the Dolphins explained that it was actually his back that caused his legs to wobble and he has passed all of the NFL’s concussion protocols, but many were skeptical of this explanation. We’ve seen this in sports before, where players continue playing despite the risks, whether it be by their own desire or they are pushed to do so by others.
Theatrically, we think of Billy Bob in Varsity Blues or Apollo Creed in Rocky IV. Hell, Kobe Bryant injured his right shoulder in a game so he tried shooting with his left to stay in, and in another game tried reattaching his own torn Achilles.
Sometimes athletes need to be saved from our macho obsession with toughness and the importance placed on winning. From afar, it certainly felt like that was the case with Tua.
How could he be staggering one moment last Sunday, unable to stand, and fit to play only a short time later? Shaking out the cobwebs yet not in concussion protocols? Ready to take hits again? Something was very wrong, either with the protocols, the implementation of them, or both.
The NFLPA was concerned enough to launch an investigation into how he was cleared to return, one that hasn’t concluded yet:
Before the nightmare situation on Thursday night, the NFL was facing a firestorm if the NFLPA investigation determined protocols were not followed. Now, with potentially a second head injury to the same player in the span of four days? This could be a defining moment for the future of the league and how they handle head trauma.
If it’s determined that Tua should never have been allowed back in the Bills game, shouldn’t have played against the Bengals, and now has a serious injury, change is coming. There’s no way around it, and frankly, it’s unbelievable that this is what it takes to get there.
I suffered a similar injury as a teenager. As a goalkeeper in a soccer game, I charged out to cut off an attack, went to slide through the ball, and got contact with the opposing forward that caused my head to snap against the ground. I got up and tried to take a step, but my legs wobbled. Another step and I was back on the ground. I crawled my way to the goal, stood again, and hugged the post to stay vertical.
I gave a thumbs up to my coaches and stayed in the game. The score was close and I didn’t want to be subbed out even though the world was spinning around me. I was at practice two days later and never saw a doctor, but the year was 1997 and I didn’t know the risks. All I knew was I didn’t want to let my team down. Knowing what we know now, I should have been removed from the game immediately.
But it’s not 1997 anymore and ignorance is no longer an acceptable excuse.
Dr. Chris Nowinski, who you may remember from season 2 of WWE’s “Tough Enough” and later as a WWE performer, has become a leader in concussion reform. He tweeted this just hours before the Dolphins and Bengals kicked off:
If Tua takes the field tonight, it's a massive step back for #concussion care in the NFL. If he has a 2nd concussion that destroys his season or career, everyone involved will be sued & should lose their jobs, coaches included. We all saw it, even they must know this isn't right https://t.co/vxpaOif5rhTua. Joe. #MIAvsCIN is on @westwood1sports 📻 Pregame at 7:30p ET. https://t.co/5ADASTVD6QNFL @NFL
Unfortunately, the situation Dr. Nowinski describes is now one that we must face head-on. First and foremost, the concern needs to be on Tua. From there, some serious questions need to be raised about whether his health was put second behind winning the game.
There’s a responsibility to keep players as safe as possible that resides with those who have the power to put them in harm’s way. We have to demand better. Thoughts and prayers after the fact aren’t enough.
Your killing these articles so far Trev!! Keep it up!