How Pro Football Has Handled This Traumatic Brain Injury Reminds Us of Work To Be Done.
With what we know about head trauma, a cautious and common sense approach seems best in youth sport.
At one point my Sundays included my football fix. Saturdays at this time of year was college football and the summer months were staple for Canadian football. In recent years, I don’t watch much football.
I am conflicted. I still love the athleticism, the team aspect, the parts working together for the common goal. Love all that. I can not get past the thought of watching grown men smash each others brains in. While that may sound dramatic, how a recent brain injury was handled in the NFL is cause for concern.
In the last week, we have seen the big money sports machine fumble and bumble a simple diagnosis with shoddy return to play protocol. The neurotrauma consultants, medical professionals and protocols have missed a common sense approach to head trauma that youth sports seem to be adopting quite well.
While the view is admittedly subjective, youth sport does not have the “trauma consultants” or the medical staff to follow teams, yet more and more awareness is opening the door to common sense.
If you get hit in the head, and don’t seem right , you come out of the game.
Last week, at a college baseball game, a runner leading off 2nd base got hit in the helmet by a ball on a pick off attempt while diving back to the base. He laid there for a while the coach got out right away with the athletic trainer. You could see they were asking questions and looking at his eyes. After a few minutes, he was taken out of the game and replacement brought in. Later in the day, the same player was cheering the team on, showing no ill effects of the hit to the head. He was in the lineup a week later showing his usual zest for play.
Halleluiah!
Not a very difficult decision was it ? Everyone saw the ball hit the helmet (and heard it!). A couple of questions created uncertainty in his well being. The coach took the player out.
How did the NFL handle a similar situation last week? Not so good .
A recent article in The Athletic. By Mike Jones (Sept 30).
Maybe they did everything right.
Maybe the medical professionals tasked with ensuring the immediate and long-term health of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on Sunday and leading up to Thursday night’s game followed concussion protocol to perfection.
It’s still impossible to shake the notion that the 24-year-old quarterback had no business playing as he did on Thursday.
And because that incident came four days after we saw Tagovailoa’s head slam on the ground, saw him stumble to his feet, shaking his head and trying to get his bearings, saw him staggering around before teammates alerted their sideline to the need for medical attention, it’s impossible to avoid wondering about a connection between the two incidents and if the second, and more serious, could have been avoided.
Thankfully, before the ambulance had even arrived at the Cincinnati area hospital, it was learned that Tagovailoa had movement in all of his extremities. And by night’s end, he was discharged from the hospital and flying back to Miami with his teammates.
But the NFL can’t have a repeat occurrence. Ever.
Maybe the protocols in place are doing their jobs. Maybe they’re not. It’s hard to say after what we saw Thursday night.
The findings of an investigation requested on Sunday by the NFLPA and jointly carried out on behalf of the players union and NFL hopefully will reveal the effectiveness of the current concussion detection and monitoring system.
However, even if the Dolphins’ medical staff and the independent neurological consultants handling Tagovailoa’s case Sunday followed the letter of the law down to every jot and tittle, something has to change.
There’s a need for greater caution and greater understanding, because regardless of the findings of the investigation, Tagovailoa deserved better.
He deserved better from a league that prides itself on player safety yet proves rather contradictory in actions like the expansion to 17 games, and coaching practices and weighty expectations that demand near-instantaneous success to secure job security — all of which fuel the rush to return to action.
He deserved better from the NFLPA, a watchdog for player safety that has good intentions yet still lacks exhaustive advocacy measures to help protect players, or the ability to step in and push for him to be held out of Thursday’s game with the investigation incomplete.
Tagovailoa also deserved better from a football culture (to which we are all either intimately, moderately or distantly connected) that makes it hard — or in some cases virtually impossible — for a man to admit weakness and sit a game out to ensure his long-term health even though things may seem mostly OK.
The NFL and NFLPA can agree to new and improved — and supposedly more vigilant — concussion protocols. The league can declare that player safety carries the utmost importance. NFL officials can praise the advancements made in recent years in the area of brain injury prevention. They can even cite numbers that reflect the way the Guardian protective helmet covers used in preseason practices helped reduce the number of concussions sustained.
But then comes an ugly and truly devastating incident involving Tagovailoa and we’re reminded that football remains a game engulfed in a barbaric culture that largely ignores the human element and long-term health and safety factors.
“Protect him from himself.”
It’s a term we hear often in relation to the responsibility an organization and coaching and medical staff owe to players who, feeling the pressure to perform and compete, will try to rush back to action prematurely. In some cases, we see examples of a team doing right by a player. But situations like Tagovailoa’s arise, and it’s hard not to wonder if the powers that be truly are doing everything possible to protect players.
According to the NFL, after sustaining his injury Sunday, Tagovailoa underwent an extensive evaluation process.
Our kids deserve the care provided by the college coach last week. At all levels, as coaches we need a basic awareness of evaluating anything involving a hit to the head or whiplash motion. The good news is the word seems to be getting through at the youth level more than at the pro level.
Some perspective from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons
There are an estimated 1.7 to 3.8 million traumatic brain injuries each year in the United States, according to the CDC, of which 10 percent arise due to sports and recreational activities. Amongst American children and adolescents, sports and recreational activities contribute to over 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries. Sustaining an injury while playing sports can range from a mild physical trauma such as a scalp contusion or laceration to severe TBI with concurrent bleeding in the brain or coma. It is important to recognize when a head trauma is severe or has resulted in a TBI because it is crucial to seek immediate medical attention. While most brain injuries are self-limiting with symptoms resolving in a week, a growing amount of research has now established that the sequelae from recurrent minor impacts is significant in the long term.
A blow to the head, also known as a concussion, is a traumatic brain injury. Maybe using TBI as the term of reference will continue to represent how serious it should be taken.
A key point above is highlighted:
“Most brain injuries with symptoms resolve within a week”. We can avoid the mistakes that the highly paid team doctor made in the above case and govern our decisions accordingly, like our college coach.
Let’s continue to increase awareness.
