The NFL phrases its concussion coverage a “protocol,” which is a stout phrase meant to counsel order and progress. It’s documented over 19 regimented pages providing how the NFL of 2022 cares for gamers’ well being over groups’ wants.
The protocol, at its core, is a joke.
And core is there on web page six.
That’s the place the concept of the “independent” physician deciding on gamers’ concussions and held up this previous week across the Miami Dolphins as some purveyor of fact, justice and quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s well being is a fantasy motion hero like Iron Man or Captain Marvel.
Oh, the protocol has full pages about this physician with the sturdy title of an “Unaffiliated Netrotrauma Consultant.” But right here’s the nut graph of his function and the whole protocol in motion:
“For the avoidance of doubt, the responsibility for the diagnosis of concussion and the decision to return a player to a game remain exclusively within the professional judgment of the Head Team Physician …”
Bottom line: The unbiased physician is window dressing, in that case desired. The crew physician decides if this unbiased physician is consulted or if a participant enters the concussion protocol. He decides if a participant returns to the sport as Tagovailoa did final Sunday towards Buffalo after his head banged the bottom, he shook his head to clear cobwebs, couldn’t stroll with out assist and went to the locker room with what the crew initially introduced as a head challenge.
“A back issue,” Tagovailoa corrected everybody afterward.
Maybe it was. Maybe the NFL gamers’ union rapid name for an investigation goes nowhere. Maybe Tagovailoa being carried off the sphere Thursday in Cincinnati was not the results of one head-trauma incident contributing to a second one 4 days later. Maybe the criticism of gamers and coaches throughout social media and 4 sports activities medical folks in professional sports activities I talked with are empty phrases.
This simply appears so yesteryear, just like the early Nineteen Seventies when Dolphin security Jake Scott was allowed to maintain enjoying towards Buffalo regardless of teammates insistence he was crazy. After the sport, Scott went to the Buffalo locker room in a daze and O.J. Simpson escorted him again to the Dolphins, saying, “I think this is one of yours.”
Football is filled with “funny” concussion tales that don’t sound so humorous now with many years of analysis and information. Dolphins quarterback Trent Green was knocked out so fully in Houston in 2007 he was loud night breathing on the sphere. Literally loud night breathing.
Escorted to the sideline, Green insisted to coaches and medical workers he was good to go, and to place him again in. Fortunately, frequent sense prevailed.
Tua returned to play on Sunday after which performed Thursday. This isn’t to query Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, who can solely comply with medical counsel and was practically delivered to tears over Tua’s situation. Nor is it to problem crew physician John Uribe who concluded Tua had a again challenge.
Tua was a louder Green on this topic, in response to a league supply. He demanded to return to the sport. He’s enjoying nicely this 12 months, turning two years of questions into a 3rd 12 months of perception and insisted on enjoying in a giant recreation. That’s a troublesome spot for a crew physician.
That’s why the “independent” physician has been held up so loudly this previous week as a defender of all issues good. It’s only a hole thought in follow.
Should Tua have been allowed again final Sunday? Should he have performed Thursday? Should he play subsequent Sunday towards the New York Jets?
That’s left to skilled medical minds and NFL gamers’ union investigators. But the protocol that the NFL touts as making a violent recreation much less violent wants some selective enhancing. Page 6 wants rewriting.
Everyone ought to agree on this a lot: Please, don’t play Tagovailoa once more till he’s wholesome. Please hold him out of soccer till his complications stop, his MRI clears and the pc base-lines involving his mind taken within the quiet of the offseason are regular.
And please, please, stop pretending some “independent” physician oversees gamers’ well being on concussions when the NFL of 2022 operates extra intently to the one among 1972.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com