• Week 4 of 2022 will forever be remembered for what happened in its first game, and how Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion impacts the NFL going forward. And if you need proof that it’s a very real flashpoint in the league’s sticky concussion history, there are three tangible things I can point to that illustrate it.
First, as far as I can tell, there was only one player who was evaluated in-game for a head injury on Sunday—Chiefs saftey Justin Reid—who wound up reentering a game. There was also some delay in catching Bucs tight end Cameron Brate’s head injury, but once he was pulled from the game, he didn’t go back in. And it sure doesn’t seem like a coincidence that, three days after the Tagovailoa incident, teams across the NFL would err on the side of caution.
Second, very real change is already taking place, with significant shifts coming to the concussion protocol. The most noticeable one will be the removal of qualifiers from the handling of gross motor instability as a symptom—before, only if gross motor instability was linked to a head injury would a team be required to sit a player; now, all gross motor instability will qualify (meaning, for example, Julian Edelman probably would’ve have been pulled from Super Bowl XLIX). These changes will likely be enacted in the coming days.
Third, my understanding is there was a good amount of communication over the weekend between the league and its designated unaffiliated neurotrauma consultants, who are charged with running the protocol at game sites. Which means where the one who worked the Bills/Dolphins game was let go, the NFL is trying to be more involved with the rest.
So if there’s a silver lining here, it’s that this has forced the NFL to tighten the screws, again, on its concussion policy. Which won’t be a bad thing, as I see it, for anyone.
