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After Tua Tagovailoa’s horrific head injury on Thursday Night Football, many are turning their attention to the injury he appears to have suffered Sunday against the Bills.
CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Bengals beat the Miami Dolphins on Thursday Night Football, but after the game, everyone will be talking about the gruesome injury suffered by Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagavailoa.
Tagovailoa’s head was knocked to the ground by a sack in the second quarter and he appeared to go into a fencing reaction, a telltale sign of a head injury, and was taken to a local hospital, fortunately with the use of all his limbs, according to the Miami Dolphins.
There was a lot of discussion on Sunday and Thursday when Tagovailoa was forced to leave the game after his head hit the ground in Sunday’s game against Buffalo. Tagovailoa got to his feet and teammates immediately had to support him as he tripped and fell to the ground. Many thought Tagovailoa had suffered a concussion at the time. But the Dolphins said he cleaned up the score at halftime, came back and the Dolphins won the game.
Now, the conversation after Thursday’s head injury turns back to Sunday, when many thought he suffered a concussion.
On the Locked On Sports Today podcasthost Peter Bukowski discussed the situation with Locked On Dolphins podcast host Kyle Krebs.
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Bukowski asked Krebs how what happened Thursday night affects how he sees how the apparent injury was handled Sunday.
“I know there’s a lot of skepticism about the injury that occurred on Sunday, and the NFLPA has requested an investigation, and frankly, I think it’s very difficult to say anything definitively until more information is gathered from Sunday because it was claimed that he was given the all-clear by an independent doctor who performed a concussion test on Sunday,” Krebs said.
“I know everyone wants to jump right into it, but I think it’s something that doesn’t look good on the surface, but it deserves a proper process of gathering all the information, because it could also be a very unfortunate coincidence. And this NFLPA investigation into the protocols that were put in place after Tua Tagovailoa on Sunday, we will get clarity. It’s a standard process that goes on for a couple of weeks, and unfortunately if there was anything nefarious in the game, it was coupled with a game that was played four days after that initial incident.”
The investigation is expected to take about two weeks, so it may be some time before we have more information on whether the dolphins followed protocol correctly. The other part of this is that Tagavailoa was cleared to play on Thursday, and what happened tells us that he shouldn’t have been released?
Krebs said he doesn’t see how the Dolphins could have handled it any differently if he had actually been cleared by doctors and independent doctors on Sunday and moved forward.
“I don’t know if you could have done it any differently, and again, it’s based on the information that we have,” Krebs said. “If there is a need for more transparency in concussion protocol and handling, maybe that’s something that can be explored. But based on the information we have now and on Sunday, I don’t know what other reasonable conclusion you could come to other than it looked pretty scary, I don’t know if that injury was a back injury and not an injury head from afar”.
“There’s a lot of that sentiment on social media right now, and I understand, because on the surface it doesn’t look good,” Krebs continued. But with the information we have, I didn’t come into this game saying I can’t believe Tua Tagovailoa is playing quarterback tonight against the Bengals because of the information we got on Sunday.”
Friday’s Locked On NFL Podcasthosts christopher carter and your boy Q welcome Dr. Kerina Maharaja, Pt., who said that based on what she saw from Tagovailoa on Sunday, she doesn’t understand how he was allowed to return to Sunday’s game on such short notice.
“If you look at the NFL concussion protocol, it’s 5 parts, 5 steps that are very thorough, and when I work in the NFL and I have to test these players, I’m not going to do it in 10 minutes and send them back on the field ” said Dr. Maharaja. “These five steps won’t take 10 minutes, they’ll take a week. I think they went in and did a verbal assessment, a visual assessment, a balance assessment and said he’s not showing any immediate or acute signs, he looks fine. He probably passed their verbal test at that point.’
“They have health professionals and I’m going to trust those health professionals whatever their opinion is, but if you look at the 5-step protocol, the last step is going from a family doctor to an outpatient doctor, and you don’t do that in 10 minutes in the tunnel, she continued. “So that worries me.”
Check out the full conversation at Locked On NFL Podcast on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
