Tuesday morning, there was no topic on Miami sports radio as important as the latest concussion suffered by Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. It was a major part of ESPN’s pregame show for Monday Night Football. The following morning on WQAM, Joe Rose said that the NFL certainly took notice.
Rose played a clip from Monday Night Countdown featuring Booger McFarland calling out the absurdity of the idea that Tagovailoa could be available for either of the team’s final regular season games.
“If we’re serious about protecting our players, Tua Tagovailoa shouldn’t play anymore this season, period,” McFarland said.
The NFL has never stopped facing scrutiny for the way it handles players’ head trauma and Rose says there is definitely a sensitivity to that.
“This is another reason I don’t think he (Tagovailoa) will be playing, as crazy as it sounds.”
Two prominent ESPN analysts had their NFL careers cut short by concussions. Monday Night Countdown’s Steve Young retired in 1999 not even knowing the exact number of concussions he suffered in his playing career. Monday Night Football game analyst Troy Aikman made the same decision in 2000 after taking a hard hit from LaVar Arrington that resulted in his tenth concussion, although Aikman maintains that back pain played a larger role in his decision.
Joe Rose says the league is well aware of their histories and what kind of perspective they could offer.
“It’s gonna be the former guys and guys that have had them coming out and saying ‘what is the league doing’ again.”
In addition to league officials, Joe Rose thinks league doctors don’t want the scrutiny that would come with Tagovailoa playing again in the 2022 season. He notes that they feel the sting of media scrutiny every time a player suffers a concussion. The heat they took after what appeared to be Tagovailoa’s first concussion of the season may be too much for them to be anything short of overly cautious.
“‘I’m not putting up with this. He’s done. He’s done for the year,’” Rose theorized a league or team doctor saying. “Cuz these doctors take a beating on this, man. They take a beating when this stuff happens.”
