I Diagnosed Brain Injuries on the NFL Sideline. The New Concussion Rules Have a Glaring Hole.
As Americans dived deeper into another football season and the media frenzy around the Tua Tagovailoa injury fiasco began to fade into the background, the NFL and its players union on Sunday implemented changes to their much-scrutinized concussion protocol. Specifically, as the New York Times reported, players who show signs of ataxia—balance and coordination issues that may be caused by brain or nerve damage—cannot return to games, no matter what team doctors or coaches believe about the source of the problem.
What this effectively means is that no player who has lost control of their limbs can continue playing, as Tagovailoa was permitted to after collapsing in a recent Bills game, with the disturbing episode attributed at the time to a back injury.
But if this is a welcome modification and clearly in the interest of player safety, it also falls firmly into the category of “well, duh!”