Individuals around the NFL find themselves having to answer questions about the handling of Tua Tagovailoa’s health this week after the Dolphins quarterback suffered head and neck injuries in last Thursday’s game against the Bengals.
The latest to weigh in on the matter is Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
In an appearance on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show, the six-time Super Bowl champion was asked if he felt like the league’s concussion protocols should be changed following the recent incidents involving Tagovailoa, who also visibly staggered after a hard hit in Miami’s previous game against the Bills. Belichick confessed that the subject was not his specialty and instead deferred to medical professionals to offer their advice on the matter.
“That’s not really my field of expertise,” he said, per NESN. “Those are medical decisions. There are league people at the game that are involved in that, so I think that’s something you should really talk to them about. I don’t personally have anything to do with that, and I’m not qualified to talk about different injuries and different classifications and what should or shouldn’t happen. That would be for the professional medical people.”
In part, the controversy that has surrounded Tagovailoa is the fact that just five days before he was stretchered off the field in Cincinnati, he hit his head on the ground after a late hit tackle against Buffalo. He stumbled after getting up, which the Dolphins later attributed to a back injury after the 24-year-old quarterback cleared concussion protocol.
Though he neglected to offer his thoughts on an overarching change to the league’s concussion protocols, Belichick did explain that he has removed players from games who showed some visible sign of impairment, even if those players were cleared by the team’s medical staff.
“I’ve definitely done that before,” Belichick said. “Oh, yeah. If I see a player that I think is not functioning properly, and for some reason it hasn’t been identified, then absolutely, I have done that. I would say not recently. Those are things that have happened at other points in my career. But yeah, absolutely.
“If a player doesn’t look like he’s functioning properly, we evaluate him with the medical people. But we also, as a secondary check, even if the medical people were to clear a player, we still go through a coaching clearance to make sure that he’s ready to play football, not just medically cleared. We always have a secondary evaluation on that.”
For Belichick, the conversation surrounding head injuries was particularly pertinent after veteran quarterback Brian Hoyer left Sunday’s game against the Packers and did not return. Third-string rookie Bailey Zappe replace him and nearly led New England to a stunning upset at Lambeau Field.
Following the events of the past week involving Tagovailoa, the NFL and NFLPA have agreed to modify the rules surrounding the league’s concussion protocol. The NFLPA also fired the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant who was involved in Tagovailoa’s evaluation last Sunday during the game against Buffalo after it was found the doctor made “several mistakes,” a source told ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques.
An NFLPA-launched investigation into the situation regarding Tagovailoa remains ongoing.
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