Miami Dolphins Head Coach Mike McDaniel announced that quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will not play in the team’s Week 6 matchup against the Minnesota Vikings. Tagovailoa has not appeared in uniform for the Dolphins since suffering a severe head injury in Week 4 against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Last week, McDaniel expressed optimism about his quarterback’s condition, claiming that he was working his way through concussion protocol and could appear as early as Week 6. At a press conference Wednesday, however, the head coach said that Tagovailoa was returning to light activity but that an early return to the field was not possible.

“Now, when talking about this week and playing, I don’t see a scenario – I don’t see him being active. I do not plan to have him play at all,” McDaniel said.

The Dolphins organization is handling Tagovailoa’s recovery cautiously after the NFL and NFLPA released an investigatory report concerning the manner in which Miami’s trainers handled his initial injury. In a Week 3 matchup against the Buffalo Bills, Tagovailoa was visibly stumbling on the field after hitting his head on the turf in the first half.

The NFL and NFLPA’s investigation, launched after his second injury and released on Oct. 8, found that the quarterback cleared concussion protocol in the locker room in Week 3, blaming a back injury for his lack of coordination on the field. He re-entered the game against the Bills after halftime and started four days later against the Bengals, when he suffered a more serious head injury.

In an interview with Science News, Kristen Dams-O’Connor, a neuropsychologist and director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, confirmed the likelihood of subsequent brain injuries for people in recovery.

“The science tells us that yes, a person who is still recovering from a concussion is at an elevated risk for sustaining another concussion,” Dams-O’Connor said.

Though there is no timetable for Tagovailoa’s return, McDaniel again maintained a positive outlook, claiming that Week 7 was a possibility. In the meantime, the Dolphins plan to start third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson, an undrafted rookie filling in for Teddy Bridgewater, who sustained an injury of his own against the New York Jets last weekend.

It’s easy to see when a slot receiver runs over the middle and get lit up by a safety. Those two, the tackler and the ball carrier, have developed into our picture of CTE.

Nobis died In December 2017 at Age 74

It’s definitely improved, you no longer get punch-drunk or have your bell rung. Instead, it’s a concussion. But there’s a common misconception with how we view concussions and the CTE that develops alongside them. It’s the lineman, offensive and defensive, who are most often at risk. Though they don’t take brutal downfield hits that level them, they take constant hits to the head. These subconcussive hits often add up and create danger similar to a concussion.

But in one case, a player is immediately removed from the game after symptoms are shown. In the other, there’s often no way to tell if there were these subconcussive hits or if it’s “just football.”

Former Atlanta Falcons star Tommy Nobis is the picture-perfect image of this. Though he played linebacker, in his era they often functioned similarly to defensive ends today. And on top of that, he played offensive line in college. So when the BU CTE center found that Nobis, known as “Mr.Falcon,” had the most severe form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, his family wasn’t surprised.

“Growing up, I remember my mom having to call his secretary when he was going out to training camp to let them know what kind of mood he was in. And then vice versa,” his daughter, Devon Jackoniski, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

“We were pretty uneasy growing up,” she said. “Although my dad had just some beautiful moments of being a wonderful man, emotionally he was so unstable it was just hard to get close to him.”

Jackoniski is currently a physician’s assistant. Even without this knowledge, she could tell there was something deeply wrong with her father. “We knew there was going to be something wrong on his pathology report,” she said. “But it was shocking how a human being could still be alive with that little functioning brain.”

There were restaurants they couldn’t go to because he’d lose his temper, a symptom of CTE. There were outbursts like how at the bank drive-thru when he got out and yelled at a teller for taking too long with the car in front of him. There was Tommy, the aggressive and intense disciplinarian whose family “walked around eggshells.” There was Tommy, the humble man who was called a saint and made people laugh.

But there was always football. “It doesn’t matter the time of year, my dad could always find a football game on,” Jackoniski said. “That was basically our lives. When he retired, his only career was with the Falcons. We would go to all the Falcons games, whether we wanted to or not. That was who we were.”

“That truly was my dad’s first love,” she added. “He wasn’t born with a lot of money. They were from a blue-collar area. It gave my dad a lot of opportunities, so it’s kind of a thing.

“He told me before he became very ill he would never turn his back on football or do anything different. But he would educate kids a little different in the game. There’s something very wrong with slamming your head against a brick wall over and over and over again.”

30 SPORTS FIGURES WHO DIED IN 2018 – TRIBUTE SLIDESHOW

Nobis was the first player drafted by the expansion Falcons in 1966. As a rookie of the year and five-time Pro Bowler, he failed to reach the playoffs in 11 seasons. In fact, he was only part of two winning seasons. Even then, he didn’t leave football.  He first took a job as the manager of the team’s training camp hotel and then worked his way up to through the front office until he became vice president.

“Football was my father’s life, the air he breathed and therefore the air we breathed,” she wrote to ESPN. “It brought discipline and recklessness, self-worth and depression, strength and weakness, determination and fear, teamwork and destruction of relationships, competition and dissension, friendships and loneliness, strategy and brutal honesty, entertainment and subsistence.

The Falcons first went to the Super Bowl in 1998. They’d lose to the Denver Broncos, 34-19. They’d get a second shot at the Lombardi trophy 16 years later in 2016. They’d lose again. But that didn’t matter to Nobis. He was too far gone to understand what was going on. Doctors found that he had “severe loss of neurons and large CTE lesions throughout the cerebral cortex.”

The man that couldn’t leave football was left behind. Left out of Canton, left out of success, even left out of his own body. 10 months and 8 days after Super Bowl LI he passed away. Jackoniski doesn’t watch football anymore but she’ll have to watch the Super Bowl “just because I know it will be on in our house.”  By the end, the man who was the Falcons didn’t know who “Mr.Falcon” was.

Former NFL running back Jerome Bettis has revealed he is disappointed with the league for how little information it provided players regarding concussions during his time as a player.

Jerome Bettis speaks at Israel event on concussion diagnosis research

“You definitely feel as though you were taken advantage of in a way that you weren’t given that information, and you always want to have the choice of knowing, and when that is taken away from you, you feel as though you were taken advantage of,” Bettis told the Associated Press on Monday, via Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk.

The 45-year-old Hall of Famer — who played 13 seasons in the NFL with the St. Louis Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers — claims anyone who played as long a career as his is bound to sustain a concussion at some point.

“I don’t think you’ll find many guys that had a long career, played 10-plus years, that didn’t have a concussion,” he said.

Bettis was known for his aggressive playing style, which included constantly running over defenders, as “The Bus.” A six-time Pro Bowler, he recorded 13,662 total rushing yards in his career.

The former running back’s remarks came at an event in Israel where NFL players visited a neurotechnology company that is researching better ways to diagnose concussions.

The Associated Press recently reported that the league’s billion-dollar concussion settlement terms were announced, terms that granted $9 million in benefits.

“The league was accused of hiding what it knew about the link between concussions and CTE, the degenerative brain disease that has been found in dozens of former players after their deaths,” the AP stated.

CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is a form of brain trauma caused by repeated blows to the head. As the AP reported, this disease is often not discovered in former football players until well after they die.

PITTSBURGH, PA – OCTOBER 01: Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis addresses fans at Heinz Field during a halftime ceremony for the presentation of his Hall of Fame ring at Heinz Field on October 1, 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images)

It was announced on Tuesday that the No Fun League, NFL, will be reinstating a little bit of fun by relaxing their draconian rule over touchdown celebrations. Group celebrations, making snow angels, and using the football as a prop are now considered legal celebrations that won’t result in an exorbitant fine. Still, players shouldn’t get carried away – any celebration that delays the game, taunts the opposing team, or doesn’t set “good examples for young athletes,” will still be punished.

This is all good. The NFL has gained a reputation for being the dictators of the sports world, where uniformity and silence are not only the status quo, but anything less is a punishable offense. By relaxing the rules and allowing players to pretend to cook dinner on the football, or pretend their teammates are bowling pins, or make snow angels, the NFL is beginning to change their image, one more acceptable in the world of social media and viral personalities.

But lets not forget, there is one word that the dictatorship will not allow its subjects to speak – and that word is, ‘concussion.’

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in a letter concerning the relaxation of player celebrations, that the league uses the offseason to “listen to players, coaches, officials and fans about how we can continue to improve our great game.” Still, Goodell, who has been commissioner since 2006, has mostly ignored the chorus of voices calling for a serious overhaul of the league’s concision protocols since the beginning of his tenure.

In the same letter, Goodell writes, “We also took important steps on health and safety, including approving new rules prohibiting the ‘leaper’ block attempt – a top priority from our players.” The ‘leaper’ block attempt is when a defensive player jumps over the offensive line right at the moment of the snap in order to block a field goal attempt. It was banned because it potentially could cause a serious injury although most injuries occurring as a result of the block don’t often involve the head.

There was no word about concussions anywhere in the letter.

NFL owners are now considering a rule that would allow teams to put concussed players onto a shortened disabled list, and replace the player with a healthy one until the original has recovered. This could potentially mean a lot for treating concussions properly – players would feel better reporting it if they knew their recovery wouldn’t take forever and teams would feel better because they could treat their player and still give their team a good opportunity to win. Unfortunately, this rule is unlikely to pass because owners feel that other teams may exploit the rule, subbing out poorly performing players for better ones.

The players, this offseason, have also begun to get flak for the concussion issue – they are frequently blamed for not reporting their injury. But their diffident attitude towards reporting a concussion stems from a much larger NFL culture of winning first, and money first, a culture Goodell and the owners have perpetuated.

Tom Brady‘s wife Gisele Bundchen recently claimed that her husband has suffered multiple concussions through out his career and never reported them. Worried that they may affect his health after he retires – which they have been proven to do – Bundchen spoke out, although her husband has disputed her claim, surely caught in the culture of the NFL.

On Tuesday, future Hall of Famer, Calvin Johnson told the Detroit Free Press, “Guys get concussions, they don’t tell the coaches. It happens. I don’t tell the coach sometimes cause I know I got a job to do. The team needs me out there on the field. And sometimes, you allow that to jeopardize yourself but that’s just the nature of the world.”

And Johnson is right. That is the nature of the world.

Those in charge of the world, at least the sporting world, need to take a hard look at all the evidence out there – honestly, they don’t even need to look that hard – and work to change the world they control.

Then, players will really have something to celebrate.

The National Football League is facing serious questions about it’s concussion research.

Severely Flawed NFL Concussion Research, Ties To Big Tobacco

Following the early retirement of several of its marquee players due to a long string of frightening concussions, the league created a committee in 1994 that would ultimately issue a succession of research papers that downplayed the danger of head injuries in the sport. Experts and physicians were eventually brought amidst criticism of the committee’s work, and these physicians concluded that the papers had relied on faulty analysis.

Now, an investigation by the New York Times has discovered that the NFL’s concussion research was even more flawed than it had been previously found.

The NFL has stood by its research for 13 years, claiming it is based on full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. However, confidential data obtained by The Times shows that over 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from these studies–including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman.

After The Times asked the league about the missing diagnosed cases — which represented more than 10 percent of the total — officials acknowledged that “the clubs were not required to submit their data and not every club did.” That should have been made clearer, the league said in a statement, adding that the missing cases were not part of an attempt “to alter or suppress the rate of concussions.”

There also seems to be some lack of transparency even within the committee. One member of the concussion committee, Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, said he was unaware of the omissions. But he added: “If somebody made a human error or somebody assumed the data was absolutely correct and didn’t question it, well, we screwed up. If we found it wasn’t accurate and still used it, that’s not a screw-up; that’s a lie.”

These new discoveries raise further questions regarding the authenticity of the committee’s findings, published in 123 peer-reviewed articles and presented by the league as scientific evidence that brain injuries from repeated blows to the head did not cause long-term harm to its players like the degenerative brain disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE. Even stranger is the fact that the omissions went unchallenged by league officials, by the epidemiologist tasked with collecting the data, and by the editor of the medical journal who published the studies.

In 2013, the N.F.L. agreed to a $765 million settlement of a lawsuit in which retired players accused league officials of covering up the risks of concussions. Some players have appealed this settlement, demanding a full, proper examination of the committee’s concussion research.

Some retired NFL players have also compared the the league’s managing of this health issue to that of the tobacco industry, which became notorious for using questionable science to downplay the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

The Times has so far found no direct evidence that the NFL took its strategy from the tobacco industry.

In a letter to The Times, a lawyer for the league stated, “The N.F.L. is not the tobacco industry; it had no connection to the tobacco industry,” which he called “perhaps the most odious industry in American history.”

However, records indicate that the two industries shared lobbyists, lawyers, and consultants.

The N.F.L.’s concussion committee began publishing its findings in 2003 in the medical journal Neurosurgery.

It wasn’t up until very recently that the league’s research was found to be this severely inaccurate. Very few, even the NFL’s harshest critics, suggested or proved that the underlying data set was so faulty.

“One of the rules of science is that you need to have impeccable data collection procedures,” said Bill Barr, a neuropsychologist who once worked for the New York Jets and who has previously criticized the committee’s work.

By excluding so many concussions, Mr. Barr said, “You’re not doing science here; you are putting forth some idea that you already have.”

The committee’s chairman, Dr. Elliot Pellman, the team physician for the Jets, stressed that his group’s primary objective was to produce research that was “independent” and “meticulous.”

Although many of the dozen committee members were associated with NFL Teams, either as a physician, a neurosurgeon, or an athletic trainer, the members stated that these relationships had not compromised their work as researchers.

“It was understood that any player with a recognized symptom of head injury, no matter how minor, should be included in the study,” one paper said.

And in confidential peer-review documents, the committee wrote that “all N.F.L. teams participated” and that “a ll players were therefore part of this study.”

However, those statements are contradicted by the database.

According to the Times, most teams failed to report all of their players’ concussions. Overall, at least 10 percent of head injuries diagnosed by team doctors were missing from the study, including two that were sustained by Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet, who retired several years later following more concussions. Dr. Pellman, the Jets’ physician, led the research and was the lead author on every paper.

In one paper, the committee explained, “The Commissioner of the N.F.L. mandated all team physicians to complete and return forms whenever they examined a player with a head injury.”

Teams were not obligated to participate, but rather only “strongly encouraged.” An NFL spokesman later added that some teams “did not take the additional steps of supplying the initial and/or follow-up forms.”

The NFL also explained that some concussions went undiagnosed because players sometimes hid their symptoms of concussion from team doctors, symptoms that can often be so brief no one even notices. Thus, doctors may have used a different set of criteria to make concussion diagnoses.

Nevertheless, most of omitted concussions identified by The Times were included in the N.F.L.’s public injury reports, which means that medical staffs had made the diagnoses and reported them to the league.

The database does not include any concussions involving the Dallas Cowboys for all six seasons, including four to Mr. Aikman that were listed on the N.F.L.’s official midweek injury reports or were widely reported in the news media.

Furthermore, some injuries were more severe than what was reflected in the official tally. According to committee records, St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner sustained a concussion on Dec. 24, 2000, that healed after two days. But Mr. Warner’s symptoms continued, and four weeks later he was ruled out of the Pro Bowl with what a league official described as lingering symptoms of that head injury.

The NFL refused to make Dr. Pellman available for an interview. John Powell and Michael L.J. Apuzzo, the study’s epidemiologist and the editor of Neurosurgery respectively, also declined interview requests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C6T2YLvjnM

Caption: DENVER, CO – SEPTEMBER 14: The NFL logo is displayed on the turf as the Denver Broncos defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 24-17 at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on September 14, 2014 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images).

Judge Approves Revised NCAA Settlement ON Concussions

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Chicago granted preliminary approval to a revised head-injury settlement between thousands of former college athletes and the NCAA that includes a $70 million fund to test for brain trauma caused by concussions.

U.S. District Judge John Lee lauded the new deal for expanding potential plaintiffs to athletes from sports beyond football, hockey and other contact sports. However, Lee also suggested various changes: particularly ones that modified what would have been a blanket protection for the NCAA from class-action lawsuits.

The centerpiece of the agreement remains the same, nonetheless. This includes the NCAA’s creation of the fund to test both current and former athletes for brain injuries they claim to have suffered while playing collegiate sports. These tests would evaluate the extent of neurological injuries and could establish grounds for individual athletes seeking damages.

As part of the new deal, the NCAA is also required to strengthen concussion-management guidelines and return-to-play rules following a concussion. A new, independent Medical Science Committee will oversee all of the medical testing.

“While we are pleased the court has provided a preliminary pathway to provide significant resources for the medical monitoring of student-athletes who may suffer concussion, we are still examining the conditions placed on preliminary approval,” Lee said.

The number of athletes who have been deemed as possibly requiring testing runs into the tens of thousands. In court filings, the plaintiffs cited NCAA figures regarding concussions and other types of injuries. According to these figures, from 2004 to 2009 alone, 29,225 athletes suffered concussions.

Ten lawsuits filed from Georgia and South Carolina to Minnesota and Missouri were consolidated into one case in Chicago, where the first lawsuit was filed in 2011. Adrian Arrington (pictured), the lead plaintiff, is a former safety from Eastern Illinois University who claimed he suffered five concussions while playing, some so severe he stated he couldn’t even recognize his parents afterward.

Arrington subsequently suffered from frequent headaches, seizures, as well as memory loss and depression, which made it difficult for him to work or care for his children. He later withdrew his support due to the settlement.

One plaintiff who hasn’t withdrawn his support is former Central Arkansas wide receiver Derek K. Owens. After several concussions, he said he could no longer retain what he had just studied. His symptoms became so strong he dropped out of school in 2011, and said to his mother: “I feel like a 22-year-old with Alzheimer’s.”

In 2012, the NFL made an “unrestricted gift to the National Institute of Health.” But according to ESPN’s Outside the Lines, there are some major strings attached to the money as the NFL will reportedly block it from being used to fund a CTE study; CTE or Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain condition suffered by many professional athletes who repeatedly suffer blows to the head.

“When the NFL’s ‘unrestricted’ $30 million gift was announced in 2012, the NIH said the money came ‘with no strings attached;’ however, an NIH official clarified the gift terms two years later, telling Outside the Lines that, in fact, the league retained veto power over projects that it funds,” says ESPN.

“Sources told Outside the Lines that the league exercised that power when it learned that Robert Stern, a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Boston University, would be the project’s lead researcher. The league, sources said, raised concerns about Stern’s objectivity, despite an exhaustive vetting process that included a ‘scientific merit review’ and a separate evaluation by a dozen high-level experts assembled by the NIH.”

The project will go ahead, however, thanks to funding from the National Institute of Health, according to a statement issued Thursday; the release made no mention of the NFL. This news also comes as the Will Smith movie Concussion nears its release date.

Photo: A ‘Deflate-gate’ football © Leland Auctions.

In the past few years, a growing number of NHL players have died early. Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak, and Rick Rypien all passed away during the summer of 2011. Todd Ewen died this September. And last February, Steve Montador was found dead in his home at age 35.

While his death came as a shock, it fit an emerging pattern. Montador was a player known for his physicality; consequently, he suffered through several concussions including the one that ended his NHL career. Those close to him had noticed a change in his mood. And after his brain was examined, doctors found he had suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by repetitive head trauma.

Based on those facts, Montador’s family filed a lawsuit against the NHL, claiming the league did not properly warn him of the long term risks hockey posed. “The NHL’s insistence upon preserving and promoting violence in spite of the obvious dangers caused, or contributed to cause, Steven R. Montador’s brain damage, addiction and depression.”

There is also a class action lawsuit against the league by 80 former players; it is similar to the class action suit former football players filed against the NFL.

Despite growing medical evidence, the NHL still denies any links between concussions, sustained in hockey or otherwise, and CTE. “The fact of the matter is, from a medical and science standpoint, there is no evidence yet that one necessarily leads to the other,” commissioner Gary Bettman said in May. “I know there are a lot of theories, but if you ask the people who study it, they tell you there is no statistical correlation where they can definitively make that conclusion.”

Photo: Steve Montador #5 of the Chicago Blackhawks controls the puck against the Vancouver Canucks at the United Center on November 6, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. The Canucks defeated the Blackhawks 6-2. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)