New NFL Concussion Report Drops Just in Time for the Super Bowl!
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NFL- The National Football League. A league that has, in recent years, tried to assuage fears about the violent nature of its games and their oft-reported deleterious effects on brain health. The movie Concussion started this conversation, albeit fifty years too late, and the NFL has since made it a priority of theirs to minimize head injuries during games, or, at the very least, to minimize the reporting of concussive blows sustained on the field. A recent statement by the NFL claimed that concussions have dropped 17% since 2023, and that this current season set a new, all-time, single-season low of 182 total concussions. If we’re being realistic, that number is probably closer to 1,082. Let’s talk with one of the players who did not report being concussed this past season:
Darius Slay, cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles: “I got hit hard in the upper chest/neck area late in the year. It was a really rough hit. My head snapped back and hit the turf. I actually saw stars. I went over to the sideline to go through routine concussion testing protocol, and I told them what happened. The doctors there were quick to remind me that we were playing the Steelers, who have stars in their logo, and that I was probably just recalling seeing the stars on the helmet of the guy who popped me. Just as they said that my blurry vision began to clear up and I realized that yea, we were playing the Steelers! Obviously, I hadn’t been concussed, and the league agreed.”
There were several other notable cases that the NFL did not deem to meet the inclusion criteria for a concussion. One of these involved a practice squad fullback for the Carolina Panthers who developed early onset dementia just days after his helmet-to-helmet hit with a 6’6, 250lb linebacker with 4.4 40-yard-dash speed. The NFL is classifying this as a case of dementia, not a concussion.
Fans may also recall Miami Dolphins’ quarterback Tua Tagovailoa being stretchered off the field and placed in a full-body cast in the Mount Sinai Miami Medical Center following a blind-side hit by Myles Garrett that actually registered as a small-to-moderate size earthquake of magnitude 3.5 on the Richter scale. Tua lost all motor control and remains in a state of full-body paralysis to this day. The NFL is classifying this as an injury sustained “of natural causes”, you know, because of the earthquake and all.
The most egregious exception from the NFL’s head-injury count was former Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ kicker Rodrigo Blankenship, who died after being laid out by a threesome of massive defensive linemen during a field goal attempt in week 12 against the New Orleans Saints. The NFL is classifying this as a death, not as a concussion.