WILL SOMEONE HAVE TO DIE (AGAIN) BEFORE THE NFL TRULY CARES ABOUT BRAINS?

The concussion crisis never ended, despite the league's nonchalance, and two skull slams suffered by Tua Tagovailoa have renewed outcry that a savage sport can reduce players to vegetables

     Too big to care, too rich to twitch, the NFL probably thinks it can get away with murder these days. It just might at this rate — literally. Roger Goodell and the owners assume the concussion crisis no longer is an agenda item, a dangerous notion in a sport more savage than ever, as they merrily count $113 billion from drooling media companies that don’t see brain trauma as a natural, televised-horror concern.

     Violence sells, right?

     Tua Tagovailoa’s battered skull begs to disagree, assuming it is able to function with cognitive normalcy anytime soon. Twice in a 102-hour span, his head was slammed violently to the ground. And his “fencing response” the second time — flat on his back Thursday night, he extended his hands with his fingers splayed, a possible symptom of a brain injury — prompted social-media outrage as the Miami quarterback was carted off a field in Cincinnati.

     Is the NFL, so intoxicated by unprecedented prosperity and prominence, once again negligent about its most severe health risks? A life-and-death vortex that has left too many casualties through time? The voluminous evidence that links repetitive head impact to CTE — is the killer data now being callously ignored by the commissioner and the billionaires who pay him handsomely? Fair and pressing questions, all.

     “This is a disaster,” tweeted Chris Nowinski, CEO of Concussion Legacy Foundation, as Tagovailoa was taken to a hospital. “Pray for Tua. Fire the medical staffs and coaches. I predicted this and I hate that I am right.”

     Just before kickoff, Nowinski had tweeted: “If Tua takes the field tonight, it’s a massive step back for #concussion care in the NFL. If he has a 2nd concussion that destroys his season or career, everyone involved will be sued & should lose their jobs, coaches included. We all saw it, even they must know this isn’t right.”

     No, they do not realize it’s wrong. The NFL culture is so locked into its booming popularity — fueled by massive TV ratings and gambling action — that no one of an official rank flinches even if a young star’s brain is turning to mush. Meat on the hoof, the barbarians call it. If the league’s concussion protocols were real and intended to protect players from harm, the Dolphins wouldn’t have let Tagovailoa play in the second half dating back to Sunday. Shoved unnecessarily by Buffalo linebacker Matt Milano after releasing the ball, he went flying, his head bouncing off the turf. He stumbled to his feet, then dropped to his knees and had to be helped off the field in a troubling sequence. Obviously in a wobbly state, he was checked via protocol for a concussion by an independent third party that concluded at halftime … his apparent head injury actually was a back issue?

     He was sent to the field for the second half, by a team aiming to beat a Super Bowl contender for its first 3-0 start in four years, a franchise owned by a slippery madman (Stephen Ross) currently on league suspension for encouraging the tanking of games and tampering with Tom Brady and Sean Payton while they were under contract elsewhere. Were the league truly invested in saving brains, it would have sounded alarms after the Miami victory about a possible protocol violation, as the NFL Players Association already was doing with an inquiry. Compounding worries, the Dolphins had a short week before a Thursday night game, a reckless and unnecessary addition to the weekly schedule, one that ignored the safety element in scheduling games without appropriate healing time. Was anyone disturbed — in the league offices, at the Dolphins facility or in the hierarchy of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Prime, which pays the league $1 billion annually for Thursday streaming rights — about the possibility of Tagovailoa hitting his head again and subjecting viewers to a frightening episode?

     Refusing to act preemptively, the league let the Dolphins make the call instead of protecting the Dolphins from themselves and protecting the player — Tagovailoa didn’t want to sit and seem like a wimp, an unfortunate byproduct of a brutish football mentality — from himself. The result, we hope, was not catastrophic. He was sacked — “slung down,” as Al Michaels put it on the broadcast — by Bengals nose tackle Josh Tupou. His head hit the ground again. About 10 minutes passed before the stretcher came and he was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where, of course, the Dolphins were quick to report he was conscious and had movement in all his extremities. After a 27-15 loss, in which veteran Teddy Bridgewater took over at QB, first-year coach Mike McDaniel was asked if he would cooperate with a full-scale investigation. “Fine,” he said.

     “The one thing I think our players know more than anybody, there's certain things that I'm very sensitive to. I've been called emotional from time to time, and one of those things is player health,” McDaniel said. “So I don't mess around with that at all. ... They went through the protocols and in that process during the (Buffalo) game, and it was something that we wouldn't have moved forward in the direction we did, had there been any sort of red flags because that’s — you can't keep quarterbacks out of harm's way, so you wouldn't — if he had a head issue, he wouldn't have been back out there.”

     In the real world, beyond whatever bubble McDaniel lives in, we know this much to be true: Tagovailoa had, has and will continue to have a head issue. He’s back at home in South Florida and is said to be in “good spirits,” in concussion protocol, but only a fool would leave it at that. Why would McDaniel accept the Sunday back diagnosis at face value? Or did he not want to know  more? “That’s why the NFL has these protocols,” he said, pushing the onus back to the doctors. “There’s an independent specialist that specializes in the specialty of brain matter so, for me, as long as I’m coaching here, I’m not gonna fudge that whole situation. If there’s any sort of inclination that someone has a concussion, they go into concussion protocol — that’s very strict. People don’t vary or stray, we don’t mess with that. Never have. And as long as I’m the head coach, that’ll never be an issue to worry about.”

     Chris Nowinski, for one, wants McDaniel fired at once. DeMaurice Smith, the NFLPA executive director, is considering legal action against the league and Dolphins. He said so in a text message to Amazon analyst Andrew Whitworth, a former union rep: “We insisted on these rules to avoid exactly this scenario. We will pursue every legal option, including making referrals against the doctors and licensing agencies and the team that is obligated to keep our players safe.”

     Even McDaniel was left to acknowledge after the Thursday slam, “It was a scary moment. I could tell it wasn’t the same guy I was used to seeing.” But it’s unlikely anyone with the Dolphins, now 3-1, is thinking Tagovailoa won’t be available a week from Sunday against the New York Jets. The same irresponsible whims are jeopardizing another wounded young quarterback, Justin Herbert, who was heralded for his courage by Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley for staying in a close game despite an obvious rib injury — then was left to the wolves the next game, still playing in the final minutes of a blowout loss.

     You’d think owners would protect their franchise QBs like fine china or superyachts, at the most important position in sports. But consider this: Tagovailoa and Herbert have yet to sign extensions. So, maybe the likes of Ross and Chargers owner Dean Spanos aren’t as cautious until they are officially committed to large sums. Unlike Herbert, who has Hall of Fame potential, the jury remains out on Tua’s ultimate projection. Only in recent weeks had he quieted critics with spectacular play, entering early MVP discussions. Don’t think for a moment that Ross, wherever he is, still isn’t influential in major team decisions, such as what happens in games.

     Amazon did the league no favors in continuing to replay the moment his head met turf in Cincinnati, sensationalizing with zoom-ins to the helmet slam and his facial pain. Not far away, up an interstate highway in Indiana, Andrew Luck might have thanked the heavens that he no longer is subjected to the torture. Three years ago, he cut short a Hall of Fame career — and untold Super Bowls and personal fortunes — by announcing his retirement from the Colts at 29. Not once has he regretted it, apparently.

     “This is not an easy decision. Honestly, the hardest decision of my life. But it is the right decision for me,” Luck explained then. “For the last four years or so, I’ve been in this cycle of injury, pain, rehab, injury, pain, rehab, and it’s been unceasing, unrelenting, both in-season and offseason, and I felt stuck in it. The only way I see out is to no longer play football.”

     In concussion protocol, whatever it means, Tua should call Luck today. That is, if he can speak without slurring.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.