Football Won’t Save Tua Tagovailoa From Himself

It was a terrifying but sadly familiar scene: Tua Tagovailoa, the star quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, lying on the field, apparently disoriented, after suffering another concussion. The injury, sustained in a game last week against the Buffalo Bills, was Tagovailoa’s fourth diagnosed concussion since 2019 and his third since becoming an NFL player, in 2020. It seemed like the ultimate sign that Tagovailoa should end his promising NFL career, only two games into his fifth season.

That appears to be the prevailing sentiment even among the NFL brotherhood. Dez Bryant, a former wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys, posted on X: “That’s it … NFL go ahead and do the right thing. Tua has had entirely way too many concussions. He need to retire for his longevity health concerns.” Antonio Pierce, the Las Vegas Raiders head coach and a former NFL linebacker, told reporters that if he were in a position to influence the quarterback’s thinking, “I would tell him to retire—it’s not worth it.”

The fact that so many voices within football are calling for Tagovailoa to quit is a small sign of progress. Players finally seem willing to buck the old hyper-macho culture of playing through any injury.

But no mechanism exists for the league or anyone else to decide how many concussions are too many, and there’s no guarantee that Tagovailoa will choose to retire. Football players eagerly sign up to play a violent game despite having a much fuller understanding of its risks than their predecessors did. And if you think the sight of Tagovailoa writhing on the ground is enough to turn fans off in any sort of meaningful way, then you underestimate the power of a sport that remains firmly entrenched as the national obsession.

Tagovailoa will have time to think about his future. On Tuesday, the Dolphins placed him on injured reserve, which means he will miss at least the next four games before he is eligible to return to NFL action. Because of Miami’s scheduled bye week, the earliest Tagovailoa could return is on October 27, against the Arizona Cardinals. The break should allow Tagovailoa not only to recover from the injury and go through the league’s concussion protocol, but to discuss his options with outside neurologists and, presumably, his family.

[Read: The standard advice for concussions is wrong]

Whatever he decides, concussions and the risk of long-term brain damage clearly remain a part of football. The NFL’s efforts to address the problem have ranged from incomplete to untrustworthy.

Nearly a decade has passed since the NFL agreed to settle a massive lawsuit brought by 4,500 players who accused the league of hiding the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE —the degenerative disease that can affect people who suffer repeated concussions and traumatic brain injuries. The NFL has since implemented a host of rule changes in an effort to make the game safer, but head injuries remain an all too common part of the game. That hasn’t stopped NFL ratings from continuing to rise. The players, for their part, appear to have mostly accepted the danger. Tagovailoa’s concussion last week came after he crashed headfirst into the chest of the Bills safety Damar Hamlin, whose heart stopped on the field last season after he suffered a severe blow to the chest. Hamlin had to be administered CPR after that injury and came very close to dying on the field. Now he’s back out there, delivering hits of his own.

The NFL has shown that it can’t be relied on to prioritize the well-being of its players. The league and the Dolphins drew widespread criticism for their handling of Tagovailoa’s multiple concussions throughout the 2022 season. During another game against the Bills, the back of Tagovailoa’s head slammed into the turf at the end of a play. After getting up, the quarterback stumbled and fell on his way back to the sideline, visibly shaken up. And yet the team’s medical staff allowed him to return to the game, and the Dolphins announced, implausibly, that he had suffered a back injury. A mere four days later, in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Tagovailoa took a brutal hit to the head. He was diagnosed with a concussion, prompting speculation that he had already suffered one against the Bills.

[Nate Jackson: I saw horrific things when I played in the NFL]

The NFL and the NFL Players Association launched an investigation into why Tagovailoa continued to play against the Bills, which led to the NFL changing its concussion protocol to include “abnormality of balance/stability, motor coordination or dysfunctional speech” as symptoms that would prohibit a player from returning to the game. This was a positive step, but clearly not enough. A few months later, Tagovailoa suffered his second NFL concussion—or third, depending on your opinion about that Bills game. While playing the Green Bay Packers, Tagovailoa again hit his head on the ground. But he wasn’t evaluated immediately for a concussion, and therefore was never removed from that game. The diagnosis came the next day.

The NFL has paid out more than $1 billion to nearly 2,000 former players and their families as part of its concussion settlement. But an investigation by the Washington Post reporter Will Hobson found that the league was still failing to meet its promise to compensate former players who suffered from CTE and other brain diseases linked to concussions. After reviewing 15,000 pages of documents and interviewing more than 100 people involved with the settlement, Hobson found that the “settlement routinely fails to deliver money and medical care to former players suffering from dementia and CTE.” In 2020, the NFL had been accused of using “race norming” to determine concussion settlements: assuming Black people have lower baseline cognitive ability, therefore making it harder for Black players to prove that they were suffering mental decline because of football. The league agreed to end the practice in 2021.

Football isn’t going to save Tagovailoa from himself. The quarterback worked hard after the 2022 season to learn how to better avoid injury. He did jiu-jitsu training to learn how to fall safely. He gained weight to make himself sturdier. For one year, his efforts appeared to pay off: He didn’t miss a single game during the 2023 season and became the first Miami Dolphins quarterback to be selected for the Pro Bowl since Dan Marino in 1995. This past summer, the Dolphins, evidently feeling more confident in their quarterback’s ability to stay healthy, rewarded Tagovailoa with a four-year, $212 million contract extension.

Tagovailoa would forfeit most of that money were he to decide to walk away from the game. No one should pretend that it’s an easy choice to make. And no one can make it but Tagovailoa himself.