Within the moments earlier than and after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was taken away on a stretcher, his youthful brother, Taulia, stored attempting to name his mother. There was no reply. Their dad and mom, Diane and Galu Tagovailoa, have been on the Dolphins-Bengals sport in Cincinnati. Taulia was 500 miles away and wanted somebody to inform him Tua was OK.
Like his brother, Taulia is a soccer participant, however what he had simply seen scared him — Tua spun round and violently flung to the turf, smacking the again of his head on the bottom. He remained on the Bengals’ brand, together with his forearms raised and his fingers stiffened in a contorted place close to his face.
It was Thursday night time, Sept. 29, greater than three months earlier than Buffalo Payments security Damar Hamlin would lie on the identical subject in Cincinnati whereas a crew of medics rushed to resuscitate him and assist save his life. On each nights, all the pieces eerily stopped. The sport finally went on the night time of Sept. 29, however Taulia Tagovailoa, the beginning quarterback for the College of Maryland, had a walkthrough follow the following day and a sport towards Michigan State to prep for and all he may take into consideration was discovering a flight, instantly, to see Tua.
He tapped his mother’s quantity once more, and once more, and began to cry. “It simply appeared actually unhealthy,” he stated.
When Diane Tagovailoa answered, she stated Tua was with the medical doctors and needed to be rushed to the hospital. His father finally received on the telephone and informed Taulia to give attention to Michigan State. However he barely slept that night time. On his approach to the Terrapins’ crew lodge the following day, he obtained a FaceTime name from his brother. Tua was smiling.
In an effort to allay his brother’s fears, Tua, 24, recited his title, birthday and different fundamental info. He joked that he did not have a concussion. However by then, he had hit his head on the bottom twice that final week of September; the primary was not reported as a concussion, the second was. He’d be the impetus for an investigation by the NFL and NFL Gamers Affiliation into how he was cleared to play, which prompted modifications within the league’s concussion coverage.
On Christmas Day towards Inexperienced Bay, Tagovailoa suffered one other concussion, and he hasn’t performed since. Miami’s fortunes have risen and fallen on the again of Tagovailoa, whose transformation in his third 12 months prompted chants of M-V-P and faraway ideas of a Tremendous Bowl. With Tagovailoa, the Dolphins are 8-4 in video games he is completed and 1-4 with out him. His passer ranking leads the NFL (105.5), forward of Kansas Metropolis quarterback Patrick Mahomes (105.2).
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So naturally, a long-suffering fanbase will grasp on each harm report and replace from coach Mike McDaniel this week because the Dolphins put together for Sunday’s wild-card matchup at Buffalo, their first playoff sport since 2016. Shortly after Miami pulled out an 11-6 playoff-clinching victory over the New York Jets with rookie quarterback Skylar Thompson on Sunday, Tagovailoa stood within the tunnel, in road garments, and celebrated the playoff berth together with his crew.
McDaniel stated he’ll do “what’s greatest” for Tagovailoa and will not even consider any eventualities involving him till he is medically cleared. As of Monday, Tagovailoa had not been cleared for soccer actions. “When he is cleared to follow, he’ll follow,” McDaniel stated. “Till then, I am not doing something.”
However take away the anomaly in Week 3, by which Tagovailoa was listed with a again harm within the Buffalo sport, and his standing this week won’t even be in query. Two famend concussion consultants informed ESPN that Tagovailoa’s head trauma in the course of the Payments sport had the looks of a concussion. Dr. Julian Bailes, chairman of the division of neurosurgery at NorthShore College Well being System, stated that is vital as a result of three concussions in a finite interval is mostly the edge that requires a participant to be held out for an prolonged period of time, probably months. If Tagovailoa has had three concussions, Bailes believes he ought to sit.
“The mind does not know whether or not it is the playoffs or not,” he stated. “The mind does not respect what a part of the season you are in. It must recuperate.”
ON SEPT. 26, the day after Tagovailoa hit his head on the bottom in the course of the Payments sport, Dr. Chris Nowinski was in rural Nebraska telling the widow of former Harvard teammate Chris Eitzmann that her husband, who died in 2021 of alcohol poisoning, was discovered to have had CTE. Within the years since Nowinski co-founded Boston College’s Power Traumatic Encephalopathy Heart, he has had many conversations like this. However this time, he was attempting to elucidate to Eitzmann’s 14-year-old son why his dad wasn’t there anymore.
It had been a protracted week for Nowinski, vacillating between disappointment and anger. He fired off three tweets throughout and shortly after the Dolphins-Payments sport, calling the back-tweak analysis “bull$hit.”
Tagovailoa had been pushed to the bottom within the second quarter towards the Payments and hit his head. He received up on his personal, shook his head, staggered and briefly needed to be propped up by two teammates. However he returned to the sport after halftime and led the Dolphins to a 21-19 victory. Tagovailoa informed medical workers he aggravated a again harm on the play. Though Miami by no means dominated the harm a concussion, Nowinski informed ESPN he believed that it was.
On Thursday, Sept. 29, just a few hours earlier than the Bengals sport, Nowinski tweeted, “If Tua takes the sector tonight, it is a huge step again for #concussion care within the NFL. If he has a 2nd concussion that destroys his season or profession, everybody concerned might be sued & ought to lose their jobs, coaches included. All of us noticed it, even they have to know this is not proper.”
Tagovailoa performed that night time in Cincinnati and later would say he was knocked unconscious. His fingers have been in a modification of the fencing response place — computerized actions of the physique that happen from impression. His cousins have been so affected by the scene that it prompted a bunch chat amongst about 15 folks, together with their spouses, they usually frightened and prayed for him.
After Tagovailoa’s concussion in Cincinnati, Miami reached out to Bailes. The Dolphins have been inspecting how they need to proceed with their quarterback, and Bailes stated he was one in all a small group of medical doctors contacted.
Bailes, a member of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Backbone Committee and the NFLPA’s Mackey-White Well being and Security Committee, was a Pittsburgh Steelers crew physician in the course of the latter a part of the profession of middle Mike Webster, the primary participant Dr. Bennet Omalu identified with CTE. Analysis from Omalu and Bailes finally compelled the NFL to rethink its insurance policies on gamers’ well being and mind security.
Bailes stated that he did not look at Tagovailoa and that he believes the Dolphins dealt with the Cincinnati concussion correctly in sitting the quarterback from Sept. 30 to Oct. 22. In all three of Tagovailoa’s blows to the top, Bailes stated that the mechanisms of harm have been “very related” in that he was thrown to the bottom and hit the again of his head. As a result of he fell backward, he could not break his fall.
On Oct. 1, the NFLPA fired the unaffiliated neurotrauma marketing consultant concerned within the choice to permit Tagovailoa to return to the Buffalo sport. A number of sources stated the firing got here after it was discovered the marketing consultant made “a number of errors” in his analysis. Every week later, after its joint investigation with the NFLPA, the league added “ataxia” to its record of signs for which a participant can’t return to a sport. Ataxia is outlined by the Nationwide Well being Service as a bunch of problems that have an effect on coordination, stability and speech.
Nowinski stated there’s a rising consciousness that hits to the top occurring shut collectively in time are “riskier” for long-term points. He additionally stated research present that with every concussion the percentages of getting one other one enhance.
“Why we expect that occurs contains what they name the neurometabolic cascade, the chemical and metabolic modifications that happen with a concussion,” Nowinski stated. “As soon as they’re triggered as soon as, it could require a barely decrease threshold to make that occur once more. Your mind’s resilience could also be diminished within the sense that you have 86 billion or so neurons and trillions of connections between them, and if you get a concussion, you lose some, but it surely’s not sufficient to completely impair you.
“But when neurons die, if axons are severed, they do not come again. And should you simply hold taking some away with every concussion, finally your mind cannot overcome the harm and the [ability to recover] turns into diminished.”
TAGOVAILOA’S FORTUNES, not less than from a soccer perspective, modified with one name on Feb. 7, 2022.
McDaniel had simply been named head coach of the Dolphins and was flying from the West Coast to South Florida when he FaceTimed his new quarterback from the airplane. McDaniel informed Tagovailoa that he knew he had the ambition to be nice and that his job as coach was to get all that greatness out of him.
“I’ll guarantee that if you look again at today, you are going to be like, ‘Rattling, that was among the finest days of my profession, too,'” McDaniel informed him.
Tagovailoa, the Dolphins’ fifth total decide within the 2020 draft, had been broadly thought-about a bust as much as that time, a lot in order that in 2021 Miami thought-about pursuing and did due diligence on Deshaun Watson amid civil litigation alleging sexual assaults. This previous August, an NFL investigation concluded that Dolphins proprietor Stephen Ross and minority accomplice Bruce Beal had violated the league’s anti-tampering coverage on three events, from 2019 to 2022, in conversations with quarterback Tom Brady and the agent for then-New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton.
Brian Flores, the Dolphins’ coach on the time, had a cold relationship with Tagovailoa. Flores was defensive-minded and recognized for being intense. In shut video games, he would bench Tagovailoa in favor of veteran Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Mike Locksley, Tagovailoa’s offensive coordinator at Alabama, stated Tagovailoa is a folks one that does not essentially function nicely with dysfunction.
“Not that you could’t bounce his butt. I’ve seen instances when coach [Nick] Saban would get after him,” stated Locksley, now the top coach at Maryland. “He isn’t onerous to educate. He needs to please his coaches and please his teammates, virtually to a fault, the place he’ll put another person above himself.”
McDaniel was seemingly the anti-Flores — unfastened, humorous, nerdy and oozing with positivity. Tagovailoa did not understand how to reply to it at first and proceeded with cautious optimism. However McDaniel impressed him to work more durable and be higher.
The 2022 season started, basically, in a park close to Tagovailoa’s home in South Florida. It was summer season. Tagovailoa’s receivers met their quarterback, some in shoulder pads and helmets, for exercises that stretched so long as 2½ hours within the punishing warmth. Tua Tagovailoa’s brother, Taulia, educated with them and will sense the chemistry constructing.
The Dolphins had simply added All-Professional receiver Tyreek Hill and high free-agent deal with Terron Armstead within the offseason partly to construct a assist system round their quarterback, and there was Hill, previously a favourite goal of Mahomes’, in that warmth, on Tagovailoa’s turf, working routes.
The primary sport of the season impressed hope, a 20-7 win towards the New England Patriots. However Miami followers have seen hope wane by greater than a dozen quarterback failures within the misplaced a long time post-Dan Marino. Skepticism was a given.
All that eroded in Week 2. Tagovailoa put collectively a six-touchdown, 469-passing yard efficiency, rallying his crew from a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit in a victory over Baltimore that made the Dolphins 2-0 and introduced hysteria that Tagovailoa wasn’t simply their franchise quarterback — he was going to take them to locations they hadn’t been for the reason that Nineteen Eighties. “That was f—ing superior,” Marino stated after the comeback.
However each excessive seemingly got here with a subsequent low of equal worth, and the Buffalo win the following week was met with the truth of Tagovailoa’s first head harm.
Miami would win 5 video games, then go on a five-game shedding streak. It will go to Buffalo on Dec. 17 and practically beat the Payments in frigid temperatures, then, simply when it appeared as if the Dolphins have been again on monitor, would lose Tagovailoa to a different concussion in a house loss to Inexperienced Bay.
Within the first half of that sport, he was tackled after a throw and fell and hit the again of his head. He received to his toes and didn’t depart the sport. He threw three interceptions within the fourth quarter. McDaniel informed reporters that the Dolphins reviewed movie from the sport and noticed issues that “brought on them to prod” Tagovailoa. After additional dialogue and commentary of him Monday after the sport, they suggested him to go to with crew medical doctors, and he was positioned into the concussion protocol.
It prompted one other investigation by the NFL and the NFLPA, which concluded that concussion protocols weren’t violated as a result of Tagovailoa did not exhibit seen indicators of a concussion in the course of the sport.
Tagovailoa has eschewed one-on-one interviews this fall, saying he needed his play to do the speaking. When wholesome, it has. He threw for 3,548 yards and 25 touchdowns regardless of the chunks of season taken away by concussions. He accomplished 64.8% of his passes, with three of his eight interceptions coming within the fourth quarter of that Inexperienced Bay sport.
Vinny Passas, his highschool quarterback coach at Saint Louis Faculty in Hawaii, was in the course of a coaching session Dec. 26 when an alert popped on his telephone that Tagovailoa had suffered one other concussion. He stated he could not keep in mind seeing Tagovailoa endure as many setbacks and difficult moments as he has in 2022.
He is aware of how onerous it should be for Tagovailoa to take a seat. Passas has coached highschool soccer in Hawaii for greater than 40 years, and mentored quarterbacks reminiscent of Marcus Mariota and Timmy Chang. In Polynesian tradition, Passas stated, a mentality of toughing it out and enjoying by accidents is deeply ingrained.
“I keep in mind teaching in a Polynesian Bowl sport the place a quarterback took himself out after successful,” he stated. “At halftime, a few Polynesian gamers informed him, ‘Gosh, if we did what you probably did by taking your pads off and never enjoying the second half, our dad and mom would come down right here and provides it to us as a result of we might be, like, embarrassing our household like that.'”
Tagovailoa’s dad and mom didn’t reply to interview requests for this story. In an interview with Maria Taylor for “Soccer Night time in America” in late October, as Tagovailoa returned from his Cincinnati concussion, he stated that his accidents had been “somewhat powerful” for his dad and mom. He additionally acknowledged to reporters that week that he is at all times been a quarterback who opted to attempt to make one thing occur, who’d look forward to receivers to get open as an alternative of throwing the ball away. However he was studying, he stated, and was now interested by his longevity.
His first sport again towards Pittsburgh, he tried to bulldoze defenders, twice.
Adam Amosa-Tagovailoa, a former offensive lineman at Navy who’s Tua’s cousin, stated that after they have been youngsters and wanted to be reminded to by no means hand over, their grandfather Seu would inform them in regards to the story of the lion and the gazelle.
“The gazelle wakes up working away from hazard,” Amosa-Tagovailoa stated, “whereas the lion wakes up hungry, at all times ravenous, attempting to get to the following meal.”
IN THE END, McDaniel’s constructive vibes and Tagovailoa’s spurts of brilliance couldn’t stand up to an offseason inevitability: Tua’s future in Miami is as soon as once more murky. The Dolphins have till Might to resolve whether or not to train his fifth-year choice.
Will they signal Tagovailoa to a long-term extension after a 12 months by which he has proved he’s able to high-level play but additionally with sturdiness points a priority? Tagovailoa was thought-about an harm threat within the 2020 draft as a result of his faculty profession at Alabama ended when he took a sack and dislocated his proper hip, additionally fracturing its posterior wall, and suffered a concussion and a damaged nostril.
“You possibly can’t tie the cash to a participant you are undecided can keep wholesome,” an AFC exec informed ESPN. “If he did not have the medical historical past, possibly you assume more durable about doing one thing. The concussion dynamic is more durable to determine since I am undecided his medical on that.
“The Dolphins are in a troublesome spot, as a result of he is a superb participant however rather a lot like Kirk Cousins. When you give him good soccer gamers, he’ll be productive. When you ask him to go win a sport and put a crew on his again, that is asking rather a lot.”
Regardless of all of the hits in 2022, Nowinski, a neuroscientist who co-founded the Concussion Legacy Basis, stated he doesn’t think about Tagovailoa to be concussion-prone. He stated that is a subjective label given to individuals who have had a number of concussions over a few years. However he’s frightened that NFL groups would possibly label him that to justify paying him much less or not giving him as many alternatives.
“I am extremely involved that he’ll get that label, and never pretty,” Nowinski stated. “I might take a look at it as he had one concussion, which occurs. He then receives an improper analysis and care and obtained what’s both a second concussion or successful that exacerbated the primary. However both manner, it left him vulnerable for months to a future hit, inflicting one other concussion, extra vulnerable than he had been prior, which is, I feel, what we noticed.
“None of this was his fault. He is been enjoying soccer for a protracted, very long time and by no means had these points. … We have to give him time to correctly recuperate earlier than he needs to be given any labels.”
The NFL doesn’t share concussion monitoring info in the course of the season however offers harm information on the finish of every season. In 2021, there have been 187 reported concussions within the common and preseason mixed. This 12 months, the league has carried out three investigations into the appliance of concussion protocol — one with New England receiver DeVante Parker and two with Tagovailoa.
Tagovailoa’s agent is Leigh Steinberg, who for many years has represented the highest quarterbacks within the NFL, from Steve Younger to Mahomes. Steinberg is understood for being on the forefront of participant security in regard to mind accidents lengthy earlier than soccer acknowledged them. Steinberg was holding seminars to coach his gamers on the long-term results of concussions as early because the Nineties. He declined to remark for this story.
In an interview in November, Taulia Tagovailoa stated he was “actually nervous” to observe his brother play in his Week 7 return towards Pittsburgh. He did not understand how he’d play or transfer. However he stated Tua did not skip a beat, and that gave him consolation.
There are choices to be made by the Dolphins, and by Tagovailoa. He and his spouse, Annah, grew to become dad and mom this 12 months. When requested what was the distinction in his brother’s sport this season, Taulia cited chemistry, then thought of it some extra. The largest distinction, he stated, is that Tua has a son, and that motivates him and helps him block out all the pieces else.
“I feel his son actually modified his life,” Taulia stated. “When he comes house, it is greater than soccer. It is your son. You at all times wish to be good for him. You at all times need him to develop up and say, ‘That is my father.'”
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler contributed to this report.
