MIAMI — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has been ruled out for Sunday’s game at the New York Jets.
Tagovailoa, who suffered a concussion last Thursday at Cincinnati when he took a scary sack from Bengals defensive tackle Josh Tupou, was stretchered off the field and immediately taken to the hospital. He flew back to South Florida with the team that night.
The additional MRI that Tagovailoa underwent Friday afternoon came back clean, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Monday.
McDaniel said he still does not have a timeline of Tagovailoa’s return, or whether the team will place him on injured reserve.
“Right now he’s in the building," McDaniel said. “He’s had a couple good days, but he’s just trying to go through with the proper procedure and protocol so that he’s feeling 100 percent. I know he’s going to be diligent with it.”
The NFL Players Association fired the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant who evaluated Tagovailoa after he stumbled off the field against Buffalo Bills on Sunday, Sept. 25., a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press.
The two hits that Tagovailoa suffered against the Bengals and Bills remains unknown whether there’s any correlation between the two injuries, but concussions are common in the NFL, especially when a player is thrown to the ground his head hits the turf.
Chris Nowinski, a founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation who played football at Harvard, is adamant Tagovailoa sustained a concussion against Buffalo and shouldn’t have played at Cincinnati.
“Tua showed five distinct signs of concussion,” Nowinski told The Associated Press. “Anybody who has any training on concussions or cares about Tua as a human is not putting him on field four days after what he showed on Sunday, so this makes it so much worse because we know that this could be career-ending or season-ending. It should be season-ending, in my opinion. And it just shows just a lack of care for him as a human being.”
All players who undergo any concussion evaluation on game day must have a follow-up evaluation conducted the following day by a member of the medical staff. Sills said Tagovailoa was evaluated every day leading up to the game, even though he wasn’t in concussion protocol.
