On Thursday night, when the Miami Dolphins played against the Buffalo Bills, a gruesome and all-too-familiar scene unfolded: Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was sprinting toward the end zone and collided headfirst into a Bills defender. Tagovailoa went limp, his head bouncing off the field, his right arm swinging involuntarily upward, his fingers clawing at the air. He appeared dazed as he tried to get up. A few minutes later, he left the game with a concussion.
Tagovailoa has become something of a poster child for football’s concussion problem. Starting as a college senior, the 26-year-old has suffered at least four concussions in a five-year span. Most notably, he was carried off the field on a stretcher after hitting his head on the turf during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals in 2022, losing consciousness. He returned later that season, but suffered another concussion during a game against the Green Bay Packers. Following the 2022 season, Tagovailoa was I considered retiring.We looked at the long-term effects of repeated head trauma.
Since Thursday night, there have been growing calls for Tagovailoa to retire. “He’s going to outlive playing football. Take care of your family,” Las Vegas Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce said. He told reporters “This could have long-term impacts … for me, it’s time to move on,” Hall of Fame tight end turned announcer Tony Gonzalez said at a news conference. said Bills post-game broadcast: Concussion Personality changes, cognitive impairment, and psychiatric disordersIt may develop years or even decades after the trauma. Repeated trauma can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease accompanied by memory loss and depression that has been diagnosed in hundreds of patients. Former Player.
It remains to be seen whether Tagovailoa will return to the game, but what risks he faces by playing again. Four concussions seems like too many, but that’s just the beginning. Too many It’s hard. There’s no “magic number that says, after X number of concussions, you really have to stop,” Thomas McAllister, a traumatic brain injury expert at Indiana University School of Medicine, told me. Unfortunately, this also makes it impossible to know when a person has had too many concussions. Not everyone who has multiple concussions develops CTE, and some do so without even realizing they had a concussion.
Still, experts generally agree on a few principles, all of which point to the dangers of repeated blows. People who suffer multiple concussions in a relatively short period of time tend to recover longer from subsequent concussions. The usual short-term symptoms, such as headaches, nausea, and sensitivity to light, last longer than usual. Repeated concussions make you more susceptible to future concussions. Your brain becomes more sensitized, and with each blow, the force needed to cause a concussion becomes smaller.
Other than that, there are few certainties. The harder you get hit, the more likely you are to have a concussion, but different people react differently to the same hit. Typically, a concussion occurs with an impact of 90 to 100 g. “If you get an 80 g concussion, you might go down. Or you might bounce right back up and go back to your normal activities,” says McAllister. One reason for this variability is that a small hit before a match “primes” the brain for a concussion, so that the next big hit could be the “final blow.”
Early data from McAllister’s ongoing research suggests that people likely have different thresholds for tolerating repeated concussions. (He co-leads the world’s largest concussion study, involving more than 53,000 college athletes and military cadets.) Some people may be able to tolerate higher repetitions and recover quickly each time. The problem, McAllister said, is that “we can’t say for sure that this is what’s going to push you to your limit.”
Number of concussions may not be important in predicting long-term damage: NFL player study Published last year Symptoms experienced immediately after a concussion, particularly loss of consciousness, have been suggested to be a better predictor of future cognitive decline than the number of diagnosed concussions. Some researchers suggest that, in rare cases, a concussion occurring before a previous concussion has subsided may be associated with a higher risk of cognitive decline. Second Impact SyndromeSerious Can cause nerve damage and death.
Experts must rely on certain indicators to determine if a concussion has increased the risk of permanent damage. Warning signs include when concussions occur more frequently and with less associated stimuli, and when longer intervals are required for a person to return to baseline. Regular neurocognitive testingMcAllister told me that all the data supports the importance of having standardized evaluations and waiting periods before allowing players back on the field. The NFL’s concussion protocol includes dictations for when players should be taken off the field, how long they should be monitored, and what tests they must pass to play full time.
There’s no question that repeated concussions are harmful. The problem for Tagovailoa, and for the future of the NFL, is that it’s impossible to quantify how damaging concussions are. If only the league placed strict limits on the number of concussions a player could suffer in any given period, Tagovailoa’s choice would be much easier. But concussions aren’t like that. Rather, they are highly individualized, and their effects are inseparable from a player’s history and biology. As long as there are many unknowns about concussions, players will be in Tagovailoa’s position, weighing their careers against the rest of their lives.
