While the NFL is cautious about concussions and admits that healthy players can be removed from games if they appear to stumble, at least one team brought up during owners’ meetings last week the potential changes from roster adjustments. , according to a league source.
The concern stemmed from the removal of Dolphins quarterback Teddy Bridgewater from the game in Week 5 after observers believed they saw signs of ataxia, which was recently added to the league’s concussion protocol. Bridgewater passed the protocol but was not allowed to return to play, and rookie Skylar Thompson was the only remaining healthy quarterback for the Dolphins.
“It’s a process that will be an evolution,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said of the latest addition to the protocol on Tuesday.
The NFL allows teams to have 53 players on an active roster (with up to 16 players on their practice squad.) But teams are only allowed 46 active players on game day, and those inactive designations must be made 90 minutes before kick-off with no possibility of adapting afterwards.
The rules had been changed for the 2020 season due to a late positive COVID test, but today they are back to pre-COVID rules.
The NFL has long had game day inactive rules in place to protect against one team being more or less healthy than the other in an effort to even out the competition on any given game week. The league plans to err on the side of caution when it comes to possible head injuries, but the league also wasn’t shy last week in admitting how crucial the star quarterback’s play is to the general well-being of the match today.
The league wants to avoid two outcomes. First, he doesn’t want to see another incident like the chilling scene in “Thursday Night Football” where Tua Tagovailoa took the fencing stance after his sack against the Bengals. Concussions are an unfortunate part of the game, of course, and that’s why the NFL has tightened protocol.
But the league also doesn’t want to see games run by running backs or bottom-roster players. The Giants nearly faced it in Week 5 against the Packers when Daniel Jones left with an ankle injury and Tyrod Taylor came out with a concussion. The Dolphins were left with Thompson later in the day, although Bridgewater never showed any signs or symptoms of a concussion that day or the rest of the week.
