Ep. 683 - The NFL and the Miami Dolphins failed Tua Tagovailoa - and it could've cost him his life

The Breakdown with Shaun King

The North Star

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 12.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In professional sports, it's the job of the team, and of the league, to sometimes protect players from themselves. Their sheer determination to play, and sometimes play injured, can be so strong, that it's up to coaches, medical staff, and league policies to protect players from making bad medical decisions for themselves in the heat of a moment.

And that's exactly what just happened to Miami Dolphin quarterback Tua Tagovailoa - who clearly got a concussion (which is a traumatic brain injury) this past Sunday, and was allowed to keep playing. And instead of sitting him out and allowing his brain and body to heal, they rushed him back out to a game last night, where his head hit the ground, and clearly caused an even more severe injury to his brain.

He's lucky to survive it, but heads need to roll. At least a dozen different people on the team, including their head coach, their GM, and the medical staff for the team all failed to protect this man.

The thing is, the NFL - and the Dolphins in particular - are dirty - and have a history of doing players wrong - so I have very little confidence that anything will happen here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	He sat there doing all this financial modeling and I love doing stuff like that by the way.
0:05.7	I actually love sitting there and working out.
0:08.0	Is everything going to be okay?
0:10.0	It is so rewarding when you get to that point where the business has finally turned around.
0:18.0	Sage empowers finance professionals like Kat to feel more rewarded,
0:22.0	with helpful business tools and advice from real experts.
0:26.0	Sage helping business flow.
0:30.0	Both the NFL and the Miami Dauphans need to be held fully accountable.
0:37.0	What appears to really be a traumatic brain injury suffered by Miami Dauphan quarterback
0:43.0	Tuataka Valoa and I was watching the game with my son on Sunday when he clearly got a concussion
0:52.0	and struggled to get back up on his feet, fell down and was holding his head.
0:58.0	Everyone who saw it knew that he was concussed and was shocked when he came back into the game.
1:05.0	Clearly the coach and the medical staff did not protect Tuat from himself.
1:12.0	Only to have him come back and play four days later didn't even have what you would typically need
1:18.0	for someone suffering from a concussion which is sometimes a week or weeks to recover
1:23.0	and was rushed back into a game last night where he suffered an even worse concussion
1:31.0	and some type of traumatic brain or spinal injury.
1:36.0	That's what a concussion is and that's why I'm calling it a traumatic brain injury.
1:41.0	People keep talking about he had his bell rang just to be clear where humans we don't have bells.
1:47.0	Your bell that we're talking about is your brain.
1:51.0	And after rushing this man back out after he clearly had a concussion,
1:55.0	he got a second concussion in a four day period which can be fatal
	...

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