Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had a scary moment when he hit his head on the turf and came up seemingly dizzy, wobbling back down to the turf.
The quarterback was cleared to return for the second half and finished the game, but because of Tagovailoa’s fall, it seemed to surprise many.
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That prompted the NFLPA to begin an investigation into the league’s concussion protocols, which the Dolphins said they were “happy to comply with.”
Miami claimed that they followed protocol all along, and while the review will take at least another week to complete, early signs say that is the case.
“Every indication from our perspective is that it was,” NFL senior vice president Jeff Miller said via the Washington Post. “I know the player, the coach and others have spoken to this. And we are engaged in that review now. So, we’ll come back with a formal answer to that question, something that we want to engage in.”
While the assumption from the outside was Tagovailoa had suffered a concussion, he said he had actually hyperextended his back, causing him to fall.
“I kind of got my legs caught under someone, and they were trying to push back, and it kind of felt like I hyperextended my back or something,” Tagovailoa said. “Then on the next play, I kind of hit my back, it kind of hurt, and I got up, and that’s why I stumbled — my back kind of locked up on me.”
“Everyone was so worried about trying to talk to him through the lens of, ‘Hey, is there something wrong with your head?’ and he was (like), ‘No, I’m fine,'” Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel said on Monday. “And he was dealing with his back. He knew that he was losing his balance a little bit when he was getting up, but it was a completely different source of issue from what everyone else was really looking at from that prism.
“If he had a head issue, he wouldn’t have been back out there.”
Tagovailoa is listed as questionable for Thursday night against the Cincinnati Bengals with back and ankle soreness.
