Reaction to Tua Tagovailoa Injury Both Right and Overblown: All Things CW

A slightly different take on Tua Tagovailoa's injury, a former Alabama player is a top candidate to become an NFL head coach, and 5 things that got our attention this week:

This week, BamaCentral is breaking apart the All Things CW notes column by Christopher Walsh into five parts, one each day leading up to Saturday's game at Arkansas. This is ...

Take 5

There was plenty of frustration and outrage expressed on social media on Thursday night about the injury Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa took in the second quarter, which landed him in the hospital with head and neck injuries. 

Thankfully, he was discharged and heading home with the team, but Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel correctly called it "a scary moment" during his postgame press conference. 

The knee-jerk reaction, of course, was that the Dolphins mishandled the situation, didn't care about their quarterback and acted irresponsibly. Remember, this is the organization that recently forfeited two draft picks and owner Stephen Ross was suspended and fined $1.5 million for trying to skirt the rules.

Don't make that assumption. 

Not even a doctor should make that leap without knowing all the facts, or being privy to the medical details on the quarterback. 

Granted, it looked bad, and came just four days after the former Alabama Crimson Tide standout suffered a back injury against the Bills. He left that game in the second quarter and reportedly cleared concussion protocol, so he returned to the field. Afterward, the quarterback told reporters his back “locked up” after the hit, causing him to stumble.

That little detail was being ignored by those lashing out. 

Tagovailoa was also considered questionable to start up until about two hours before kickoff on Thursday, which seems consistent with a back injury. 

Now if it does come out that Tagovailoa did suffer a concussion against the Bills, and the Dolphins swept it under the rug, the entire coaching, training, medical and personnel staff should all be fired and never allowed to work in sports again. The ownership should also be stripped of the team.

The number of lawsuits resulting from that would be staggering.

So it was important to note what McDaniel said after the loss to the Bengals. 

The coach was asked point-blank by Sun Sentinel beat reporter David Furones if he could say with 100 percent certainty that Tagovailoa did not suffer a concussion or other head injury against Buffalo. His answer was yes.

McDaniel was also asked if there was anything in hindsight that he would have done or could have done differently after the injury against the Bills?

“Absolutely not," he said. "If I would have, that would be irresponsible in the first place and I shouldn't be in this position."

Mike McDaniel gives update on Tua🙏 pic.twitter.com/OSIbDRyC8k

— CBS Sports HQ (@CBSSportsHQ) September 30, 2022

Give the coach the benefit of doubt, and Tagovailoa as well. If something was indeed amiss, the truth will eventually come out. Moreover, McDaniel didn't do the equivalent of a Bill Belichick stiff-arm with the media regarding the status of his quarterback. 

He came across as believable and genuinely concerned even though it was just his fourth game as an NFL head coach.  

"Every single NFL game that is played, there's an independent specialist that specializes in the specialty of brain matter," McDaniel said. "So yeah, for me, as long as I'm coaching here, I'm not going to fudge that whole situation if there's any sort of inclination that someone has a concussion, they go into the concussion protocol. It's very strict. People don't very or stray. We don't mess with that. I never have and as long as I'm the head coach, it will never be an issue that you guys have to worry about."

What fans and everyone else should be questioning is why the league continues to play Thursday night games just four days after most of the teams play on Sunday. 

Granted, it's a pure money grab, and the league doesn't want to schedule opposite high school (Friday) and college (Saturday) games, but at some point the well-being of the players has to come into play.

It's just not enough time for teams to adequately prepare physically, mentally or emotionally. 

5 Things That Got Our Attention This Week 

1) CFP Meetings:

Per Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated, the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick met for about 10 hours over two days at the Big Ten headquarters outside of Chicago. CFP executive director Bill Hancock said the group “made progress” toward the end goal—expanding the College Football Playoff by 2024—but no specifics, answers or details were provided. No final decisions were made (or at least they weren’t made public).

“Earlier is icing on the cake. We’re going to have our cake in 2026,” Hancock said. “Can we ice it now and start earlier? That’s what we’re working on now.”

Commissioners next meet in Dallas on Oct. 20, which some believe is a deadline of sorts to determine whether expansion can happen before the current TV contract expires after the 2025 season

2) New Ole Miss Helmet: 

The Rebels have drawn a lot of attention with their new helmet that looks like something the Houston Oilers wore to a paintball-gun ambush, but not because of the design.

The camo-blue helmet also has the Realtree logo on the side. Per the Sports Business Journal, there's no rule against that ... yet. 

"We examined NCAA equipment rules related to competition to ensure we were compliant," Ole Miss athletic director Joseph Keith Carter said. "This included no logos on the actual equipment worn on gameday as opposed to what was shared in our marketing assets." 

The first batch of camo apparel sold out online in 12 hours, according to Dyehard. 

Realtree

3) Potential Ole Miss Blues: 

Speculation is growing that Lane Kiffin is getting frustrated in Oxford. He'd previously vented about how the transfer rules were like free agency that would only benefit the biggest programs, and how unchecked NIL rules does the same.

Now his focus is on the Ole Miss student body, which is still trying to make sure it wins the tailgate.  

During Saturday's win over Tulsa, which had an announced attendance of just 60,641, the student section was virtually empty after halftime. It's become a regular thing. 

"When you come back out, run out of the tunnel and it looks like a high school game playing in a college stadium, you can't let that affect you," Kiffin said on Monday. 

Ouch. 

He continued: "There's psychology to that obviously. There's home-field advantage for a reason. When it goes the other way, you kind of have that feeling that, 'Man, are we still really playing in a game here?' The players have to fight that. We use that as a learning lesson for our guys. If that's the case, that's the case. I'm worried about what I can control. I've tried social media in here for two years. We'll worry about what we can control and that's getting our players ready to play."

Just thinking out loud, but Jimmy Sexton is Kiffin's agent, and Juice, his dog, could have a really big back yard in, say, Nebraska. 

4) NIL Advantages

Pay attention to this quote by an unnamed SEC recruiter to Jeremy Crabtree of On3 on how NIL is influencing recruiting:

“The sands are shifting. NIL isn’t just a recruiting pitch anymore. It’s a retainer. It’s a salary. Most originally thought you’d just have to focus on telling recruits, ‘This is what you can potentially get from NIL if you come here.’ Now it’s just as important to tell your players that you have a collective that will take care of them before they hop in the Transfer Portal.” 

Added a Pac-12 recruiter: “The Transfer Portal is the NIL battlefield that nobody is really talking about. You can try to win that battle by keeping your roster together through NIL compensation.”

With school after school having its own collective, though, NIL is arguably becoming less important because the small financial differences are being outweighed by other factors, like preparing players for the NFL. 

In other words, the rich are getting richer. What else is new?  

5) Gratuitous Book Plug

The best advice my late friend Pedro Gomez (former ESPN baseball guru) gave me was after I stopped covering Major League Baseball, and living in Wisconsin as a Packers beat writer. Green Bay was getting ready to host San Francisco, and he told me to drop my rule of not going out the night before covering a game and find the man they call Z, Michael Zagaris.

A quick explanation. This was roughly 20 years ago and since there wasn't a hotel big enough in Green Bay to accommodate any NFL teams they all stayed in Appleton, almost 30 minutes to the south. The home of Lawrence University, the main thoroughfare where the hotel was located is known for one thing especially: Bars. 

It didn't take long to find him. Pedro told me to drop his name, buy Z a beverage of his choice, get him talking, and then kick my feet up and listen. Why? Because in addition to being the 49ers' team photographer, he had shot many top musicians including The Grateful Dead, The Clash, Blondie, The Who and Tom Petty.  

He told me things about The Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd that made my jaw drop (and Z, if you're reading this, you swore me to secrecy and I've kept my word). 

Zagaris has done a new book Field of Play, which will be published on Tuesday. It includes photos of some former Crimson Tide greats like Joe Namath and Ken Stabler, but many of the anecdotes are just as good as the stellar shots. 

Per the article that appeared in the October 2022 issue of SI, one of the best ones involves Joe Montana, who was at the time being dogged by rumors of cocaine use. At the airport in Denver, in 1985, the quarterback saw Zagaris and playfully chucked a snowball at him. Zagaris ducked and fired back, “Exhibit A!” After getting the picture, of course.

I'm happy to finally return the favor from two great nights of storytelling. It just so happened the 49ers came back three years later, and I knew exactly where to find him ... 

Tide-Bits

• Conor Orr's The NFL’s Top Head Coaching Candidates for 2023 has a familiar name listed second among approximately 60 names, former Alabama linebacker DeMeco Ryans, the impressive defensive coordinator of the 49ers. “DeMeco is going to be a head coach," Kyle Shanahan said. "He’s too good not to be, whether it’s this year, whether it’s next year, whether it’s anytime.”

• When you start looking at the fallout from Tagovailoa's injury, start here: Tua Tagovailoa’s Injury Makes It Complicated to Love the NFL.

• Five Teams Who Passed on Jalen Hurts in 2020. Yeah, we're looking at you Steelers and Seahawks. 

Did You Notice?

• Going back to Prime Time at Jackson State, Deion Sanders was connected to the TCU job last season, and his name is being floating for Auburn should Bryan Harsin get the ax as many expect, although that seems pretty unlikely. Georgia Tech, though, would be interesting, especially since the two-sport star is considered an Atlanta Braves legend.  

“It’s nice to be mentioned,” Sanders said during a recent appearance on The Rich Eisen Show. “… So you’re saying a guy can come from HBCUs and coach at a higher level, but a quarterback shouldn’t be considered at the next level. I don’t know how that works.

“…If I were to go to the next level, you don’t think the quarterback is going to the next level? … What I’m saying is that it is just funny you say I’m good enough and my name is being tossed and hit around like a fastball to [Aaron] Judge. I like that, though. I like that thought process.”

The quarterback who Sanders is failing to mention is his son Shedeur Sanders, whom he's also touting as a Heisman Trophy candidate.  

• Why an Air Force Infractions Case Could Be Key to Speedier NCAA Resolutions

• This stuff is getting serious: Northwestern Shares Plans for New $800 Million Football Stadium

Christopher Walsh's notes column All Things CW appears every week on BamaCentral.

See Also:

Take 1: Third-Down Numbers a Real Reason for Optimism with Alabama Offense, Bryce Young

Take 2: It's Time for SEC Schools to Seriously Consider Scheduling HBCU Opponents: All Things CW

Take 3: 2022-23 Could be a Banner Year for Alabama Women's Sports

Take 4: Yes, Things Can Get Worse for Arkansas, Tennessee Against Alabama