Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa has “officially” been diagnosed with 3 concussions over his career. “Concussion”. Simply a nice, wholesome and technical sounding word for a “brain bruise”, “brain bleeding”, or “the easiest path to possibly becoming a living vegetable”.
Those are the concussions we, and he, publicly know about. There is not one single doubt in the mind of medical professionals that in reviewing his career, from high school to college to the NFL, his brain has been dinged more times than that. Each beating has the potential to maim, cripple, incapacitate, and lead to an early and painful death. Don’t even try to argue the science that has been public for decades.
Yet Tagovailoa, yet another member of the macho nonsense “He Man” football club, has decided that he will return to NFL play this season, despite spending several weeks on the band-aid called “Concussion Protocol” the League throws around to make it seem as if they give a spit about the health and welfare of their athletes. Everyone knows that in the end, save for the precious and well-protected signal callers who are shielded due to their ability to throw touchdown passes and sell plenty of tickets and replica jerseys, every player is replaceable and disposable.
Thanks to medical professionals who haven’t been willing to just conveniently shut up and allow the NFL to get away with their cavalier attitude on player health, Tagovailoa and others have a chance to not only minimize the potential damage, but perhaps even save their lives in the process.
Yet the vast majority refuse to even consider it, as it would be a blow to their macho football nonsense. Not that this is very surprising.
In a league where speed, strength, and strategy define greatness, it’s no wonder that NFL players often view themselves as invincible. The NFL, America’s gladiator arena, is a spectacle of bone-crushing hits, last-second touchdowns, and battles that leave players limping off the field in defeat and victory.
But what happens when that invincibility is an illusion? What happens when the very thing these players use to think, process, and strategize, their brains, starts to disintegrate? Enter the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) epidemic, a well-documented, devastating condition caused by repeated head trauma.
Yet, despite countless warnings, some NFL players still refuse to wear the Guardian Cap, a protective helmet cover designed to reduce head injuries.
Let’s call it what it is: a short-sighted, reckless, and frankly, stupid decision that’s setting them up for a future potentially filled with confusion, memory loss, mental deterioration, ending with a very painful and often public decline into death. It’s like these players are standing on train tracks, hearing the whistle of an oncoming train, and deciding to stand still because moving out of the way would be too much of a hassle.
The medical and scientific communities have spoken, so many times that players and fans are either immune to the warning sounds or refuse to hear them, as they would impair their ability to be part of the spectacle. CTE is real, and it’s killing athletes slowly from the inside out.
This neurodegenerative disease, first discovered in boxers in the 1920s, found its infamous resurgence when Dr. Bennet Omalu published his groundbreaking study on former NFL player Mike Webster in 2005. Webster, a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, was posthumously diagnosed with CTE, and his tragic decline was shocking. By the end of his life, Webster had lost control of his mind, body, and finances, suffering from severe depression, dementia, and homelessness. He was 50 years of age.
Football, the decisions Webster made and the ones made for him by a sport covering up the possibility of brain damage, in the end, killed him.
Studies show that CTE results from repeated head trauma, which is exactly what happens every single day during NFL practices and games. These aren’t just concussions. The danger comes from sub-concussive blows, the seemingly innocuous hits that accumulate over time and slowly degrade brain tissue. Research conducted by Boston University has found that over 90% of former NFL players studied had signs of CTE.
Let that sink in: 90%. That’s not a risk. It’s almost a guarantee.
In light of these staggering facts, one would think that NFL players would leap at the chance to wear something like the Guardian Cap, a soft-shell helmet cover that reduces the impact of head collisions by up to 20% during practices. But many players have refused.
Why? Because it doesn’t look cool? Because they think they’ll be perceived as weak? If that’s the case, then these players should be more worried about how weak they’ll look when they’re unable to hold a conversation with their children in 20 years.
The NFL isn’t off the hook, either. For decades, the league has treated concussions and head injuries like a minor inconvenience rather than a ticking time bomb. Before the 2000s, concussions were seen as part of the game, something players were expected to “shake off.” Team doctors routinely cleared players to return to the field, often without proper medical evaluation. The league’s official stance was essentially that concussions didn’t cause long-term brain damage. They stuck to that narrative until 2016—yes, 2016—when the NFL finally acknowledged a link between football and CTE after years of denial and cover-ups.
It wasn't long after that those doing the research blew the whistle on the NFL for doing everything they could to cover-up findings of the CTE research. One can only wonder how many lives that delay cost.
For a league that generates billions of dollars in revenue annually, it’s outrageous that it took over a decade of lawsuits, scientific studies, and high-profile player deaths to admit the truth. Even today, while the NFL has made some improvements, like the introduction of concussion protocols and penalties for helmet-to-helmet hits, it still hasn’t done enough. The Guardian Cap is one such small step, but its use is limited to practices and optional for players in games.
Remember that word, “optional”, which means players are free to ignore it if they don’t want to look like a “dork” or something namby-pamby weak in front of their teammates and fans.
Here’s where it gets infuriating:. These athletes, despite all the warnings, despite the research, despite seeing former players suffer and die from CTE, are choosing to gamble with their lives. When we think of some of the NFL’s most heartbreaking CTE cases, such as Junior Seau, who committed suicide at 43, or the cold-blooded murderer Aaron Hernandez, whose autopsy revealed one of the most severe cases of CTE ever seen in someone his age, it’s hard to understand why today’s players wouldn’t take every precaution to protect their brains.
Players often argue that football is inherently dangerous, and no amount of padding or rules can make it 100% safe. And yes, they’re correct. It is dangerous. But the Guardian Cap isn’t designed to make football safe. It’s designed to make it safer. It’s a layer of protection that reduces the number of sub-concussive hits, which means fewer players walking off the field with invisible brain damage and a one-way ticket to their own potential demise.
Wearing the Guardian Cap during practice should be a no-brainer, pun fully intended. Most concussions don’t happen during the high-speed collisions of game day but rather in the mundane grind of practices. NFL teams practice for hours every week, and every hit counts. Reducing the impact of those hits by 10-20% doesn’t seem like much, but over time, it adds up to fewer damaged brain cells and, ultimately, fewer players suffering from CTE later in life.
So why aren’t more players wearing it? Is it because they believe their brain is somehow immune to the forces of physics? Is it a misplaced sense of invincibility, or just stubbornness? Either way, it’s a dangerous game, and the only prize for “winning” is potentially living out the rest of your life as a CTE-ravaged shell of your former self.
The NFL has dragged its feet long enough when it comes to player safety. And while the league has made some progress, the onus now falls on the players themselves. They know the risks. The science is undeniable. The Guardian Cap won’t eliminate those risks, but it will reduce them.
In a sport where every little bit of protection counts, refusing to wear it is nothing short of reckless and a level of sheer stupidity not faced since someone thought of playing Russian Roulette with 5 of the 6 chambers loaded.
NFL players need to stop being their own worst enemies and start taking their long-term health seriously, or they’ll find out too late that looking “cool” today might cost them their minds tomorrow.
In the press conference announcing his return to the playing field, Tagovailoa stated, “I love this game and I love it to the death of me”.
While every person gets to make their own choices, we can still shake our heads and tragically marvel at someone graced with such talent being so inherently and casually foolish.
For parents of young football players, the athletes of every age, and those who turn a blind eye to the dangers and potential death, don't be Tua Tagovailoa.
Don't be stupid.
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