Concussions have been a major focus for the National Football League in the past two or three years. It has upped the ante on head injuries with rule changes and adding spotters and non-team specific neurologists on the sidelines.
However, even the increased ability to identify concussions by those people doesn’t mean concussed players aren’t still playing games.
Cam Newton appeared to be concussed early on in the season, but was never removed for the game. It appears a technology glitch was partly at fault for spotters not seeing the issue, but there appears to still be a larger issue at hand.
That issue is of players refusing to self-report concussion symptoms.
Jordan Reed of the Washington Redskins is a perfect example of the work still needed to be done. That’s because Reed admitted to hiding a concussion from doctors and others in Week 5 of the season.
“I got hit in the back of the head,” Reed said, via the Washington Post. “I kinda kept it to myself. I had a feeling. I was feeling it throughout the game, but I kept playing. … Had a pretty bad headache. The next day, I was feeling all right, then I was doing some exercises and I started to feel it worse.”
There clearly needs to be changes within the culture of players regarding head injuries.
How is the league supposed to protect players who won’t even admit to head injuries and work to hide them from officials and medical personnel on the sideline?
At some point, the NFLPA needs to make it clear that its players need to stop with the machoness and start to take head injuries seriously.
It is clear concussions have potential life-long consequences, yet players still are looking to hide them from those who are there to protect and help them?
In Reed’s case, he couldn’t hide for long and was eventually ruled out of last week’s matchup.
What is even more troubling is that Reed has suffered multiple concussions (five at last count) and still tries to play through them and hide them?
It’s that culture that needs to stop if the league is going to get concussion issues under serious control.
