Opinion | The aftershocks of the Tua Tagovailoa saga were felt leaguewide on NFL Sunday

The reverberations from the Tua Tagovailoa controversy continue to be felt across the NFL. And they won’t be ending soon.

By coincidence, the Buffalo Bills, the team that caused Tagovailoa’s initial injury the previous week, became one of the first teams on Sunday to experience just how jumpy the NFL suddenly is when it comes to head injuries.

Trailing Baltimore 20-13 early in the second half, Bills receiver Isaiah McKenzie was hit hard by Ravens defensive back Chuck Clark and briefly lay stunned on the field. A few moments later, McKenzie was feeling well enough to jog off the field without assistance to be examined by an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant, and soon after was ruled ineligible to return to the game because of a head injury.

Safety first, right? But there was clearly a stark difference between that incident and the Tagovailoa situation that has caused such consternation across the NFL and the football industry.

In that episode, Tagovailoa was thrown violently to the turf by Buffalo linebacker Matt Milano and hit his head. When he got up, he was appeared stunned like a boxer who had absorbed a haymaker, and twice stumbled before taking a knee. After being examined by a neurotrauma expert, however, he was allowed to return to finish the game. The Dolphins claimed he had a “back injury.”

That entire incident became even more controversial four days later when Tagovailoa was cleared to play against Cincinnati, then was hit hard again and lay on the field for 12 minutes before being carried off. He was later diagnosed with a concussion.

Outrage followed. The consultant involved in the decision to let the 24-year-old Miami quarterback back into the Buffalo game was fired, and the league and players union vowed there would be an investigation and changes to the NFL’s concussion protocol. The way in which the McKenzie injury was handled seven days after the initial Tagovailoa injury was dealt with clearly demonstrated just how sensitive, perhaps for legal reasons, the league now is to criticism that it doesn’t put the welfare of players first.

On NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” former NFL safety Rodney Harrison spoke passionately about the dangers of head injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Given that it was a national broadcast by a rightsholder, they were remarkably frank comments critical of the NFL.

“I would get hit, the entire stadium would be spinning around, and I would go back into the game,” said Harrison. “It’s not worth it, and I would implore these young men: Don’t go back on the football field if you get hurt, because I don’t want them to feel like me and so many other former players that had to deal with concussions. Whether its depression, anxiety, paranoia, broken relationships, not being able to communicate with your spouse and things like that. CTE takes you to a dark place and I want these players to know it’s not worth it.

“Please take care of yourself. Don’t depend on the NFL. Don’t depend on anybody. If something’s wrong with your head, report it.”

Tagovailoa remains on the injured list, and his ability to return to play this season will be closely scrutinized. The Bills, meanwhile, spent the first half on Sunday looking like they were still woozy themselves from a shocking loss in the heat of South Florida a week earlier.

The Bills fell behind 20-3 after turning the ball over on two of their first three possessions. But a drive late in the second quarter culminated with a short touchdown pass from Josh Allen to McKenzie with nine seconds left before halftime and gave the visitors life.

After losing McKenzie to the head injury in the third quarter, the Bills managed to finish that drive with a major on Allen’s bootleg run, outsprinting Ravens linebacker Patrick Queen to the end zone to tie the game 20-20.

The game came down to the final minutes, which included some questionable decisions by the Ravens. First, after a nine-minute drive had them facing fourth-and-goal from Buffalo’s three-yard line, Baltimore coach John Harbaugh decided to go for the touchdown rather than a kick the easy go-ahead field goal.

“I like to attack. I like that (Harbaugh) likes to attack, too,” said Baltimore tight end Mark Andrews.

The attack failed. A backpedalling Lamar Jackson threw a wounded duck into the end zone, where it was intercepted by Bills defensive back Jordan Poyer with 4:09 left.

“Hindsight, you take the points,” Harbaugh said afterward.

Allen led the Bills down the field to Baltimore’s 11-yard-line. Buffalo running back Devin Singletary took a handoff and headed for the end zone. Clearly, some Baltimore defenders had decided to let Singletary score unimpeded in order to get the ball back in the hands of Jackson and the Baltimore offence as quickly as possible. But second-year defensive lineman Odafe Oweh obviously didn’t get the memo and tackled Singletary at the two-yard line.

That gave Buffalo a first down and allowed the Bills to kill the clock, with Allen taking a knee three times before the Bills kicked the winning field goal to escape with a 23-20 victory.

“Those are the games that you love winning,” said Allen.

A week after a game in Miami that simultaneously rattled the NFL and seemed to reveal vulnerabilities in Buffalo’s highly touted squad, the Bills confronted both issues and reasserted themselves as a Super Bowl favourite.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin

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