Posts about NFL
Zak Keefer Aug 14, 2023 48
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. โ Ninety-five days beforeย?Damar Hamlinย?collapsed on the same yard line on the same field,ย?Tua Tagovailoaย?was thrown to the turf at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati. His elbow slammed down first, then his back, then finally his helmet ricocheting off the field and leaving him unconscious.
It was a legal play with a vicious consequence, a horrifying scene similar to the one that played out three months later. An uneasy silence swept over the stadium while a stretcher team hurried onto the field. Players knelt. Players prayed. Theย?Miami Dolphinsย?quarterback lay on his back, eyes shut, arms up, fingers frozen and darting out every which way, an immediate and obvious sign heโd suffered a traumatic brain injury.
That night, and the events that preceded it, would foment theย?NFLโs concussion debate, cost a neurotraumatic consultant his job, earn the Dolphins and coach Mike McDaniel mountains of criticism and push the league to rewrite its concussion policy within nine days.
It also spurred the 24-year-old Tagovailoa to start questioning his career. After another concussion in late December ended his season, it took him more than a month to clear the leagueโs protocol. While he waited, some of those closest to him urged him to walk away.
But โฆ quit now? At 24? After finishing the season with the highest passer rating in football? Leave behind the fastest receiver room in the league and the coach who had made it his personal mission to convince everyone in the building โ from the team owner to Tagovailoa himself โ that the QB couldย?stillย?be the player everyone envisioned heโd be when he delivered Alabama a national championship at 19 years old?
No. Tagovailoa couldnโt leave. Because of all that, and because heโs always envisioned playing long enough so his infant son, Ace, could remember watching him.
With that decision, the stakes for Tagovailoaโs 2023 season crystallized: No player in football has more on the line this fall. The coming months will set the course for the next stage of his career โ or they will end it.
Stay on the field, something the quarterback has yet to do in any of his three seasons, and the title-hungry Dolphins have a chance to win it all, with a nine-figure extension on deck for him when itโs over. Donโt, and Miamiโs likely looking for a new quarterback next spring.
Tagovailoa began his road back by watching replays of the hits that left him weighing his future. Haunting as they were to relive, he scoured the film for commonalities, asking himself what, if anything, he could have done differently.
The Dolphinsโ staff spent the winter poring through the plays, too. Every sack. Every fall. Every concussion. Around the same time, they came to Tagovailoa with an idea, something that took him by surprise.
He went home, opened his laptop and Googled, โjiu-jitsu falling.โ
โWait a minute โฆ what?โ
That was Skyler Thompsonโs initial reaction. It was late April. The Dolphins were back in town for the start of offseason workouts, and the coaches were telling all three quarterbacks they were going to start teaching them how to โฆ fall differently.
They mentioned some new drills. They mentioned them being based on jiu-jitsu. And they mentioned something about redistributing their weight before they hit the ground.
โHonestly, I didnโt even know what jiu-jitsu was,โ Thompson says three months later. โLike, I watch UFC and stuff. But this? I didnโt know a thing about this stuff.โ
Neither did Tagovailoa. Not at first. But after the coaches approached him with the idea after the season, he dug in.
In jiu-jitsu, as in many martial arts, falling is a skill honed with repetition. One maneuver includes using the arms โ not the wrists โ to brace for impact, which reduces force on the back and neck. Others include continuing momentum into another move; say, a somersault. Each is designed to keep the head from whipping backward.
โThere is absolutely something to the idea of using your body mechanics to help you in those situations instead of hurt you,โ says Dr. Walavan Sivakumar, director of neurovascular surgery at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Los Angeles. โYes, you can lessen the impact.โ
With so much riding on this season, and his on-field availability central to the Dolphinsโ Super Bowl hopes โ not to mention his long-term viability as a franchise quarterback โ Tagovailoa was willing to try anything. โWhatever keeps me on the field,โ he told himself.
Thus he was in jiu-jitsu class every Friday during the offseason, retraining his body to fall in ways that better protect his head. He repped from every conceivable position, mimicking being tackled from straight on, from the blind side, high, low. Often, his instructor would lift him completely off the ground, then slam him to the mat.
โYo,โ Tagovailoa said at one point, โif a defensive player does this, heโs getting fined and kicked out of the game.โ
๐ท Tagovailoa passed for a career-high 25 touchdowns over 13 games in 2022, leading the Dolphins to an 8-5 record in games he started. (Eric Espada / Getty Images)
By April, Dolphins coaches were introducing techniques to the entire quarterback room. First, they had Tagovailoa, Thompson andย?Mike Whitepractice the falls at walk-through pace. Gradually, they upped the tempo, added helmets and tested the QBs on rollouts from the pocket. After they launched a throw downfield, a trainer would slam into them with a body-sized pad; it was up to the QBs to protect themselves on the way down.
For a while, Tagovailoa was the only one who knew what he was doing. After heโd get hit, heโd tuck his chin to his chest, then brace himself with his arms to redistribute his momentum and โ ideally โ prevent his head from snapping backward.
Thatโs what cost him so often in 2022. A fall against theย?Billsย?in Week 3 left him wobbly and stumbling back to the ground a moment later. (โA back injury,โ the Dolphins called it.) The sack four days later in Cincinnati knocked him unconscious and left his fingers locked up, a common concussion response known as fencing. The Christmas Day fall against theย?Packersย?caused his body weight to crash forward and his head, once again, to slam against the grass.
What stood out most to Tagovailoa when he watched the replays? The tackles were legal, largely routine. Itโs what happened as he fell that cost him.
โIt wasnโt anyone really hitting my head,โ Tagovailoa says. โIt was really just the ground.โ
The jiu-jitsu maneuvers arenโt perfect and wonโt remove the inherent risk that comes with playing quarterback in the NFL. But if executed, some experts believe, they could ease the severity of the shots Tagovailoaโs taken in the past.
โYouโre not taking the impact away,โ Thompson points out, โbut you are sort of moving it, if that makes sense.โ
It makes plenty of sense to those in the jiu-jitsu community, which is applauding Tagovailoaโs willingness to embrace the techniques. Ricardo Liborio, a master black belt and former world champion based in Florida, has spent decades instructing professional athletes โ Australian rugby players,ย?NHLplayers, even a few in the NFL. One of his former pupils was longtimeย?Steelerslinebacker LaMarr Woodley, who grew into such a staunch believer in jiu-jitsu he bought a condo in Boca Raton, minutes from Liborioโs studio, so he could train with him every offseason.
Tagovailoa wanted to turn devastating falls into more routine falls. If he could retrain his body to respond differently in those critical moments, heโd at least have a chance. โIn my opinion, 100 percent, this can save his career,โ Liborio says.
โItโs literally the smartest thing he could have done at this point,โ adds Jessica Aguilar, a black belt whoโs spent years studying under Liborio.
Dr. Theo Versteegh has spent two decades as a physiotherapist, focusing on neck pain, neck training and concussion mitigation. His research tells him that โmuscles will respond very specifically to the type of training we expose them to,โ even within the ridiculously tight windows NFL quarterbacks operate in. With enough repetition, Versteegh believes, there is at least a chance Tagovailoaโs body will instinctually lean on the techniques heโs been drilling the past six months.
In other words, muscle memoryย?mightย?save his brain from another season-ending shot. โThose millisecond decisions can make a huge difference,โ says Sivakumar, the neurovascular surgeon.
โControlling your fall is never going to eliminate the risk of concussion,โ says Dr. Vernon Williams, a sports neurologist whoโs worked with theย?Los Angeles Ramsย?and as a consultant for the NFLPA. โBut is it off base to conclude that you can reduce your chances to some extent? No, I donโt think it is. I think thatโs within the realm of possibility.โ
Tagovailoa knows the hits are coming. That he canโt control. What he can is how his body reacts, and though he admits it would likely take โa year or two yearsโ for the muscle memory to fully sink in, preventing his head from crashing into the field might make the difference between 17 starts this season and 10.
โItโs not realistic to assume weโre gonna be thinking about tucking our chin while we read coverages downfield and get ready to throw,โ Thompson says. โBut if we can do some of these things without thinking, if our body just reacts, thatโs the place weโre trying to get.โ
During a practice this spring, Tagovailoaโs foot was stepped on by one of his offensive linemen, sending him tumbling toward the ground. But instead of falling, he somersaulted backward, then popped back up.
The other quarterbacks cheered.
McDaniel changed everything for Tagovailoa last season, reviving a damaged psyche beaten down from two tumultuous years under Brian Flores. It wasnโt a secret Flores never wanted anything to do with his young quarterback. The Dolphins pondered pursuingย?Deshaun Watsonย?amid Watsonโs pending sexual assault accusations, then they were punished โ with draft picks taken away and owner Stephen Ross suspended โ for violating the leagueโs anti-tampering policy after having multiple conversations withย?Tom Brady.
Enter McDaniel, the brainy former Yale receiver who talked differently and thought differently. On his flight to Miami for his introductory news conference in February 2022, McDaniel FaceTimed Tagovailoa, telling him, โIโm gonna make damn sure that when you look back on this day, youโre gonna say, โDamn, that was one of the best days of my career.'โ
During their first sit down a few weeks later, McDaniel could sense his QBโs shaken confidence.
โDo you not understand the player you are?โ the coach asked.
McDaniel flipped on the film. Later, heโd show the entire staff, then Ross, working to convince every last soul in the building that Tagovailoa was The Guy in Miami โ and would be for some time. Months later the QB would admit it felt like โa 360โ from everything heโd known in the NFL.
๐ท Head coach Mike McDaniel convinced the Dolphins to stick with Tagovailoa after a tumultuous first two seasons under Brian Flores. (Rob Carr / Getty Images)
The season started. Miami took off. Tagovailoa took off. Then came the falls, the โback injuryโ in Week 3, the chilling scene in Cincinnati four days later, Tagovailoa headed for the hospital while the Dolphins and the NFL were left scrambling to explain why he was on the field that night in the first place.
After a joint investigation with the NFLPA, the league added ataxia โ defined as an obvious lack of balance and coordination, which likely led to Tagovailoa stumbling back to the field after his initial fall against the Bills โ to its list of symptoms that would prevent a player from returning to a game.
Tagovailoa returned in late October and heated back up, throwing 11 touchdowns against no interceptions amid a five-game win streak. The Dolphins were 8-3. MVP chatter swelled.
Then it began to crumble. Tagovailoa cooled. The Dolphins couldnโt win a game. On Christmas Day against the Packers, before the hit that would end his season, Tagovailoa was 9-for-12 for 229 yards, a touchdown and a passer rating of 144.4. After the hit โ on which he was later determined to have suffered the concussion โ he was 7-for-13 for 81 yards, three interceptions and a passer rating of 33.3. It was a microcosm of the Dolphinsโ 2022 season.
It was Thompson, then a rookie third-stringer, who was left to drag Miami to the playoffs. He delivered on the final Sunday of the regular season, an ugly 11-6 win against theย?Jetsย?that earned Miami a wild-card spot. Tagovailoa was the first teammate waiting for him in the tunnel as he walked off the field, wrapping him up in a congratulatory hug.
โYou deserve this,โ Tagovailoa told him.
A week later, after the Dolphins rallied from 17 down in Buffalo and nearly escaped with a win, Thompson lumbered off the field and into the locker room. He turned on his phone. Tua had already texted.
โYou played great,โ he wrote. โYou gave it everything you had.โ
Thompson remembers feeling the weight of the world that week. After the loss, the disappointment started to tear him up inside.
โIโll be honest, that text meant the world to me,โ he says six months later.
Because each brain is different, each player recovers from a concussion at a different pace; a mild blow to one quarterback could end the season of another. There are other variables at play, including neck strength, something Tagovailoa made a focal point of his offseason.
Everything he did was designed around starting 17 games โ then hopefully more. On top of the weekly jiu-jitsu classes, he altered his lifting routine, working to add strength to his neck and core. He put on some weight. And this fall, heโll wear a different helmet.
โIโve seen a guy thatโs followed through with his words as well as any young man Iโve come across in my career,โ McDaniel says.
๐ท GO DEEPER NFL Quarterback Tiers 2023: Who's on the rise and who's on the decline?
Miami exercised Tagovailoaโs fifth-year option in March, tying him to the franchise through 2024, but has resisted dishing out a lucrative, long-term extension akin to the one theย?Chargersย?recently awardedย?Justin Herbert, who was picked one spot behind Tagovailoa in the 2020 draft.
Everyone knows why.
When asked in March if Tagovailoaโs injury history remains a concern for the organization, Dolphins GM Chris Grier said, โI canโt lie and say no.โ After his concussion-marred 2022, itโs not a stretch to believe one more crushing blow could be Tagovailoaโs last.
But his return, coupled with some big-name additions in Miami, has the Dolphins thinking Super Bowl. Itโs an ambitious aim for an organization that hasnโt won a division title in 14 years.
โOn paper, it makes sense,โ safetyย?Brandon Jonesย?says, weighing his teamโs chances of playing into February. โBut this is the National Football League. You donโt win on paper.โ
For stretches last season, the Dolphinsโ offense with a healthy Tagovailoa on the field and McDaniel dialing up plays was downright scary โ the QB finished with the leagueโs best passer rating (105.5), the highest yards-per-attempt (8.9) and the third-best EPA per dropback, trailing only the Billsโย?Josh Allenย?and the Chiefsโย?Patrick Mahomes. With the speedyย?Tyreek Hillย?andย?Jaylen Waddleย?on the outside, McDaniel scripted a scheme that accentuated timing and accuracy, Tagovailoaโs greatest strengths as a passer.
Even with their starting QB missing the better part of six games, the Dolphins jumped 11 spots in scoring and finished sixth in total yards, their first time in the top 10 since the Dan Marino era. This fall, Tagovailoa will have the same play-caller in consecutive seasons for the first time since he was at Saint Louis High School in Honolulu.
McDaniel shuffled the locker room last season, pairing up players from different position groups in hopes of cultivating chemistry. Jones found himself next to the attention-averse quarterback who always wanted to be a part of the team and never above it. Amid months of chaos, the two grew tight, and Jones saw up close what makes Tagovailoa tick.
A group of players started spending holidays at the Tagovailoas โ Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth of July this summer. The week before they were to report for training camp, the QB had a dozen teammates over for a hibachi night.
โOne thing Iโve learned about football: The really good teams are usually the tightest teams on and off the field,โ Jones says. โWeโve grown a lot closer. Heโs the one leading that.โ
Which is part of the reason Jones never saw him walking away. Not now. Not like this.
โHe has thatย?itย?factor, and we need that,โ Jones says. โHe was balling last year, and I can see it in his eyes now, that feeling of unfinished business. Heโs coming back with a vengeance.โ
On a sweltering morning in Miami recently, training camp not yet a week old, Tagovailoa dropped back and lofted a deep shot to Hill, who had slipped behind a defensive back in a 1-on-1 drill. The throw was pristine, dropping right in the receiverโs lap, never forcing him to slow his stride. Hill hauled it in and sped into the end zone untouched.
โThis sโ too easy!โ Hill barked for everyone to hear. โThis sโ too easy!โ
At times, it can feel like that in Miami, with these receivers and this coach and this quarterback โ so long as he stays on the field. But nothing about Tagovailoaโs career has been easy to this point. Thatโs not likely to change.
This fall will reveal how long it lasts.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly /ย?The Athletic*; photos: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)*
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