Tua Tagovailoa injury update: NFL pledges course of action amid Dolphins QB's concussion worries

Some have wondered if the NFL will step in and prevent Tua Tagovailoa from suiting up again after his latest concussion, and the league cleared up whether that’s a possibility on Friday.

According to NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills via ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, the league won’t “impose an outcome” for the Miami Dolphins quarterback, “other than enforcing the concussion protocol it administrates along with the NFL Players Association.”

While Tagovailoa’s concussion was the latest in a string of concerning head injuries for the quarterback, the league is simply allowing him to make his own decision after being given all the possible information, which feels like the most fair way to have it all play out.

“Patient autonomy and medical decision-making really matters,” Sills said, via ESPN. “And I think that’s what we have to recognize goes on with our concussion protocol as well. Ultimately when patients make decisions about considering their careers, it has to reflect that autonomy that’s generated from discussions with medical experts giving them best medical advice.”

Moreover, Sills added that there’s no “detailed formula” that can predict the future risk of concussions, so if the quarterback is cleared, he’s cleared. It’ll be up to him to determine whether he should return to the field, when that time comes.

“It’s not like we can put in your number of concussions and how long between them and your age and some unusual constant or Avagadro’s number that always seemed to be in freshman chemistry somehow, and come up with a risk,” Sills added, speaking generally and not about Tagovailoa in particular, per ESPN. “It just doesn’t work that way. So what we end up having to do is look at the totality of the patient’s experience, how many concussions, the interval between those concussions, some about duration of symptoms after each concussion, and then very much the patient’s voice about where they are in their journey, their career, their age, and things of that nature.

“And from that, we try as medical professionals to provide our best guess. But that’s really what it is, is a guess at what is someone’s future risk of concussion.”

Alas, it remains to be seen what Tua Tagovailoa decides when the time comes, but the NFL won’t force him to retire, sit out or anything like that. Regardless, concussions as a whole are down across the league due to a number of measures, including improved helmet technology and the use of guardian caps.