NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on increase in concussions and player safety efforts

Diagnosed concussions during the NFL increased by about 18 percent during the 2022 regular season, but commissioner Roger Goodell on Wednesday praised the league’s efforts in regard to player safety, saying total injuries in the preseason and regular season decreased by 6 percent.

Concussions again came to the forefront of discussions with player safety this season after the league and NFL Players Association altered the protocol in wake of Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s frightening concussion against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 4 that saw him carted off the field.

Goodell, speaking at his Super Bowl news conference, said the change in protocol in October allowed for more screenings and allowed medical personnel to flag more concussions.

“What we changed in October was something that we thought would give us a better opportunity to treat those conditions more conservatively, give the players an opportunity to get off the field and recover,” he said. “And I think that is also a reason why concussions went up this year: because we had a broader definition, a more conservative definition.”

After the league and NFLPA launched an investigation into the handling of Tagovailoa’s suspected head injury against the Buffalo Bills in Week 3, the two sides announced that the league’s step-by-step protocol was followed but the protocol was altered, adding a new “no-go” symptom, ataxia. This would have kept Tagovailoa out of the Bills game and likely sidelined him for the Bengals game. Ataxia is an abnormality of balance/stability, motor coordination or dysfunctional speech caused by a neurological issue.

Goodell estimated that concussion evaluations increased by about 17 percent in the regular season. “If you have more evaluations, you’re going to have more concussions.”

Goodell said more work can be done in improving helmets but that the league has made strides in getting players to wear the safest helmets. He also cited a continued effort to change the rules to make the game safer.

“Ultimately you want to try to take that head out of the game,” he said. “You’re always going to have contacts that are not intended. And that’s why you need the protection but ultimately you want the rules to make sure that you’re avoiding the techniques that can lead to those types of injuries.”

On a conference call last week, NFL executive vice president Jeff Miller said a helmet model specifically designed for quarterbacks is close to being completed and could be available in the fall. At the Dolphins’ end-of-season news conference, general manager Chris Grier said the helmet Taghovailoa has been wearing is one of the top rated in terms of safety. Grier also said doctors told him Tagovailoa is not more prone to concussions and he expects the 24-year-old to return at full strength as Miami’s starter in 2023.

Goodell said the decline in total injuries was a byproduct of multiple things, including the use of Guardian caps in the preseason and changes to the training camp practice schedule. He also pushed back on assumptions that additional games on the schedule could impact injuries. Ahead of the 2021 season, the league added a 17th game to the regular season, and there has been speculation of an 18th game in the future.

“The injury rate is absolutely no different than any other week,” Goodell said. “... We don’t want concussions to occur. We want to prevent them and we want to treat them. But we’re not afraid of having them be diagnosed.”

In a separate news conference that followed Goodell’s, NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith also noted the progress the league has made since he assumed his role in 2009, which includes the implementation of concussion spotters and a detailed return-to-play policy.

“Not only are the things that we’re doing in the pros trickled down to nearly every high school, but every junior high school kid is also getting baseline testing,” he said. “There is a return-to-play protocol for kids that never existed before. So I think there is no magical, ‘this is what I think [the NFL] should be doing,’ as long as they continue to work with us on this relentless effort to bend the work to the highest health and safety standard.”