Like bruises and flying fangs, serious injuries, and head injuries in particular, are an integral part of the football experience – and football broadcasting.
When Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa hit the turf Thursday night and appeared to suffer his second head injury in five days, it was the first test of how Amazon, which donated more than $1 billion to the NFL to broadcast games, did pays on Thursday evening would be a difficult balancing act for the league’s media partners.
The show was tasked with deciding quickly how to show replays of the injury and how to place them in context. Tagovailoa was injured during last week’s game against the Bills, wobbling and falling to the ground after a hard hit. He left that game but returned after the Dolphins reported that he deleted the NFL’s concussion records. The NFL Players Association has initiated and is ongoing an investigation into how this was handled.
After Tagovailoa was injured on Thursday, the game returned from a commercial break and featured a slow-motion replay of his fingers involuntarily bending after he hit the ground. “We’re about to show you how his fingers stretched out at the end of this piece,” said play-by-play man Al Michaels.
Many shows are finding how newsworthy recurrences of injuries are, and some are deciding that’s not the case. When Alex Smith suffered a gruesome leg injury a few seasons ago, CBS only aired a single rerun. “It’s a philosophical thing,” said Howard Bryant, CBS vice president of production. “It’s a terrible injury and we described and documented it extensively and as a group we felt that was enough.”
Amazon (whose founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post) showed another repeat of the Tagovailoa breach in the fourth quarter. The multiple reruns drew the ire of some fans on social media.
Tua Tagovailoa’s head injury spurs review of NFL concussion protocol
At halftime, the game’s studio crew returned to the Tagovailoa topic, but made little mention of Tagovailoa’s controversial injury and status the previous week. Host Charissa Thompson only referred to it indirectly, saying: “Considering everything we’ve seen last week and now this week, it’s a really tough sight to see.”
But there was no debate as to whether Tagovailoa should have played at all — not even from former cornerback and Amazon crew member Richard Sherman, who once published an essay in the Players’ Tribune titled “Why I Hate Thursday Night Football.” citing his concerns about player safety and the short turnaround time of Sunday games.
Not everyone was convinced the show should have discussed the dolphins’ decision. Andrew Whitworth, a recently retired offensive lineman, responded to criticism from an NFL writer on Twitter.
“You just criticized former players,” he wrote. “Who played the game? For spending their time talking about their football brother having exercise and gaining awareness. Bad Look doesn’t care about anything but Tua and his family at this moment. politics is for [tomorrow]!”
Chris Nowinski, co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, started a program to educate broadcasters on how to talk about concussions with Bob Costas, who claims he was removed from NBC’s Super Bowl coverage for his comment about concussions. “The problem is that we all thought Bob Costas was untouchable,” Nowinski said. “When he said a bad word about football, NBC kicked him off the NFL broadcasts. And I think that scared everyone. … I watch the games and listen to the fear [announcers’] Voices. If they say something bad about concussions or say it in the wrong place, they lose their jobs.”
During Thursday’s pregame show, the Amazon crew had a lengthy discussion about Tagovailoa’s injury over the past week. The network also offered a more detailed account of the injury after the game, including a detailed explanation of the league’s concussion logs from reporter Michael Smith.
Michael Weinstein, a veteran sports executive and producer, including NFL games, said finding the right balance in live critical injury coverage is one of the hardest things a sports show has to do. “You’re trying to tell a story about what happened, but you’re also making a decision right away,” he said.
Weinstein thought the context of Tagovailoa’s previous injury was important and needed to be highlighted, but he said it was difficult for broadcasters to speculate on whether or not a player should play.
“What makes you think he shouldn’t play when the Dolphins and the doctor give him the green light?” he asked. “It’s hard for Al or [color analyst Kirk] Herbstreit or anyone on the show to say so.”
Weinstein added that the way injuries are shown and discussed on television is important to the NFL. Meeting with the league ahead of the season about broadcasting games, executives always highlighted the work the NFL is doing to protect players — especially as awareness of concussion cases has grown. “The NFL recognizes that there are concerns at every level about this,” Weinstein said.
Mark Maske contributed to this report.