By SHALISE MANZA YOUNG
Journal Sports Writer
FOXBORO — From the time most professional football players begin playing the game — and for many, that is at a very young age — they are taught to believe that the sport requires a warrior mentality, and that nearly any injury can and should be played through.
Unfortunately, that includes concussions.
While it is overdue, concussions have been getting more and more attention from the National Football League and the NFL Players’ Association as more and more studies are showing just how damaging concussions, even minor ones, can be in both the long- and short-term.
But not everyone is taking them seriously.
In locker rooms, it’s called getting your bell rung. And from this perspective, that’s where the problem begins. That phrase minimizes the severity of what is a serious brain injury.
Many players believe that a concussion occurs only when a player blacks out from impact, which isn’t the case.
Listen, for instance, to Patriots’ safety Brandon McGowan. One of the surprise performers of the season for New England, he knocks on the dark wood walls of his locker stall when asked if he’s ever had a concussion.
A minute later, however, he admits that there have been times when he’s felt dizzy after a hit and continued to play. Not surprisingly for a player who describes his on-field style as “reckless,” McGowan says he likely would try to get back on the field even if he suffered a major concussion.
“The person I am, I probably would, yeah,” he said. “But that’s just the person I am. If I can play through something, I will.”
This is not meant to knock McGowan, because he is not alone in his thinking.
In 2004, when he was in his first season with the Redskins, Shawn Springs suffered a concussion against the Eagles in Week 13, sat out the next game, but came back for Week 15.
“I probably shouldn’t have come back,” the 13-year veteran said Friday afternoon. “(The effects) lasted for six months. I lost a little vision in my left eye.”
In the years since, Springs says he has noticed that as a season wears on and he delivers more and more hits, his speech starts to slur a bit.
Loss of vision, memory problems, headaches, sensitivity to light, confusion, nausea — all are symptoms of a concussion, and they can last days, weeks or months. Over the long-term, multiple concussion sufferers can develop epilepsy and other significant neurological problems. There are studies that link multiple concussions to the development of Alzheimer’s disease as well.
Not surprisingly, the NFLPA seems to be taking concussions and their effects more seriously than the league itself. Just last week it came out that union executive director DeMaurice Smith and assistant director George Atallah have twice asked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to replace Dr. Ira Casson, the co-chairman of the league’s committee on concussions, because they feel Casson has tried to discredit studies that show the myriad negative issues associated with post-concussion syndrome.
Casson is leading an ongoing study of retired players to study how the effects impact their day-to-day lives, but the findings aren’t expected to be published for at least three years.
Adalius Thomas, one of New England’s alternate representatives to the Players’ Association, believes that many players are starting to take brain injury more seriously because they’re getting more information.
“Players aren’t doctors, so sometimes we don’t know the signs,” he said. “I’m sure all of us have had one in some shape, form or fashion. You can be hit hard, and suffer a slight (concussion) and not really know it. I got hit a couple of times and when I think back on it, I was dizzy, and that’s what they’d consider slight.
“It’s that fine line of trying to be tough.”
Thomas recalls a game against Pittsburgh when he was with the Ravens, when he collided with fullback Dan Kreider. It wasn’t a particularly hard hit — as Thomas notes, offensive and defensive linemen don’t seem to suffer as many concussions because they play in such close proximity to one another and don’t hit with as much speed and force as special-teams players or safeties and receivers — but Kreider got him right on the temple. It made Thomas woozy, but he finished the game.
“I was young and dumb,” he said.
Thomas believes that the decision of whether a player can return to the field and when he should be taken out of their hands, because most players will opt to strap the pads back on.
The Associated Press interviewed 160 players throughout the league earlier this month, and 30 said they have either hidden or played down the effects of a concussion. Fully half said they have suffered at least one concussion playing football.
Goodell recently suggested that players tell a member of a team’s medical staff if they believe a teammate is showing signs of a concussion. Atallah told the Associated Press that that is not an adequate solution, since players aren’t doctors.
Washington fullback Mike Sellers gave what many see as an utterly ignorant response that players “ain’t snitches” when asked about Goodell’s suggestion. The Patriots’ Kevin Faulk, who missed a game in 2006 due to a concussion, responded by saying Goodell had the players’ best interests in mind.
The bottom line is that players need to continue to be educated on the signs of a concussion, as well as their seriousness, and should be allowed proper time to recover if they have suffered one.
Bones heal and muscles can be mended, but brains don’t bounce back as easily. What good are a player’s glory days if he can’t remember them once his football days are over?
