49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, six days after suffering a concussion on Monday night in Minnesota. He’s received all appropriate and required clearances, both from team doctors and from an independent neurologist.
So he’s good to go. Ready to roll. Fit as a proverbial fiddle.
And if he suffers another concussion today, the NFL will be scraping something smelly from its shoes.
Even though it would be a separate injury, the obvious outcry would be that he shouldn’t have been cleared to play. Last year, Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa played on a Thursday night and ended up leaving on a stretcher, four days after a “back injury” that left him walking wobbly. The blowback was sudden and intense.
The clear difference in this case comes from the fact that Purdy was properly diagnosed with a concussion. He cleared the protocol, ultimately getting the blessing of a neurologist not affiliated with either team.
Of course, the neurologist is affiliated with the league. And the league has an obvious interest in having Purdy play in what arguably is the biggest game of the day, Bengals at 49ers, 4:25 p.m. ET on CBS.
The NFL has billed it as the No. 1 overall pick vs. Mr. Irrelevant. That pitch would have been even more irrelevant than Purdy, if Purdy hadn’t played.
“Independent” only means independence from the player’s team, which had a direct bias in favor of getting a player cleared to play. It’s not independence from the broader NFL apparatus.
That’s NOT meant to imply that any pressure was placed on the independent neurologist to clear Purdy; it’s just a recognition of the basic facts. The league doesn’t pluck a neurologist from the phone book with the one-off request to assess a single player. There’s an ongoing relationship there, and it’s impossible to separate the neurologist’s desire to maintain that relationship from the broader process of whether discretion will be exercised in favor of giving a game off, or whether caution will be thrown to the wind.
Was it a coincidence that, after Tua’s Thursday night concussion in 2022, only one player (Kenny Pickett) was cleared to return from a concussion without missing at least one game? Is it a coincidence that, with no league-wide concussion controversy (yet) this year, a player like Purdy got a ticket to play after only six days?
One thing is clear. The NFL will indeed have its first concussion controversy of 2023, if Purdy suffers another concussion today.
