Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained neck and head injuries after being slammed to the ground Thursday night against the Cincinnati Bengals and was taken off the field on a stretcher.
The Dolphins said Tagovailoa was conscious, had movement in all his extremities and was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center for further evaluation.
The Dolphins said after their 27-15 loss to the Bengals that Tagovailoa was expected to be released from the hospital and fly home with the team, but there was no further update.
Tagovailoa was chased down and sacked by six-foot-three, 340-pound Josh Tupou with about six minutes left in the first half. He was spun around and thrown to the turf. While on the ground, his hands froze in front of his face. He remained down for more than seven minutes before being loaded on a backboard, stabilized and strapped to a stretcher after his facemask was removed.
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is examined after the hit on Thursday night. (Jeff Dean/The Associated Press)
Dolphins players gathered around as Tagovailoa was rolled off the field and the crowd chanted “Tua! Tua!”
Miami coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa called for him when he went down.
“I could tell it wasn’t the same guy that I was used to seeing,” McDaniel said. “It was a scary moment. He was evaluated for a concussion. He’s in the concussion protocol, but he’s being discharged.
“It’s an emotional moment. It’s not a part of the deal you sign up for. His teammates and myself were very concerned, but he got checked out and it’s nothing more serious than a concussion.”
Player health and safety is at the core of the union’s mission. Our concern tonight is for Tua and we hope for a full and speedy recovery. Our investigation into the potential protocol violation is ongoing.
Teddy Bridgewater, who replaced the injured Tagovailoa, said the Miami sideline went quiet when the starting QB was on the turf.
“Complete silence,” Bridgewater said. “He’s one of us. At the end of the day, it’s only a football game. In that moment, you saw how we feel about Tua. He’s our captain. He’s our leader. It was great to see the doctors handling the situation.”
Reaction came swiftly from around the NFL. Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes and Broncos QB Russell Wilson promptly tweeted with concern for Tagovailoa’s well-being.
“Praying for you Tua,” Wilson wrote.
Controversial return against Buffalo
The 24-year-old Tagovailoa was suffering from a sore back and was listed as questionable for most of the week ahead of the game.
Tagovailoa briefly left Sunday’s 21-19 victory over the Buffalo Bills after appearing to be disoriented by what the team originally said was a head injury after taking a hard hit from Bills linebacker Matt Milano late in the first half. He missed just three snaps and returned after halftime, a decision that prompted a joint review by the NFL and National Football League Players Association of what went into the decision to allow him to return to the game.
The team and Tagovailoa said after Sunday’s game the quarterback had a back injury that caused his awkward stumble and fall after he was slammed into the turf in the second quarter. The team said Monday that Tagovailoa was not in concussion protocol.
He said he “hyper-extended” his back after getting his legs caught under someone on a quarterback sneak.
McDaniel said Thursday that he didn’t think an injury from last week made him fall the same way this week.
After Tagovailoa’s injury Thursday, the NFLPA tweeted: “Player health and safety is at the core of the union’s mission. Our concern tonight is for Tua and we hope for a full and speedy recovery. Our investigation into the potential protocol violation is ongoing.”
NFL executive vice-president Jeff Miller said the review usually takes a week or two.
“Every indication from our perspective is that it was,” Miller said about the team and its doctors following concussion protocol on Sunday. “I know the player, the coach and others have spoken to this. And we are engaged in that review now. So we’ll come back with a formal answer to that question, something that we want to engage in.”
Some criticized the decision to play Tagovailoa so soon after his injuries in Sunday’s game.
Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe tweeted: “That’s a serious injury. Tua shouldn’t have been out there with Sunday Thursday turn around. Sometimes players need protecting from themselves. Dolphins failed Tua.”
The bottom line regarding Tua is LIFE is bigger than football. Teams should always put the person before the player. Health before competitive advantage.<br>Putting Tua out there isn’t just a player safety issue. It’s a quality of life issue.
Before leaving Thursday’s game, Tagovailoa was eight for 14 for 100 yards and an interception. Bridgewater threw a touchdown pass to Chase Edmonds with 15 seconds left in the half.
Vonn Bell’s interception of Bridgewater — the safety’s second pick of the night — with three minutes left in the game set up the Bengals’ final drive.
Joe Burrow tossed a late two-yard touchdown pass to Hayden Hurst to seal the win for Cincinnati.
Bridgewater threw an incomplete pass on Miami’s final drive to turn the ball over on downs with 57 seconds left. He finished 14 for 23 for 193 yards, a touchdown and an interception in relief.
Evan McPherson kicked two fourth-quarter field goals — including a 57-yarder.
Burrow was 20 for 31 for 287 yards and two touchdowns as the Bengals won their second game in five days after dropping the first of the season. Tee Higgins caught seven passes for 124 yards and a TD.
Tyreek Hill paced the Dolphins with 10 catches for 160 yards.
The play of Tagovailoa, who won a national championship at Alabama, has been key for the 3-1 Dolphins. He came into the game second in the NFL with 925 passing yards.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
