A man who is best known for giving guys concussions doesn’t want to think about how many concussions he has suffered.
“I haven’t been out like on my feet or out to where I wasn’t moving, maybe once,” Harrison recently told Alan Robinson of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “But what they consider a concussion . . . I’m not going to count.”
Plenty of guys falls into that category. Injuries previously regarded as dings and bell ringings and snot-knockers are and were concussions.
Harrison has yet to play this year, not because of a concussion but a knee injury. Per Robinson, Harrison now has Kevlar padding in his helmet, which is intended to reduce the amount of impact by more than 50 percent.
But none of that changes the manner in which the brain impacts the inside of the skull in the event of sudden stops and starts of the head. Even with a complete elimination of the impact felt outside the head, nothing can protect the brain from bouncing against the bone encasing it.