Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers thinks there’s much more that can be done, and should be done, for players who have suffered multiple concussions during their careers.
But at the same time, he wonders how much more that can be done to protect them in the present, specifically from themselves.
During his appearance on HBO’s “Any Given Wednesday,” Rodgers said the willingness of players to play through pain remains one of the biggest hurdles to clear.
“The biggest obstacle, I think, would be the mindset of players,” Rodgers said, via Jason Wilde of ESPN.com. “They have people who watch every player, there’s one up in the booth and then we have a number of doctors on the sidelines watching concussions. The helmets and the pads are as safe as I think you can possibly get them at this point.
“But players feeling comfortable self-monitoring [is still an issue]. And, if you have one, telling somebody about it.”
The NFL doesn’t mind hearing someone say that, as it takes them partially off the hook, if even for a moment.
But Rodgers recounted a pair of incidents from the 2010 season, when he stayed in games after a blow to the head that illustrates the problem.
On the first, he said that after taking a helmet-to-helmet shot against Washington, “one eye went metallic. I could only see out of my right eye. . . . It was like metallic, it was silver metallic.”
That one came at the end of a game, so it’s unclear if he’d have gone back on the field. Later that season, he suffered another concussion against Detroit and missed the following week.
“The only thing I remember from that sequence, I was under center and I didn’t know if it was a run or a pass,” Rodgers said. “Mike [McCarthy] and I laugh about this [now]. It’s not funny to play through a concussion -- it’s not safe, I wouldn’t recommend it -- [but] we laugh because it was a hard play fake to the right and I had the post [receiver] wide-open for a touchdown. But I didn’t know if it was a run or a pass, so I kind of moved backward, and then held it and got sacked and that was it. I came out of the game.”
What he didn’t do then, and you wonder if he will in the future, was take himself out of the game as Ben Roethlisberger did last season. But high-profile quarterbacks such as Rodgers and Roethlisberger also have financial and positional security other players don’t have, and as long as players are willing to risk their own health, the problem will remain.
But high-profile quarterbacks also have financial and positional security other players don’t have, and as long as players are willing to risk their own health, the problem will remain.