He has the authority to buzz the officiating crew to halt play if he has reason to believe a player may be concussed. Instead, Keenum stayed in and fumbled immediately on the next play. He grabbed his head and had trouble standing up.
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What’s even more disturbing is that while the officials discussed the ensuing offsides penalty on the play, Keenum spoke briefly to a member of the Rams’ staff on the field and spoke to him face to face. Fisher did speak but was not asked about the irresponsible decision not to remove Keenum. “There are unintended consequences that come up”. “The shots you’ve seen of him struggling to get up, I didn’t see that”. “I tried to hop up as quickly as I could, and I was heading toward the sideline”.
“Anytime you implement something, there are things you have to work through”, Fisher said.
The injury happened when left tackle James Hurst rolled into Flacco.
“Obviously, Nick is watching every step that Case takes because that’s his responsibility as a backup quarterback”. “Had we seen that, we would have taken a different course of action”.
Osweiler is just getting started with the Broncos.
“So the officiating department didn’t see it”, Fisher said.
Let’s go upstairs for a moment, because this is where the certified athletic trainer in the booth, the ATC injury spotter, factors into the situation.
“Fortunately, Case felt really good this morning”, Fisher said. Well, because he saw our head trainer on the field, he didn’t feel it was necessary to make the call.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this upset or mad after hitting a game-winner, but this is kind of unchartered territory for me”, said Tucker. “They were examining him and then I didn’t find out until after I finished the press conference”. Again, it’s a new system. This should amplify league-wide underreporting concerns, and more broadly, it ties into football’s real concern: the thousands of “sub-concussive” hits players absorb each year, hits that still contribute to the degenerative brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), that’s been linked to playing football. He’s the co-chair of the NFL’s competition committee.
In the NFC the Carolina Panthers are the No. 1 seed, the Arizona Cardinals are the No. 2, the Green Bay Packers are the No. 3 and the NY Giants are the No. 4. Previously, right guard Rodger Saffold was lost for the season after undergoing shoulder surgery. “He made the right decision to go out there”. Keep an eye on these guys as we enter the final month of the regular season. If so, a 10-second runoff would have been applied, and the game would have gone to overtime.
And the Seahawks, a team built with defense, have lost too many key players on the other side of the ball.
According to Fisher, the ATC spotter eventually told officials that Keenum had shown signs of brain trauma, but only after Keenum was already out of the game.
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After tearing his ACL and MCL with 50 seconds left in the fourth quarter against the Rams on Sunday, no one would’ve blamed Flacco if he had pulled himself from the game. The melee occurred during the fourth quarter of the game on November 22, when the St. Louis Rams faced the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Maryland.
