Doctors have become the nanny police for the NFL?

Injured players have always returned to the sideline and sat on the bench. Unless the injury required a ambulance to the hospital.

Coaches control who enters the game. The coaches are told who is injured and can’t continue playing.

Apparently that didn’t get communicated Sunday. But thats very unusual. Coaches have dealt with game day injuries their entire careers. I don’t believe a coach deliberately sent a injured player into the game Sunday. Somehow the doctor’s order didn’t get to the coach.

When they’re able. By the way these rules have been in place since 2011.

I love watching people feel like their own manhood is being assaulted because a football player isn’t allowed to further endanger themself after a head or neck injury. Or when the NFL enacts a rule or policy in general meant to protect players.

I’m just remembering those miserable hot days of Spring and Summer practice. The hours in the weight room. All the sweat and shit I went through to make my basketball team. I can relate to the disappointment of these NFL guys.

Getting hurt and being told you can’t play is bad enough. I’ve been through that a few times. It’s part of life. But this quiet room rule is something else.

You’re imagining the disappointment and completely failing to understand the problem - and the fact that this rule is several years old.

I posted this in the thread on the divisional round playoffs as well. Suffice it to say that my opinion is different from aceplace’s.

The NFL has, as mentioned, run into a serious problem dealing with concussions, and they’ve made a number of rule changes to address that problem. They’ve come down hard on players who’ve violated the new rules. It’s time for them to come down harder on teams that do the same thing.

Coaches have started sending “packages” in for plays instead of relying on sending in individuals. A couple of miscommunications and someone who should be sitting out can slip in. Protect the players from themselves.

Yes, and coaches used to deliberately dehydrate their players during practices, as they believed giving them water was bad.

As always, we learn more and more about how to properly care for athletes. Defending old practices on nothing more than your gut feeling we’re “nannying” players is misguided, at best.

They’ve already recognized that concussions are serious injuries. A coach doesn’t send a guy back into a game with broke ribs. If a guy has a concussion then the coach can’t send him back into the game either.

They already have rules in place to protect players. What happened Sunday must of been some confusion on the sideline.

I was caught off guard by the quiet room rule. I should have taken a few minutes before posting. Sorry for the OP mini rant.

Because of the rules you are complaining about in this thread!

Or a guy who didn’t want to let a little knock on the head keep him out of a game he’d worked all his life to get to. Or a guy who wasn’t quite sure of everything that was going on, so he just ran out with the guys he knew he was usually supposed to go with.

Neither of those is an acceptable reason for a player with a concussion to be in the game, and they both would have been prevented by following the concussion protocol.

As I said in the other thread, the team should be fined for allowing these players back on the field (even if it was an oversight). If you let them get away with it, teams will start to ignore the rule due to the lack of consequences and the opportunity to have your best players out there during an important game. Then injured players start to feel pressured to go out there and help the team at risk to their own health. If you going to have a rule - and it’s a good rule - it needs to be strictly enforced.

SO what is the actual rule?
Is the player restricted from returning to the sidelines for the remainder of the game or is there like a 30 minute observation period after which they can watch the game?

But the players might have been disappointed. If you think about it, isn’t disappointment much, much worse than the risk of serious brain damage?

Just tell him he played fine - he won’t remember.

If the doctor says you can’t play, then they should simply take your helmet and put it in a locker. Then go ahead and stand with the team for the rest of the game.

I recently saw a PBS: Frontline program about this. The bottom line is “you get a concussion, you’re out of today’s game.”

Or…you know, maybe if the doctor has a medical reason the player should be away from the game, we should listen to the doctor. It’s not like they’re arbitrarily deciding these things.

The way some posters are going, I might as well have my car mechanic perform brain surgery on me. Not like the trained professionals knows what they’re doing or anything.

Guys on the sidelines can get hit by a stray ball or teammate. Keeping them there is too risky. I guess I could see the point of advocating to let them sit in the stands or something, but it’s really not that big of a deal.

Treatment for concussions involves removing as much stimuli as possible. That’s the reason the doctors send them to a quiet room. Concussion patients aren’t supposed to even read a book or watch a nature documentary much less watch their team play.