Joe’s Notes: It’s the NFL, Dumbass

Tua Tagovailoa’s injury last night was terrifying, and it was especially scary given there was already skepticism surrounding the wisdom of his clearance from concussion protocol four days prior. The guy took two bad hits to the head in a five-day span. One was followed by a stagger and collapse. The other was followed by the 24-year-old’s hands flexing in downright spooky positions. People were mortified. People were disgusted. People were furious.

And they continued to watch.

There’s been a grand duplicity on display these last eighteen hours, and the question it keeps bringing to mind is, What did you expect? We’ve learned of the danger of football to the human brain for years. We’ve watched NFL players suffer traumatic injuries for decades. The fox lives in the henhouse. Now we’re going to wring our hands when the bastard steals an egg?

Some of this, of course, is a problem with social media, which is where the “discourse” played out in real time. You don’t need to react in 35 seconds to say, “Shit, that’s scary. I hope Tua Tagovailoa’s ok. This is making me ask again whether the NFL takes brain injuries seriously enough.” That’s the reasonable sentiment, and it’s the reasonable sentiment as much now as it was last night. But because this was going on over social media, we instead got calls for the game to be stopped, calls for Mike McDaniel to be charged with attempted homicide, and podcasters (who make a living covering professional football) changing their programming to demonstrate how seriously they suddenly take concussions again after shrugging their shoulders for years watching the NFL make marginal changes to “address the issue.” It was sincere concern, I’m sure, but filtered through social media it became a judge/jury/executioner shouting contest. Thousands who pounded the same keyboards months ago telling their enemies to trust medical professionals turned their ire on the medical professionals responsible for letting Tua Tagovailoa play in last night’s game. Concerned skepticism turned into self-serving certitude. Like a friendly caterpillar into a big, annoying butterfly.

GQ published that article about the NFL and concussions in 2009, more than half Tua Tagovailoa’s lifetime ago. We know the impact of concussions is immense. We also know they happen when people play football. We still follow the NFL. We still follow college football. Many of us still let our kids play high school ball and middle school ball and Pop Warner. Something like last night happens, and we scream and shout about how terrible the NFL is for doing this. But the NFL isn’t making us do this. We’re accepting the product they give us. We’re giving them lots of economic value in exchange for their product. We’ve led them to change it, over the years, and I’m sure there are good people within the NFL helping change it themselves, but binary rage about incidents like last night’s has an air of self-delusion to it. What did you expect? The fox is in the henhouse. It’s the NFL, dumbass.

Playoffs! (Almost)

This weekend’s hottest baseball is…

The Mets are in Atlanta for a three-game set that will likely decide who wins the NL East and receives the accompanying two-seed and first-round playoff bye. As the situation stands, the Mets have a game to give. They lead by one in the standings, and they hold the tiebreaker, meaning even a series loss would leave them leading the division so long as they don’t get swept. Still: It’s only three games. A lot can happen in that size of a sample. And to illustrate the leverage here, the Mets are calling up top catching prospect Francisco Álvarez.

It’s not necessarily a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency move. Had the Mets really wanted Álvarez up there because of his ability alone, he may have been up already, and plenty of teams have promoted a top prospect for the last few games of a regular season, giving them a taste of what’s to come (a high school coach of mine used to bring the best freshmen in the program to the state tournament to get them fired up to work hard over the offseason). It remains to be seen whether the Mets will try to include Álvarez on their postseason roster. But given the leverage is high, it’s being interpreted as a call-in of reinforcements, and it may well be that. Roster construction in Major League Baseball is more of a guessing game than we often credit it for being.

The Yankees host the Orioles as Aaron Judge tries to hit home run number 62 and close out a Triple Crown campaign. Meanwhile here I am trying to scrap out only my second or third set of notes for the week. Way to make a guy feel bad, Aaron.

The Phillies are in Washington for four and the Brewers are hosting the Marlins for three, and with the Phillies beating the Nationals in Game 1 today, that’s a one-game race where the Phillies own the tiebreaker, same as the Mets’ division situation. The Brewers’ odds are long, then, but Corbin Burnes is pitching against Sandy Alcantara tonight, so you may want to tune in anyway.

Finally, the Rays and Mariners should each clinch a wild card berth at some point this weekend. They and Toronto are still wrestling by proxy over seeding, but the important piece—who’s in, who’s out—should lock itself up in the AL within these next three days.

Housekeeping

Everyone’s favorite topic.

We are a little underwater right now organizationally—one of those times of the year when the calendar changed and we stumbled through the transition, and are now getting our feet back under us. So, apologies for the start-and-stop content. We’ll probably do weekend notes again this weekend, focusing on more of the individual teams we cover and catching up on any big stories we’ve missed. Does this mean we’ll do our long-awaited dive into how Boise State and Wichita State may have missed their chances to ascend? No. But we might talk about how to fix Georgia Tech.

Here’s the weekend’s college football preview. We are not short-shifting that.

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Viewing schedule for Friday, second screen rotation in italics:

College Football (of interest):

• 10:30 PM EDT: Washington @ UCLA (ESPN)

MLB (of playoff race and home run chase significance, plus the Cubs):

• 1:05 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ Washington – Game 1, Falter vs. Fedde (MLB TV)
• 2:20 PM EDT: Cincinnati @ Cubs, Ashcraft vs. Sampson (MLB TV)
• 7:05 PM EDT: Baltimore @ New York (AL), Lyles vs. Germán (MLB TV/ESPN+)
• 7:05 PM EDT: Philadelphia @ Washington – Game 2, Syndergaard vs. Romero (MLB TV)
• 7:07 PM EDT: Boston @ Toronto, Pivetta vs. Manoah (MLB TV)
• 7:20 PM EDT: New York (NL) @ Atlanta, deGrom vs. Fried (MLB TV)
• 8:10 PM EDT: Miami @ Milwaukee, Alcantara vs. Burnes (MLB TV)
• 8:10 PM EDT: Tampa Bay @ Houston, Rasmussen vs. Valdez (MLB TV)
• 9:40 PM EDT: Chicago (AL) @ San Diego, Martin vs. Darvish (MLB TV)
• 9:40 PM EDT: Oakland @ Seattle, Waldichuk vs. Gilbert (MLB TV)