Case Keenum staying in with obvious concussion is shameful for NFL
It’s bad enough that St. Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum was stumbling around on the football field with what everyone on TV could plainly see was a probable concussion. The really bad part is that nobody thought to stop the game to evaluate him.
With a little more than a minute to go against the Baltimore Ravens, Keenum’s head hit hard on the turf when he was sacked. He grabbed his head immediately. Rams lineman Garrett Reynolds tried to help Keenum up, but Keenum went down again and was on all fours for a few seconds. He was in obvious distress.
Keenum’s teammates on the St. Louis Rams didn’t do anything. The coaching staff didn’t try to see if he was OK — someone did, however, put in the effort to have Nick Foles warm up in case Keenum had to come out. Priorities. The NFL has spotters in the press box whose jobs are to look out for players with concussions, and this year a new rule was made that they could buzz down to the officials and stop the game if they thought someone had a concussion. The game never stopped.
Two plays later Keenum fumbled, and the Ravens ended up winning on a last-second field goal. In the locker room afterward, Keenum was unavailable to the media. Myles Simmons, who works for the Rams’ official site, said Keenum was diagnosed with a concussion.
The whole episode is shameful for the NFL, which tries to tell us all the time it is taking concussions seriously but rarely acts like it.
It’s impossible to believe nobody saw Keenum or believed he could have had a concussion. He was sacked on the play in question, so this isn’t something that happened away from the action. And, Foles started warming up because it was clear Keenum was hurt. Television cameras were aware enough to pan to Foles warming up, and the television folks caught everything else including a replay of Keenum grabbing his head and struggling to his feet. Also, there’s a spotter in the press box whose job consists of spotting concussions. Most concussions aren’t nearly as obvious as Keenum’s was, either.
Former New England Patriots center Dan Koppen said what a lot of folks were thinking.
There’s been a lot of buzz about how the new Will Smith movie “Concussion” will look bad on the NFL. And it probably will. But sometimes the NFL doesn’t need any help looking bad when it comes to the concussion issue.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
