1. With just under six minutes left in the second quarter Thursday night, Bengals defensive lineman Josh Tupou wrapped his arms around Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and flung him down to the ground for a sack.
Tua’s head hit the turf, and a frightening scene ensued. Tagovailoa was eventually stretchered off the field and taken to a local hospital.
According to updates from the Dolphins, Tua suffered head and neck injuries, was conscious and had movement in all his extremities, and flew home with the team.
The injury generated massive controversy because of what happened to Tagovailoa just four days earlier when Miami played Buffalo.
In that game, Tua was shoved to the ground and ended up banging his head on the turf, which led to his stumbling around, collapsing and having to be held up by his teammates.
The independent evaluators who do concussion testing for NFL teams concluded Tua had a back injury and cleared him to go back into the game.
Now, those of us who aren’t doctors and don’t have medical degrees should not make medical judgments, but we can be skeptical in watching that video above, to say the least.
And that’s why whenever anyone talks about what happened to Tagovailoa on Thursday night, they must cite what happened to him against Buffalo. It cannot and should not be ignored.
However, that’s just what the Amazon Prime Video halftime crew of Charissa Thompson, Tony Gonzalez, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Richard Sherman did. There was no discussion of Tua playing in a game four days after he left a game because of a hard hit. The crew just offered thoughts and prayers and lectured the audience that Tua’s health is all that matters, as if we didn’t already know that.
I’m not asking the panel to speculate or play doctor, but you also can’t pretend that what happened four days ago didn’t happen. It’s a disservice to viewers to not tell the entire story.
Prime Video’s halftime show faced major blowback on Twitter after taking a pass on giving the full details of the story. Someone at Amazon, I assume, must have been paying attention to the response because, lo and behold, in the middle of the third quarter, Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit gave a light summary of what happened to Tua and mentioned the incident in the Buffalo game, although they cut the video off right before Tua started stumbling around.
For as big as a miss the halftime show was, the postgame show came through big time, mainly thanks to Michael Smith, who was not on the halftime panel. Smith came with facts and details about concussion protocol, what happened in the Buffalo game and responses from the players’ union. He was measured, thorough and went in-depth on all the details.
On another positive note for Amazon, sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung did an excellent job with her reporting and with keeping viewers updated on what was going on with Tua.
This is not a story the NFL wants all over game coverage. Concussions are a controversial topic. The existence of Thursday Night Football, with players back out on the field after getting just three days of rest, is a controversial topic. And the visual of the injury itself Thursday was terrifying.
Part of me was willing to give the halftime show a little bit of a pass, because the networks are likely going to lean toward making their league partners happy. But that theory doesn’t hold up since Michaels and Herbstreit, and then Amazon’s postgame show, went into detail about the incident Sunday. The bottom line is it was just a failure by the halftime show.
2. Given the show airs on the NFL’s own network, Good Morning Football deserves credit for covering all the ugly details of the Tua controversy on Friday’s show.
And for those of you who have asked why more people in sports media didn’t call out the handling of the Tua, one person who has ranted about it every day this week on his SiriusXM show and First Take is Chris “Mad Dog” Russo.
3. While everyone was watching Dolphins-Bengals on Thursday, Utah State was playing BYU on ESPN, and the game featured a 15-yard penalty for shoe throwing.
The internet rule is that any time any athlete throws a shoe, this clip must be posted.
4. Here’s a great quote from Twins shortstop Carlos Correa, comparing himself to Dior, on whether Minnesota can re-sign him.
5. A big topic on the latest SI Media Podcast (see the next item) was the over-the-top reaction from college football fans who were angry that ESPN cut into last week’s Clemson–Wake Forest game to split-screen at bats from Aaron Judge. Well, guess what? According to Andrew Marchand, it’s going to happen again this Saturday if the Yankees slugger is still pursuing home run No. 62. Just remain calm. It’s really not that big of a deal.
6. A brand-new SI Media Podcast dropped this morning, and this week’s guest is The Ringer’s Bryan Curtis, who joined me to talk about a truly wild week in sports media.
Topics covered include:
- Split-screen madness
- Ime Udoka coverage
- Brett Favre coverage
- What Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have done for Monday Night Football
- The most outlandish take of the week
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Cheers premiered on NBC 40 years ago today. Not only was it a great sitcom, but it featured a top-10, maybe even top-5, all-time TV theme song.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
