Al Michaels criticized for Tua Tagovailoa discussion

In a scene that felt unfortunately too familiar to many NFL viewers, Tua Tagovailoa left Thursday night’s Miami Dolphins-Buffalo Bills game after suffering a concussion in the third quarter.

This was the third officially diagnosed concussion of his NFL career and it left many NFL commentators wondering if the five-year veteran should call it a career instead of risking further injury.

How the NFL treats concussions and player recovery from them is a whole can of worms, but for the most part, we’ve entered an era where broadcasters recognize the severity of these injuries and what they can lead to . There’s a solemnity that often comes with an NFL broadcast in the way they’re handled.

That wasn’t always the case and quite frankly that wasn’t the case more recently than we’d care to admit.

For most of Al Michaels’ NFL broadcasting career, something like this was usually considered “getting your bell rung.” Maybe the player misses a few plays or sits out the rest of the game, but he’s back out there sooner rather than later. And that was the expectation, too.

We know what’s become of that era’s football players and those who came before them .

Now in the twilight of his Hall of Fame announcing career, you know what you’re getting from the 79-year-old broadcaster at this point when you tune in for Thursday Night Football . A steady hand calling the game, a gambling tidbit or two, and an enthusiasm level akin to a sloth climbing a tree .

Complaints about Michaels’ lack of excitement have tipped into overblown territory for some, but every TNF broadcast seems to have at least one or two moments to remind you.

If Michaels doesn’t want to muster the enthusiasm for touchdowns anymore, fair enough. He’s earned the right to call a game how he wants. But in the minutes following Tagovailoa’s injury, Michaels’ flippancy failed to meet the gravity of the moment.

Hindsight is 20/20 so Michaels’ call of the play, in which Tagovailoa dove head-first into Bills’ defender Damar Hamlin and then crumpled to the ground, can’t be policed too hard. Still, anyone watching the game on X saw how every NFL person immediately recognized what they were seeing while thinking about Tua’s history.

Michaels didn’t seem to put two-and-two together in the moment, saying that Tua “paid the price” for his dive. Purposefully or not, Michaels seems to avoid mentioning the potential of a concussion, adding “down he goes” during a replay as Tagovailoa fell to the ground with an obvious head injury.

On the return from a commercial break, both he and Herbstreit talked around the word “concussion” for as long as they could, with the conversation veering toward the quarterback’s size and how he can “run a little recklessly.” As Tagovailoa walked into the tunnel, Michaels noted that at least he “keeps the drive alive” with the play.

It wasn’t until they threw it to Kaylee Hartung that Tua’s previous two concussions were finally mentioned to provide context for the situation. Michaels noted “We remember it well” since one of the concussions occurred on Thursday Night Football , but stopped there, leaving it to Herbstreit to offer well wishes and a speedy recovery.

A few minutes later, Hartung provided an update on Tagovailoa, saying that he would not be returning to the game and that he had been diagnosed with a concussion. Michaels’ reaction to the news seemed…nonchalant.

“A little irony there, he got hit by Damar Hamlin,” said Michaels. “You know that history.”

Setting aside that Hamlin being the one that Tagovailoa ran into to cause a concussion isn’t really irony ( more like coincidence ), there’s a jauntiness to the way Michaels delivers the information. He doesn’t sound like someone considering the sober reality of how either man must feel about what happened.

“The only good thing for the Dolphins now is they get a mini-bye week so they don’t have a game for ten days,” added Michaels.

That line is where Michaels really gives his mindset away. The “good thing” is that the Dolphins will have enough time so that Tagovailoa could potentially return in time for their next game. The unsaid aspect of that statement is that the goal here is to get him back on the field ASAP and not that Tua’s health is the foremost concern.

That’s the kind of thinking that felt normal to NFL viewers in 1984, but not in 2024.

No one expected Michaels to spend the next ten minutes focused exclusively on Tagovailoa and his situation, but it was hard to ignore how he seemed to avoid the reality and discussion around it entirely.

One might argue that his job is to call the game and that’s it, but consider the way that Joe Buck handled the Damar Hamlin situation . While the comparison is perhaps apples to oranges (and therefore not ironic), Buck had a strong sense of time and place, using his play-by-play role to give audiences a sense of the situation’s gravity while keeping them well-informed .

Unfortunately, Michaels comes from an era where you did what was best for business in situations like this. It’s a mindset we’ve seen many other NFL broadcasters take in similar situations , especially older veterans.

But times have changed. As much as the NFL probably loved the way Michaels handled things, modern viewers and sports fans have a different view of concussion injuries and their cost. They force viewers to do the mental calculus that comes with being a football fan. It challenges everyone involved to own up to their part in this situation.

For a long time, the playbook was to simply move on. Now, when you try to ignore the reality of a severe injury such as the one Tagovailoa suffered on Thursday, people notice.

And it doesn’t feel right.

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