Redskin sees stars two times a game
Coach kept LB’S concussion secret
ASHBURN, Va. London Fletcher says he gets his bell rung perhaps twice a game. He’s played in 240 games in a row, not counting pre-season and playoffs.
Do the math and it adds up. The Washington Redskins linebacker has seen a lot of stars.
“I play inside linebacker and I like to play it physical,” Fletcher said Thursday. “So, I don’t know, it can happen a couple of times a game, but I wouldn’t classify them as concussions; they’re just, you know, bell-ringing. You’ll see stars for a second, and then you’re back to normal in two, three seconds, whatever the case may be. That’s just the way the game is.”
Fletcher, 38, who has never missed a game in 16 NFL seasons, is decidedly old-school. In a profile in this week’s issue of Sports Illustrated, he reveals that he suffered a concussion last pre-season that he and the team kept secret from the public.
“I’m not going to tell an opponent about anything that I’ve got going on. It’s just the way I am,” Fletcher told reporters in the Redskins locker-room. “You play football, you have things that bother you all the time. If I go around telling you all everything that’s bothering me, you’d be writing a story every day.”
So what was suspected was true. When coach Mike Shanahan said Fletcher was “not feeling right” and kept evading followup questions, it turned out that the linebacker did get a concussion when he was hit by a teammate while defending a pass in the pre-season opener in August 2012 against the Buffalo Bills. Fletcher stayed in the game for a few more plays before telling trainers he was feeling dizzy, and he missed the next pre-season game.
Asked why he didn’t reveal Fletcher’s concussion, Shanahan said: “I don’t remember, to be honest with you. I’ve got a hard enough time thinking about what it was last week with injuries, yet a year ago.”
Teams are not required to issue regular injury reports during pre-season.
Still, had the injury occurred in September instead of August, Fletcher wouldn’t now hold the longest active consecutive games streak in the league.
“If I had suffered the concussion in a regular season game, I would not have been able to play that following week,” he said.
What Fletcher didn’t tell the trainers was that he was dealing with a byproduct from the concussion well into the regular season. He was over the actual concussion, but something still wasn’t right with his head.
“It wasn’t a situation where I was all wobbly or anything like that,” Fletcher said. “It’s just every now and then I would maybe have a little sway. I would notice it. Nobody else would notice it. So I never told the team about that.”
It wasn’t until he had a hamstring injury in October that Fletcher told the team about his “balance” issues. It turned out to be problem in his neck that was resolved easily. Fletcher hadn’t been his usual self up until then, and once the problem was treated he had a strong second half and was named second-team All-Pro.