Fins’ record on predicting player durability spotty
Former Dolphins coach Adam Gase was seriously upset about two things in January of 2017: He was peeved about his team’s playoff loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, despite the lopsided 30-12 score, because the game tape showed multiple opportunities the Dolphins missed that might have turned the game in Miami’s favor.
And Gase was frustrated with the Dolphins’ team doctors.
Gase asked Miami’s doctors and the specialists contracted by the team and Ryan Tannehill for certainty about the direction the Dolphins quarterback should take with the torn
ACL in his left knee.
Tannehill had a choice of treating the injury through rehabilitation and other methods or having reconstructive surgery. The surgery, still considered the orthodox remedy, would almost certainly cost Tannehill to miss part of the 2017 season.
The rehab would get him back on the field by the spring and be seemingly completely healed by training camp in July of 2017.
So Gase wanted doctors to tell him if Tannehill would be no more likely to be re-injured if he underwent the rehab as the surgery. He asked the doctors
for their expertise. But he also, in some regard, wanted a prediction.
And the Dolphins’ doctors wouldn’t or couldn’t give the coach certainty either way.
This from multiple sources familiar with the events of the time.
It doesn’t really matter, by the way, that Tannehill chose to rehab rather than have surgery. It doesn’t matter the Dolphins agreed to this course of treatment. It doesn’t even matter Tannehill tore the same ACL mere days into that next training camp in August of 2017.
What matters is Miami’s doctors apparently had no stomach for giving certainty to that which they would have to predict.
And it wasn’t the first time.
Joe Philbin had experienced similar frustrations with Miami’s doctors when they could not (or would not) give him predictive certainty on a foot injury to Ja’Wuan James in 2015 and Branden Albert’s recovery in 2015 from knee surgery in 2014.
Still not the first time. This followed concerns among some in the Miami personnel department about assurances, or lack thereof in one case, they got from the medical staff about Dion Jordan’s shoulder issues coming out of Oregon in 2013.
The connection in all these cases during multiple years?
Dolphins doctors didn’t wish to “make a definitive call,” according to one source, about how the players in question were going to respond and what durability they would show going forward after sustaining injuries.
( This doesn’t even address the infamous Drew Brees shoulder examination in the spring of 2006 that cost Miami the chance to sign a future Hall of Fame quarterback. In that instance, Dolphins doctors actually did make a prediction. While Dr. James Andrews, who performed the surgery on Brees, sent all 32 teams a letter assuring them the quarterback’s shoulder would be fine, Dolphins doctors told then-coach Nick Saban they were uncomfortable with that prediction and were instead of the opinion Daunte Culpepper’s knee recovery was a safer bet.)
Perhaps that Brees episode, which eventually led to a change in Dolphins doctors, still matters. Because, again, Dolphins doctors as recently as a few years ago were reticent about giving assurances on player durability after they recovered from injuries.
And so here we are, in the spring of 2020, and the Dolphins face a potential franchise-defining question:
Do they draft quarterback Tua Tagovailoa despite his injury history?
Do they, in an extreme case, invest the necessary capital to trade up in order to draft Tagovailoa?
And most fans, indeed, most pundits, have boiled that question down to a matter of Tagovailoa recovering from the November 2019 fractured and dislocated hip that forced the player to undergo surgery and miss the remainder of Alabama’s season.
Most folks think of this as simply, “If Tua is recovered, we’ve got our answer.”
But that’s not the complete question. The complete question NFL teams ask internally goes beyond what has already happened and how that recovery has gone and explores out into the future.
That injury question is “Will Tagovailoa be as durable as any other quarterback we might draft given his injury history?”
Any team drafting Tagovailoa can’t simply be settled on his recovery from the hip and then roll the dice. That team has to be very comfortable that Tagovailoa will be durable, available, able to help the cause on game days.
Because most first-round draft picks are rarely any good if they are chronically injured.
So the Dolphins need a comfort level that Tagovailoa will be durable years into the future. Long after the hip is healed.
And putting that question to their doctors — or any doctor — is asking for a prediction more than a prognosis.
“That’s the sinkhole in the road the Dolphins or any team is going to have to maneuver if they want Tua,” one source told the Herald recently. “They have to get their medical experts to look at the history and all their current information and decide if this player can be a factor for years to come.
“The hip recovery is only part of that — perhaps a small part.”
So what are the other parts?
Obviously, history plays a role. And not just Tagovailoa’s personal history.
Recent NFL Drafts show that quarterbacks with a history of college injuries often continue that trend into the NFL.
Sam Bradford had an injury history at Oklahoma. And he had one in the NFL.
Robert Griffin III had an injury history at Baylor.
And he had one in the NFL.
Carson Wentz was injured during his time at North Dakota State and as an adolescent. And he has been injured with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Deshaun Waton had two ACL tears in a four-year span between his time at Clemson and his first year with the Houston Texans.
Marcus Mariota had an MCL injury in 2013 and sprained his A/C joint in the final game of the 20142015 season. And he has an extensive injury history with the Tennessee Titans. And Tagovailoa?
Yes, there’s the hip issue. Monday was supposed to be a big day on that front in that Tagovailoa said during the NFL Combine he expected to be medically cleared on March 9 — his four-month post-surgery milestone.
And all the news, according to the NFL Network, was apparently good.
But Tagovailoa will apparently have to ease into his field work. And he won’t be ready to compete in the Alabama Pro Day this month. He hopes to have a Pro Day on April 9.
And the issue that gives pause is Tagovailoa’s hip was just one of a handful of injuries he had during his time at Alabama.
There was the broken index finger and surgery on his throwing (left) hand in March 2018.
There was the sprained knee in October of 2018, which admittedly was not serious.
There was the high ankle sprain in December 2018, which was treated via surgery.
There was the high ankle sprain in October 2019, which was treated via surgery.
And then came the hip injury in November 2019.
NFL doctors will be asked by some teams employing them if Tagovailoa is injury prone, given this history. They will be asked if his frame — 6-foot and 217 pounds — is capable of taking NFL punishment on any sort of consistent basis.
And, assuming teams do studies on Tagovailoa’s bone density and other things, doctors will be asked the million-dollar question: Is this player going to be durable in the future?
Dolphins doctors have in the past demurred about making such predictions.