Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa's third concussion of his NFL career saddened the football world Thursday night, and two NFL head coaches, who are also former players themselves, have weighed in with their advice for the 26-year-old quarterback.
Las Vegas Raiders head coach Antonio Pierce, who played nine seasons as a hard-hitting inside linebacker with Washington (2001-2004) and the New York Giants (2005-2009), recommended that Tagovailoa take a long-term view and look toward a future without football by retiring.
"He's going to live longer than he's going to play football," Pierce said, via The Athletic, on Friday. "Take care of your family."
Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson played seven NFL seasons with four different NFL teams, and his message centered around making sure a player is "1,000% healthy" if they are in the kind of situation Tagoaviloa is now. He also emphasized putting the player first in a situation like the one the Dolphins quarterback is in now.
"If it happened to one of our guys, you have to be very careful and do the right thing for the player," Pederson said, via The Florida Times-Union, on Friday. "I think that's the most important thing. It's part of the game that obviously we're trying to remove, and obviously I don't know if you can fully remove it because of the nature of these hits. But, I think you just have to think about the player, the health and safety of the player and making sure they're 100, 1,000% healthy. Those are just decisions I think personally as a player you have to consider as you think about your career. Think about wanting to play. That's the thing about it. Everybody wants to play. They love this game so much, and they give so much to it that, when things like this happen... reality kind of hits a little bit. It just shows the human nature, the human side of our sport."