On Wednesday, Panthers coach Ron Rivera said receiver Kelvin Benjamin has a “mild” concussion. The reaction of NFLPA president Eric Winston was anything but.
“You don’t have a ‘mild’ concussion,” Winston said on Twitter. “You either have one or you don’t.”
“I didn’t say he didn’t have a concussion,” Rivera told PFT by phone on Thursday afternoon. “What I said was based off what the doctors told me.”
While there are degrees of concussions, the increased sensitivity to brain injuries has prompted many to cringe when hearing any concussion dubbed “mild.” But that doesn’t mean that “mild” concussions never happen. For Benjamin and any player with a concussion, the key word isn’t “mild” or “moderate” or “severe” but “concussion.”
“He’s in the concussion protocol,” Rivera said. “He’s being treated like everyone else in the concussion protocol.”
Rivera isn’t the only coach to use the phrase “mild concussion"; he just happened to do so on the same day comments emerged from Bengals coach Marvin Lewis inexplicably suggesting that concussions now linger longer because of the media -- not because coaches no longer have the power to determine when a concussed player is cleared to play.
Presently (and indefinitely into the future), the doctors will decide when a player with a concussion can return. Whether the concussion was “mild” or worse than that doesn’t matter. So maybe the best move for everyone -- starting with the doctors -- would be to abandon any effort to give the diagnosis a subcategory.
